Explorify for Inclusion: Recording children’s responses

Our top tips 

1. Give additional adults in the classroom sticky notes (there are even speech bubble shaped ones) and ask them to record what children have said during Explorify activities. These provide useful evidence of learning and could be stuck into children's books.

2. For many children, writing can be a barrier to their enjoyment of science learning. Sometimes it is useful to have a record of the ideas shared in an Explorify session, but this needs to be manageable. One of our experts describes how she used an Explorify big book and active learning to capture children’s ideas. Hear their story and read the case study.

3. Use your Explorify big book (or floor book) as an opportunity for retrieval practice to recap on children's science vocabulary. This can be a quick and simple intervention which looks at selected Explorify activities and asks, “What can you remember?”

4. Drawing pictures can help children to share their ideas without the need for writing. One of our experts describes how they introduced this approach and even saw some children become more motivated to write. Hear their story and read the case study.

5. Using devices to make audio recordings provides a motivating alternative to writing and encourages children to work independently. There are recordable 'talk buttons', 'talk pegs', 'talk postcards' and cards with multiple record buttons. These devices can form part of interactive displays or help share ideas about resources such as Science in my Pocket.

6. Create a ‘Story map’ topic display which maps what the children have done including Explorify activities, post-it notes of what children said, audio devices and photos of their activities.