Putting It Into Practice: Roadmapping

By Holly Youlden

This term we've been talking about the power of roadmapping, and using backwards planning to ensure your lessons have impact. In this blog post, we are going to explore some of the ways you can put pedagogy into practice by looking at staff reflections, reading, and top tips! 

Staff reflections:

Charlotte Nicholas in the History team has been focusing on the concept of roadmapping over the past year so was a natural fit to lead our CPD session on the topic in September. She summarised some of the key research in this area in this slide below and shared a specific example from her Year 9 medium-term planning. Note how clearly Charlotte has identified the substantive and disciplinary knowledge required in the units, as well as thinking about where specific transferable skills may feature:

(From C. Nicholas' "Roadmapping" CPD, 1st September 2022) 

We spoke to some of the colleagues who attended Charlotte's CPD to reflect on what they had learnt:

What were your key take-home message about roadmapping?

Roadmapping is an excellent way to signpost curriculum content to students and sequence learning in a way that reinforces student knowledge, helps them to prepare for what is coming up next and what they need to remember (potentially for GCSEs, assessments, etc). I haven't specifically made any new resources, however have integrated this into my thinking when planning, especially the Do Now- more retrieval based, linking to past learning and the Plenary, recapping today's lesson as well as looking ahead to the next lesson. 

(Alice Hall, Expressive Arts)

The end product is what gives the roadmapping process its shape, direction and structure. It also supports the idea of very high expectations in which the teacher holds the learners and encourages students to have the same expectations upon themselves. I particularly liked the idea that students know where their learning is heading and how this may encourage them in their journey despite the challenges they may face along the way. 

Roadmapping may require complete or at least partial re-planning of schemes of learning. One of the main challenges is obviously finding the time to achieve this. So backwards teaching will perhaps have to begin where there are clear gaps of planning based on students' starting points (from pre-assessment for example) and also consider whether the teacher can get sufficient challenge opportunities to get accurate feedback throughout a sequence of lessons. In other words, find areas of schemes of learning that require both more challenge and more effective ways to differentiate learning through the principles of roadmapping instead of replanning a whole scheme of learning. 

(Diogo Pereira, Science) 

How can I learn more?

Watch...

• Kitchen pedagogy 2.4- Instruction by Tom Sherrington here

• Instruction collection by Cult of Pedagogy here

Read...

• Blog post from Michelle Chen about curriculum development and planned skills progression

  
  

• CPD slides from Charlotte Nicholas about roadmapping

• Backwards planning takes thinking ahead by Rebecca Abler here 

• Backward design: the basics by Jennifer Gozales here

Speak to...

• Charlotte Nicholas- History

• Lucy Taylor- Geography

• Dipesh Patel- Science

Please share any great examples of roadmapping with me at h.youlden@westminsteracademy.org.uk!