Planning ahead for learning involves taking into account the resources and materials that one might need throughout every stage of the lesson (Ewing et al. 2019). These resources may be used at any part of the lesson for a range of purposes; explaining a task, teacher demonstration, supporting students during a lesson etc. Within my lessons I utilised a number of pre-made and self-made resources which were age appropriate and adequately supported the learning style of my class, allowing each child within my lesson to engage in learning effectively (Ewing et al. 2019).

When presenting my STEM challenge lesson to the class in week 1, I created a power-point to be used during the introduction and explanation stages of the lesson. Within the power-point, questions were framed to the children which worked as a pathway to reaching the challenging goal by explaining the aims and ideas of how to achieve this (Hattie, 2012). The presentation also included numerous photo examples of instruments which aimed to provoke children’s imagination and creativity. By including both the written and visual provocations, all students were able to use the power-point to understand their task and create their instrument, regardless of reading ability. The power-point resource was kept up on the interactive white board for the entirety of the lesson, allowing children to revisit it when needed for clarification or inspiration.

In many of my lessons, I used the ‘teacher demonstration’ strategy to present tasks to students in order to ensure they understood the learning goals and intentions. Before sending children off to do their independent or group work, I would use the same resources that they would be engaging with to demonstrate what the aim of the task is and some alternate strategies they could use to reach the desired goals. For example, in my sentence structure activities, before sending children off to complete the task, I used the same template that they would be working with to model where to write their sentence and clearly demonstrated how the sentence needed to be written before drawing in the picture. What this shows is that I was able to utilise the resource to support student learning by using it as a tool to scaffold learning through joint participation before encouraging independent engagement (Winsler 2003).  

Ewing, R, Kervin, L, Glass, C, Gobby, B, Le Cornu, R, & Groundwater-Smith, S 2019, Teaching : dilemmas, challenges and opportunities (6th ed.). Cengage

Hattie, J 2012, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning, Routledge.

Winsler, A 2003, ‘Introduction to special issue: Vygotskian perspectives in early childhood education: translating ideas into classroom practice’ in Early Education and Development, pp. 253-270.