Do they know they're making progress?

I've mentioned before that I've been following the free Futurelearn course Teaching Languages in Primary Schools: Putting Research into Practice.  Yesterday I worked through week 2 (there are 3 weeks altogether) and it gave me more food for thought.

Following week 1, I've been thinking about progression, particularly in upper Key Stage 2 (age 9-11).  I learned that the younger children (lower Key Stage 2, age 7-9) benefit from lots of varied input with which they can actively engage.  They are emotionally engaged with the learning, and "fun activities from an engaging teacher" are particularly important for them at this stage in their learning journey.  The older ones, on the other hand, appreciate more challenge, focus, logic and structure, and more opportunities to reflect on the language and on their learning.  As the children get older, they gain a deeper understanding of their own learning and they become more frustrated if they don't achieve their learning goals.  Younger children are motivated by enjoying the fun activities, while for the older ones, progress and achievement are crucial to motivation.

So awareness of progression and a sense of achievement are key factors for motivation in the older children.  This has led me to think about progression:  I know what progression looks like in my scheme of work, and I know when the children have progressed and achieved their objectives.  But do the children know?  Do they know they're making progress?

I'm thinking of a possible way of showing the children explicitly how their learning is progressing and how they can do things at the end of a lesson that they couldn't do before.  Giving them a green stamp for achieving an objective and showing them my spreadsheet every so often probably isn't sufficient.

Week 2 of the Futurelearn course, during an interview with Sarah Dugdale, mentioned WAGOLL (What A Good One Looks Like) texts for showing children what they are aiming for.  In this case, children can help the teacher to compile a list of things that they will need to know in order to create their own version of that text, and will see their progress as they "tick off" the different points on the list.  Sarah advocates using as the WAGOLL text a piece of work that  has been done by a previous pupil.  Children will find this more motivating: if that child can do it, they can do it.  You could also provide a teacher-produced WAGOLL, but children might perceive this as less motivating, as they already know the teacher can do it!  Incidentally, Sarah also commented that she can see a use for "WABOLL" (What A Bad One Looks Like) texts, where children are shown a bad (or less good!) example and can suggest ways to improve it (maybe in a content sense rather than accuracy).

Another solution that I have been thinking about is, at each stage of the learning, getting the children to write a few words or a short sentence to summarise what they have learned during that lesson, that they didn't know before.  I've made a mock-up of how that might look for the beginning of my first Year 6 unit:

Alternatively we could break down the learning objective to create a tick list as mentioned before.

What do you think?  Do you think that the children in your Year 5 and Year 6 classes know that they are making progress?  Can you think of any easy-preparation and quick ways of showing the children explicitly the progress that they are making so as to motivate them in their learning?