Drops of Gold

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Drops of Gold This page is dedicated to sharing strategies, insights, examples for working with diverse brains .

The trolley didn’t create independence. The teaching did. 💛Sometimes the most powerful teaching isn’t about what the tea...
16/10/2026

The trolley didn’t create independence. The teaching did. 💛

Sometimes the most powerful teaching isn’t about what the teacher is doing, but what students have learned to do without them.

What started as explicitly taught visual routines has become something much more powerful.

Students are now identifying what they need, selecting and displaying the visuals, and even reminding each other!

This is what happens when we move beyond simply providing visual supports to explicitly teaching students how to use them.

It’s about building independence, student agency and shared responsibility through everyday classroom practice.

The real question isn’t what resources we have in our classrooms. It’s what we’ve taught students to do with them.

🎲 Quick Connection Games!Sometimes the best classroom connections happen through the simplest activities.A die, a few co...
10/10/2026

🎲 Quick Connection Games!

Sometimes the best classroom connections happen through the simplest activities.

A die, a few counters, a little friendly competition and suddenly students are talking, laughing, thinking and learning together!

Perfect for a morning welcome, Do Now, transition activity or those spare five minutes.

Adapt the challenge to suit your students — from number recognition to multiplication.

đź’› Same simple game. Different levels of challenge. Plenty of opportunities to connect.

Because not every classroom activity needs to be complicated to be worthwhile!

🎲 An oldie but a goodie… with a little twist!Remember the old game Boxes? Connecting dots, completing squares and trying...
10/10/2026

🎲 An oldie but a goodie… with a little twist!

Remember the old game Boxes? Connecting dots, completing squares and trying to outsmart your opponent?

Well, this version throws the neat rows out the window!

Scatter some dots across a page, swap squares for triangles, and roll a dice to determine how many lines you can draw.

Same simple idea, just a little more unpredictable!

A great little Do Now, brain break or connection activity that gets everyone thinking, laughing, planning and perhaps getting a little competitive!

And the best bit? All you need is paper, pens and a dice.

Sometimes we don’t need to reinvent the wheel… just scatter the dots a little! 💛

All of these are wonderful for reset
10/10/2026

All of these are wonderful for reset

Roll, choose, move! 🎲💛A little movement support, right on your lanyard! 🎲💛 Roll, choose and try a quick movement togethe...
01/10/2026

Roll, choose, move! 🎲💛

A little movement support, right on your lanyard! 🎲💛 Roll, choose and try a quick movement together, then support the return to learning. Adapt to the child—keep it playful and pressure-free.

Future You is really about student agency. 💛As teachers, it’s so easy to become the person doing all the remembering, pr...
23/09/2026

Future You is really about student agency. đź’›

As teachers, it’s so easy to become the person doing all the remembering, prompting and thinking ahead.

Have you got your book?
What do you need next?
Have you packed your bag?
What could you try?

But what happens when we start handing some of that thinking back?

“What could Today You do to help Future You?”

This little mini-lesson introduces the idea playfully. Children draw themselves now, imagine their Future You, and begin thinking about the small things they could do today to make something easier later.

It’s not about withdrawing support or expecting children to suddenly become independent.

It’s about creating more opportunities to notice → think ahead → choose → act.

Less reminding.
More thinking.
More agency. đź’›

The second image is a worked example you can use to get the conversation started.

This is one I’m really excited to try.We spend so much time reminding children what to do next. What happens if we delib...
23/09/2026

This is one I’m really excited to try.
We spend so much time reminding children what to do next. What happens if we deliberately start handing some of that thinking back?

Meet Future You.
Swipe through — it’s a simple little idea, but there is a lot of thinking sitting underneath it.

What if we replaced one more reminder with one more opportunity to think?“Future You” is a simple way to help children c...
23/09/2026

What if we replaced one more reminder with one more opportunity to think?

“Future You” is a simple way to help children connect what they do now with what happens later — without another lecture, checklist or adult doing the thinking for them.

Start playfully. Draw Future You. Talk about what they might know, practise or feel more confident doing. Then gradually bring the same question into everyday classroom moments:

“What could you do now to make things easier for Future You?”

It might be packing up, starting something tricky, asking for help, practising a skill or making a different choice.

Same question. Lots of situations. Bigger thinking.

Less reminding. More thinking. More agency.

Swipe through for a simple way to introduce it.
Same You. Brighter Tomorrow.

For Instagram, I’d use five focused hashtags rather than a huge block:

Sometimes regulation looks like this… 🎾Track. Hit. Move. Repeat.
23/09/2026

Sometimes regulation looks like this… 🎾Track. Hit. Move. Repeat.

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