This is the time when learners acquire information and engage in an experience that provides the basis for, or content of, their ensuing learning. This ‘shared experience’ might involve the class brainstorming to recall and review the extent of their existing knowledge and understanding of a topic; it could be teacher talk, reading, watching a video or a field trip. At this stage the teacher aims to create the ‘need to know’ which will ensure that the task matters to the pupils as well as the teacher. By the end of the engagement stage the pupils need to have the territory they are to explore charted and to have a clear sense of the required outcomes.

This is an essential stage in most learning activities where pupils think aloud -–grappling with new ideas and relating them to previous knowledge. The talk is likely to be tentative and hesitant. It is the time when teachers deliberately take a step back. They become observers, monitoring students activity – watching, listening and learning just how much or how little information and experience the learners are bringing to the task.

In this stage the pupils are set an activity which will focus their attention on the most significant aspects of the new information, to deepen their understanding of the topic. This often involves reshaping the new information into another form

Students are asked to present their findings to an interested and critical audience which might be another pair or small group in their own or another class, a whole class forum, a teacher in discussion with the group or another adult. Often it is by explaining to someone else what we think that we come to know what we think. It also provides a degree of tension and gives a sense of purpose to small group work.

An equally important part of the learning process, reflection is too often ignored or merely allocated a few minutes at the end of a project or a piece of work. Yet this is the time for considering where we have been and where we might go next: essential to help us learn and teach more effectively. By looking back at what they have learned and the process they have gone through, students can gain a deeper understanding of both the content and the learning process itself. Project teachers have used pupil / pupil interviews, buzz sessions, ‘talk diary’ entries and whole class forums as ways of logging and considering progress made.