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University of Exeter
Tools for Schools
Moving on and through the day

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Moving on and through the day

Key Points

This strategy will support the student to know what is happening each day, or in the immediate future. It can be tailored to the student’s needs and contains some science around why it is important know what to expect of the day. This can reduce anxiety

  • Personalised to toolkit student
  • Everyday use
How is this tweaked for flex?
Children may either lose track of time or tasks easily, or struggle to remember where they are in the school day. This strategy is to help them stay on track. They may also need this kind of scaffolding to reduce uncertainty about the things that will happen next, as this can be a source of anxiety.
Plan
  • Watch the video to understand why this is useful
  • Get the visual timetable and now and next templates ready, or make your own
  • Some students will need events broken down during lessons, others will need larger chunks of time laid out, you know your student so adapt this to what they need
Do
  • Introduce the visual timetable and/or now and next resources to the child and have them customise some tokens before you laminate them (pictures of the activities- see our icons here)
  • Put it somewhere either the whole class or the individual student can easily see it:
    • stuck on to their desk
    • on the wall close to their desk
    • in their planner
    • along the bottom of your whiteboard 
  • Involve students in putting on and removing activities, and tell everyone what the expectations are for the next one, referring to the template as you do so
Review
  • How has the student's behaviour changed with more knowledge of what is happening? Talk about your reflections with colleagues, or the child's family
  • What problems have come up? Record these on the reflection template

For example, does it cause a problem if they know that an activity they do not like is coming up soon? Do they fiddle with the template too much if it's on their desk?

  • Consider: is it in the right place to be visible and useful to the child? Do you have the right level of detail- do they need more or less (moving from lesson-by-lesson to day-by-day, or having a different version of the template to use within a lesson?)
  • Make changes to the templates based on your reflections
Resources