Flexibility is one of the five Fs (friendly, firm, fair, flexible, fun). The best lessons sometimes come from abandoning the plan, but flexibility mostly means building choices into a routine framework.
Eleven ways to build in flexibility
Topics from children’s interests · grouping criteria (friendship/ability/gender/random) · standing vs seated · repeat a popular game or song · timing matched to difficulty · who asks and answers · how answers are checked · teacher vs peer feedback · choice of task, order, method or homework · L1 to avoid misunderstanding or resolve conflict · reward systems “if used at all”.
Examples
Snow in Madrid; a shoebox of silkworms. “Here-and-now” relevance turned into lessons.
Limits
Those moments “don’t happen every day”, so flexibility needs a repertoire and a routine base. “Flexible within a framework” comes from a commenter, endorsed by Read.
Apply in my context (Claude)
- The “reward systems, if used at all” aside is worth taking seriously as the school’s gamification lead: Read lists rewards as optional.
- Flexible-within-framework is also the honest answer to observers who see deviation from a Prepare plan as a failure.