Learning Intentions.

I have found that writing learning intentions on the plan helps me to direct the activities more.  I run my class using a personalised list of must do's for the week.  It starts off as one list of learning intentions and activities.   I make little changes to intentions and tasks to differentiate them.  I believe that the situation where children can work out what they are learning and why for themselves is the end goal.  I think each teacher needs to come up with ways of scaffolding students to recognize the learning in the way that works for their class.  I think walts on the board, my method, learning intentions in books are all just ways to scaffold students into having increasing amounts of control over their own learning.  In my opinion Senior Management Teams would do better to ask how teachers are moving students to this end goal rather than dictating that learning intentions should always be on the board.  Some classes don't need this much scaffolding to have control and motivation.
It was very interesting at ICOT 2013 to hear the father of learning intentions apologise for inflicting the "walt on the board" on all teachers.   His desire was for students to know what and why they were learning.  He didn't want to be p[rescriptive about how this was achieved.