One page profiles as bookmarks
In January, I wrote about exploring different ways of presenting
information on our One Page Profiles. The staff were keen to trial
the bookmarks. Beautifully printed bookmarks were produced,
which immediately inspired teachers and children to fill them in.
The children enjoyed completing the different sections, and reading
their own comments upon how to support their learning journey was
very special. There was a real feeling that these would be useful
on a day to day basis, being kept in their reading books.
There were a couple of things that we have learned from this,
however. One teacher felt that she had 'got it wrong' by asking the
children to write about anything that supports their learning. I
reassured her that the things her pupils wrote was fine! Other
children focussed on ways to support the reading. The ideas and
suggestions that they came up with were very insightful.
Here are a couple of the bookmarks, where children have written
about how they want to be supported at school.
We have also realised that the 'like and admire' section was
completed from the child's point of view. So they were listing
things that they liked - pop stars, family members, sports. We
should have been much clearer that this was about themselves -
those characteristics that they and others like and admire; for
example being a good friend, being able to save lots of goals,
making people laugh, always being helpful. This is an important
lesson to me, in that I needed to be much clearer in my
instructions to the adults leading the activity.
Looking forward to how we can learn from this and continue to
use this approach each term, we will create a post card style
format with key information about Like and Admire / Important to
and then focus on a section about 'What I want my next teacher to
know about how I learn best'. This section can be filled in by the
children themselves, the parents and the teachers who have worked
for a whole year with these children. This will be really useful
for transition, and being in a postcard format will be easy to
manage and use.
