An idea found in Talk-Less Teaching by Isabella Wallace and Leah Kirkman, that was a great hit with my class this year was the boarding and landing pass cards. This activity provides a simple AfL strategy, feedback to the teachers about prior knowledge, self assessment and help with targeting interventions when necessary.

How it was used:

The boarding pass is issued upon the start of the lesson. I had my class ‘board’ as if they were on a plane and if I had a air host’s hat I would have worn it. Mental note to get one for Halloween next year! I went to town with it and got the children really excited to start our lesson by asking them to sit down and put their seat belts on, all pretend of course.

Once every one is ready ask the children complete the first part of the boarding pass where they write down 3 things they learnt in the last lesson. You will then need to introduce today’s lesson and before you move on ask them to fill in the second part of the boarding pass, where the children need to write down what it is that they will be learning today. Here you are checking prior learning and seeing if your pupils have understood the learning objective of today’s lesson.

After teaching, as a plenary the children need to fill in the landing card pass. This works even better if your lesson is before break or lunch time and then the children can be dismissed to ‘board off plane’. Here children write about what they have learnt and if they are still unsure about anything and also reflect on their learning via the smiley faces.This is great for you as teacher to see how successful your lesson has been, what intervention is needed and also how to best prepare and plan your next lesson.

What AfL strategies do you use?

Download the free editable boarding and landing passes HERE.

Let me know how it goes in the comments below!

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Till next time…