Scott Lavery\’s Enterprise Blog

I spent the morning in 3 different classes at Wallyford Primary School on Monday.  This was my first session focusing on developing teaching and learning in line with the major educational agendas.  I was developing learning intentions (What) and asking pupils to explore the relevance of the lession (Why) whilst setting their own success criteria (How).

Initailly, I worked with Primary 7 who were planning an imaginative story.  The children showed they had a good understanding of learning intentions and success criteria and it was evident that the class teacher had spent a great deal of time in class using these to improve learning in her class.  The pupils themselves set their own learning intention for the lesson and I then focused on why they needed to plan to help them see the relevance of their learning.  We then went on to develop the success criteria and the children took full responsibility for this and used them in order to check their plans.

I then moved onto Primary 1 to introduce the concept to them.  The lesson was counting forward and backwards from 0 to 10.  I introduced the learning intention using a WHAT flashcard (which all classes across the school will have access to).  We then moved on to discuss WHY it was important that we learn to do this accurately.  I was surprised by how engaged the children were by this and also how they were able to suggest real life contexts for using their learning.  From this we discussed HOW they would know they had completed this successfully.  The pupils eventually came up with the idea of using their fingers to check accuracy.

In Primary 4, spelling was the focus lesson and gain, the children were able to decide upon reason for learing their spelling sounds.  Reference was also made to how this would benefit them in later life.  The pupils again set their own success criteria for the lesson.

All 3 classes demonstrated how impoirtant its is to ionvolve the children fully in the learning process and the need to give them opportunities to understand the relevance of what they are learning.  This area will be developed in all classes over the coming weeks so there is a consistent approrach across the school.