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Friday Gem #4 – ‘Do Now’ Starter

This idea comes from Nazlee, who shared it with the assessment and work scrutiny working party this week. It’s a quick but powerful way to start a double lesson with some low stakes retrieval of prior learning in order to strengthen long term memory.

 

What is it?

  • At the start of a double, put on the board three to four short questions/activities.
  • They should require pupils to recall prior learning from last lesson, last week, last term and last year.
  • They questions should be quick to complete and quick for the teacher to check in class.
  • This should take no more than 10mins in total.

 

This is effective because…

  • Interleaving and spaced retrieval practice are both proven to strengthen long term memory. Increasing storage strength is really important for our bigger, linear GCSEs and A Levels. Here are two great articles from the ‘Learning Scientists’:
  • Studies show that low stakes testing deepens learning: assessment as learning.
  • Routine knowledge recall produces better organisation of knowledge/concepts for pupils. Powerful schema are built in the pupil’s memory.
  • Immediate feedback allows teacher to quickly put right any misunderstandings (shown to be important in consolidating learning) and it identifies gaps in understanding to be addressed.

Examples from Nazlee (Maths) and Mary (Chemistry):

Maths Year 7:

 

 

 

 

 

Maths A Level:

 

 

 

 

 

Year 11 Chemistry:

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Friday Gem #3 – The power of Océane

This idea comes from Richard Bristow, who turned to Océane for support in navigating the depth and breadth of academic literature about ‘why arts should feature in STEAM’. She is a powerful researcher and was ready to use her expertise to help.

How did Océane help?

Richard said “Océane was brilliant in helping me to navigate this area, giving titles from our own library as well as sorting through online resources. She directed me to really interesting research from Universities concerned with this question, meaning I could focus my initial thinking before going off on separate tangents. The big problem I have when using an online resource like JStor is that I get easily distracted – there’s always another really interesting article to read – and before I know it a double free has gone and I’m no closer to answering my original question! By giving me targeted resources I’ve been able to format an answer to my initial problem and then go on to look at secondary materials.

I’ve since asked her to do the same for my Year 10 and 12 pupils on targeted research for the Baroque Period and French Art Music by Messiaen; she has produced beautiful and informative worksheets for me to use with my pupils helping us to have focused research. Thank you Océane!”

Think about how the brilliant Océane could help you. Once you’ve tapped into her expertise for the first time, she will no doubt become indispensable to you.

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Friday Gem #2 – “Categorise in any way you find interesting”

This idea comes from Claire Baty, who I saw use it in her Year 10 French lesson. However, I think it can be easily adapted to suit lots of different subjects.

 

What did she do?

  • For each pair of pupils, she set up a collaboration page on OneNote full of adjectives. Some adjectives were familiar, and some were new.
  • The instruction was for pupils to drag the words around the collaboration space and to group them “in any way they find interesting’.
  • She didn’t define what she meant by ‘interesting’, giving pairs the freedom to think independently, creatively and logically.
  • Pairs were immediately deep in debate as to first, what categories to use, and then how to categorise the individual words…some were not easily categorised!
  • There were lots of different interpretations of ‘interesting’: some pupils took a grammatical approach (grouping words by how they are used in a sentence); some a semantic approach (grouping words by their meaning); some a metacognitive approach (grouping words with whether they were new or difficult)…and some did something more personal and quirky! (see a couple of screenshots of this below)
  • She then showed the collaboration spaces to the class, with pairs explaining their approach.

 

Of course, you don’t have to be grouping adjectives. You could ask pupils to group anything, BUT it works best where there can be debate and flexibility about how and what to group.

 

This is effective because…

  • The task allowed for natural differentiation, with pairs choosing to group words in more complex or simpler ways (for a great article about differentiation by task rather than activity, read this https://learningspy.co.uk/english-gcse/building-challenge-differentiation-thats-quick-and-works/ )
  • It opened up rigorous, independent debate between pupils as they weighed up why words should be grouped in a certain way.
  • It recapped prior learning and allowed for independent exploration of new words (and the way they work within sentences).
  • It modelled a way to revise vocabulary – by grouping vocab in different ways to make networks/schemas of words and ideas. This is great for memory recall.
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Friday Gem #1 – Silent Teacher

This idea comes from Helena, who observed Roz using this technique really successfully last term with a Yr11 class doing simultaneous quadratic equations. However, the technique can be used in lots of different subjects and contexts.

 Roz started by showing the steps to an algebraic solution without explaining what she was doing. Pupils had to watch intensely, work out for themselves the logic of the steps, and then give it a go or join in when they caught on. She said that by using this method, the class understood more quickly than if she had explained it.

Rather than overload pupils with visual worked examples AND teacher explanations, this is an opportunity for pupils to intensely focus on one thing…what you are showing them on the board. This reduces cognitive load, demands an intense focus and relies on independence as pupils have to work things out for themselves. It’s riveting and game-like!

This will work in subjects where there is logic, problem-solving, patterns and steps. I can also imagine it working in arts subjects – there are patterns and linked ideas within and across literary texts, for example. You could start by putting a text on the board highlighting particular words. Pupils have to work out the link and pattern and continue independently in their own texts, annotating their own ideas as they go.

So, in summary: