Focusing on learning at the planning stage means:

• being clear about the learning and teaching objectives in planning and sharing them with the children and their parents and carers
• being clear about the importance of the language demands of the curriculum as well as language teaching and learning opportunities provided by the curriculum
• including social and emotional learning and teaching objectives in planning, when appropriate, and sharing them with the children and their parents and carers
• planning the key focus points for the teaching and the learning (the success criteria) and involving the children by making them aware of, and even part of, the creation of the agreed success criteria
• making sure that the context is designed to enable the learning objective to be fulfilled
• being confident to adapt the planning and teaching at any time if the learning objective, based on assessment throughout the teaching sequence, is not being fulfilled.

The Primary Framework encourages flexibility to ensure that teachers use the most appropriate organisation and structure to promote and develop children's learning in literacy and mathematics.

• Phases (including timings) within and across lessons should support the learning intention by introducing, developing and reviewing the focus.
• Children should know what they are learning, and why, as well as the extent of the progress they are making.
• While the teacher orchestrates the structure of learning, children should have opportunities to enquire, to question and to explore, using their full language repertoire, so that they can apply their learning and teachers can consolidate and build on children's knowledge, skills and understanding.
• While it is necessary to plan across terms and weeks to build progression and cover content, such planning should be adapted to meet the needs of children's learning in response to assessment and ongoing review.
• Building on and activating prior learning is at the heart of the renewed Primary Framework. The professional development materials in the 'CPD' section provide support for developing an understanding of age-related expectations and making use of prior learning prompts to assess children's understanding.

Support for day-to-day assessment in the Primary Framework