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!

Bitesize Research: 'Hinterland Knowledge' & Curriculum Planning

 By Jaya Carrier

I hope everyone has had a good week so far! This week, I was interested in this TES summary about the concept of ‘hinterland knowledge’ which was coined by History education specialist Counsell in 2018. Objectives: To understand the concept of ‘hinterland knowledge’ and how it informs teacher thinking and curriculum planning. Summary:

• Counsell states that ‘core’ and ‘hinterland’ knowledge are different insofar as the former is the fact-based knowledge you want students to remember over the long term (normally, what is listed on the specification at KS4 and KS5 is an example of core knowledge), and the latter is the important stories, anecdotes and illustrations that give meaning, richness and context to the core knowledge.
• Counsell argues that a consideration of this distinction between core and hinterland enables teachers to exercise judgement over the kinds of activities they choose in sequencing a curriculum
• The article gives an example from RS curriculum planning, explaining that consideration of the ‘hinterland knowledge’ gives depth and richness to the curriculum, but also enables it to stay focussed on retrieving core knowledge.
  

How does this impact me and my practice?:

Some reflections arising from this that might be helpful to consider are:

• What is my awareness of ‘hinterland knowledge’? How am I already using this?
• Am I aware of the other kinds of disciplinary knowledge in my subject? Some commonly used delineations of knowledge include substantive, conceptual, generative, declarative and procedural. What do I want to find about these?
  

If you would like to discuss this further with me please get in touch! I’d be delighted to hear from you!

Bitesize Research: Using Effective Do Nows To Maximise Student Learning

 By Jaya Carrier

I hope everyone has had a great week so far. This week, I’ve been thinking about Do Now activities, and will be doing my Wednesday briefing on this theme. I was interested in coming across some work by Petty in his book Evidence-Based Teaching: A practical approach which puts forward an evidence-informed strategy for the beginning of lessons. Objectives:

To provide a practical model for the beginning of lessons that uses evidence-informed ideas. Summary: Building on the work of Hattie (2008), Petty’s model proposes three steps to begin lessons which he claims has a significant effect on student learning:

• Show a visual representation of the learning that will take place during the the lesson
• Set learning intentions that are not outcome-based but focus on what will be learned
• Use questioning to recall prior learning

How does this impact me and my practice?:

Some reflection questions arising from this that might be helpful to consider are:

• How am I starting my lessons? How effective are they? How do I know?
• What do visual representations of learning that will take place actually look like?
• What do I think about Petty’s model?

If you would like to discuss this further with me - please let me know! I’d be delighted to open up these discussions and conversations.