Key Points
This strategy will help you to provide opportunities for children in the class to interact with different peers in structured and unstructured settings
Plan
- Giving your students opportunities to work in different ways and with different peers in the classroom can help the toolkit student to feel included, make friends and engage with learning
- It is best to think about this during your planning time to start with, and it should become part of usual practice over a few weeks
Do
- Alongside your lesson plans, identify the types of learning activities that you are planning for the week (e.g. lone work, working with those on the table, use the mix it up menu to help)
- Identify places where you can mix this up, and the activity could be changed slightly (aim for at least one a day) using the prompt suggestions sheet and prompt template, you can use a pen or highlighter to note where you plan to do this on your lesson plan, or the mix it up icon on the prompt template if you have digital resources
- Use the mix it up menu or classroom mix it up sheet to choose an alternate option that means the toolkit student will be interacting with different students in the class to normal. Feel free to add your own suggestions for ways that will work in your classroom
- There is a classroom random mix up sheet as well so your students can input into how an activity is mixed, and a version where you can choose what the options are. This may be useful for on-the-spot decisions or building in where you might have let students choose a partner to work with before, this introduces an element of chance and vary who interacts together
Assess
- Use the reflection template to capture when you have used this tool, and the impact it has had on who the toolkit student has interacted with each day for a week, then review it
Review
- Do you have any concerns about using it more? Talk about these with others
- How are you going to remember to keep using the mix it up method in your teaching activities? Make some notes about how you will build it in to your usual planning and routine using the prompts template
Resources
Editable PDFs
Mix it up menu
Prompt suggestion sheet