More learning walks

Today I saw an English lesson, a maths lesson and a geography lesson.

The English lesson was great and I got to see an idea in action that I have thought about using myself. The pupils had done an assessment and had been 'levelled' - it was then up them to go through the level descriptors to see what they had done really well and what they could improve on. At first the pupils were a little hesitant (it was the first time they had seen the descriptors) but they soon got into it and seemed to enjoy the responsibility of having an input in the marking of their work. It was a really clever way to get the pupils not to focus on the grade that they got, but the reason that they got it. The focus was on improvement and moving forward.

I think this would work in Languages too. I would like to give it a go, but I find the MFL NC level descriptors a bit awkward sometimes. I am going to have a go at re-wording and chunking the targets for the descriptors and see whether I can get my pupils analysing their work and having input in the marking as successfully as I saw today.


Geography was great fun! I only saw a couple of minutes as I was running out of time but I wish I could have stayed longer. Even just staying for that few minutes allowed me to see exactly what the learning objective was. The pupils were leading their teacher around the school using their newly acquired map skills, using what looked like a school map. It was nice to see the whole school being used as a resource an the pupils learning so practically.

For MFL a similar task could be created quite easily using directions in the TL, with the pupils also using QR codes to follow a treasure hunt around the school.


In the maths lesson that I visited was very interesting. You could actually feel and hear the brains working and the learning happening!! It was so positive to see that at this point in the lesson the teacher wasn't using any fancy technologies, or even colourful worksheets or anything, she didn't need them, she was explaining something simply to the pupils in a very practical and easy-to-understand way and they were 100% engaged and totally understood what they had to do.

I wish I could do that...

I am loving this learning walk thing, it is giving me a lot of inspiration and it is great to see such positive things happening in the classroom around the school. :)