Top Tips on Collaborative Learning

As we move into the new year I find myself thinking about the exam session which is rapidly approaching, and find myself asking “how can I change my revision strategies to get students to be more independent?”  The holy grail in teaching is to get students to teach each other allowing teachers to take a step back an act as facilitators.  One method that has been discussed lots over the last couple of years is collaborative learning.  In this blog I have tried to discuss my experiences with it and some of the ways that it can be used day to day.

Before teachers can foster positive interdependence, we must use new techniques, skills and strategies which involve:

• Planning activities and tasks in advance – including how they will be assessed
• Forming different kinds of groups for different purposes
• Using different methods to compose and recompose groups
• Having ground rules with students
• Training peers to teach peers
• Using a range of techniques (e.g. carousels/jigsaws)
• Taking time to give feedback on the process of learning as well as the product of learning, and how well students worked together

One key thing when starting to use collaborative earning within your lessons is how your classroom is set up.  Some of the main things which you may want to consider are:

• The objective of room arrangement is proximity. Zones of proximity can create good behaviour.  Can you stroll/loop around the room to be close to all students in the minimum of steps?
• Can all students see the whiteboard?
• Can you see the faces of all the students in the room?
• Can students access resources?
• How will you seat genders?
• How will you seat abilities?
• How will you seat for behaviour?
• Do you need flexibility to ‘snowball’ – individual/twos/pairs/ fours etc?
• Do you need to move between activities e.g. from a circle to individual writing?

The first stage in any collaborative learning activity is to enable students to gather the information for themselves.  If students must find things out for themselves, they will make more progress than if they are just spoon fed it.  This can be done in many ways.;

• Flipped learning:  Before the lesson you can let students know what they will be teaching and then set appropriate videos for them to watch. Students can then use this to make notes on the content they need in preparation for the next lesson.
• Directed reading:  Students can be given the content they will be producing a micro teaching presentation or short lesson on.  This method works most effectively when students must pick out key information from the text and then have it taken away before they start interacting with other groups.
• Use exam questions:  During revision, different groups of students can be given different exam questions that they need to explain to other students how to answer.
• Information hunt:  Before beginning the micro teaching activity, put key information around the room that students will need to use.  Give students some time in small groups to go around and gather the information they need to carry out the micro teaching activity.

The simplest form of collaborative learning is to let students work in pairs.  As most of the time students will already be sat in pairs it takes very little organisation other than being careful that you sit students next to each other that work well.  The way that I use this is to give students the opportunity to discuss the answer to any questions I’ve asked with their partner before they answer.  By doing this, students are able to reassure each other so when they are asked for an answer they do not feel like they are being put on the spot by themselves. 

Micro teaching involves students teaching each other ideas & content during a lesson.  There is lots of evidence that shows that students make the greatest amount of progress when they have to explain ideas & concepts to each other. Below I have outlined how to carry out a micro teaching activity with students and have tried to detail some of the possible preparation that needs to be in place to ensure that this activity has a meaningful impact on student progress.  Once students have collected the information they need, they need to put together a short lesson or presentation on a concept.  This can take the form of a traditional short presentation or a short lesson where students have prepared some simple resources to help them teach.  Once your students are ready set them up work around rows of tables as shown in the pictures below:

Explaining large concepts to each other:  This is something that I have only tried out with A level students but I don’t see any reason that it wouldn’t work across other year groups.  I give each group a large concept model that they need to start off by putting together.  Once students have put together a model like one shown below they need to be able to explain the model to other students.  As this activity is used for revision, I like to get students to video themselves explaining the model and then share their videos with each other to aid with revision.

Revision hexagons:  This is a method that I have used a few times during revision with students for the first last year and it really helped them make connections between lots of different concepts.  How I ran this task was to produce a hexagon for a number of different topics with different questions relating to that topic on each side.  Students then needed to add a hexagon with the answer to a sides question to each side.  They then needed to write their own question relating to that topic on the other sides of their hexagons.  Different students then add their own hexagons which results in a large amount of interconnected hexagons.  Once there is enough information for a topic down students can then make concept maps using the hexagons.

Constructing exam questions:  Due to a lack of multiple choice questions available for the new A Levels this is an activity that I have tried with my Biologists, however, I see no reason that it couldn’t be used elsewhere.  The way that I’ve used it is to give each student a revision topic to focus on, then write four multiple choice questions for that topic.  After they have all written their questions they swapped topics and had a go at answering each other’s questions.  Towards the back end of the lesson the student who wrote the questions highlight the correct answers and the other students can then mark their own answers to see how they have done.

Collaborative exam question answering:  This is something that I use at all stages of different lessons as it can be used for a starter, main, plenary or during revision.  The way that this task is carried out is to have a number of exam questions printed out, one per sheet of A3 paper.  Each pair of students start off with a question and are given two minutes to start answering it.  After this time the students need to pass their question to the next pair and they need to continue answering it.  After the point when all the questions have been answered, the last pair to answer the question need to mark it using a mark scheme and then feed back to the rest of the class on how well the question was answered.  

I hope that these ideas are different for many others out there and they have provided some inspiration for things you can do within your own lessons.

You can follow me on twitter @teacherchalky1 or on Facebook @teachlikeahero. 

Thanks for reading

D Chalk

How to teach students inertial mass using drag racing

Thank you Ofqual for chucking in another term into the new physics content that I have never come across before!  Most other teacher that I spoke to about it knew what inertia is but had not ever used the phrase ‘inertial mass’.  It turns out inertial mass is just a re-arrangement of Newton’s second law.  SO, once I knew that the next conundrum is how to teach it in a way that’s going to keep students engaged.  At this point I must thank old Top Gear which was being repeated on Dave.  For whatever reason they were drag racing and the idea to base this lesson around was born!

Pre-Starter

I am fortunate enough to have a long corridor outside my room, so as the lesson is based around drag racing it would have been criminal not to have used it!  Before students entered the room, I asked them to line up along both sides of the corridor.  At one end I set up a ramp and used four different cars, all different masses.  I asked students to describe what they thought would happen in terms of distance travelled, acceleration and other forces.  We set the cars off down the ramp and saw what happened.  This activity worked well and got students in the correct frame of mind to approach the lesson with.

Starter

As a concept, inertial mass is something that I had never come across, so it’s a safe bet that my students hadn’t.  To help students gain a basic understanding of what inertial mass is and where it comes from I used a tried and tested literacy game.  It’s always important in a lesson to ensure that your students have had to read something as it helps re-enforce expectations and as we all know, the more students read the better their reading age becomes, and the better their reading age the greater progress they are likely to make within their own journey.  I start off by giving students some information on the development of the idea of inertial mass to read.  Depending on the level of your students you could allow them to highlight key points or briefly talk to them before they start of what they need to look out for.  If you have a low ability class, you could almost turn this into a group reading exercise if you have the time.  Once your students have finished reading they can play snakes and ladders.  DO NOT ASSUME ALL STUDENTS KNOW HOW TO PLAY SNAKES AND LADDERS!  After students, have finished make sure that you leave some time to ask specific students answers to some of the key questions to ensure that they have got out of the task what they need.  By running this literacy activity as a game, it almost stops students from putting up any barriers to reading that they may if just given some information to read.

Task 1

Hopefully by now, your students should have some understanding about what inertial mass is, however, I always find that it never does any harm to go over the basics of it again.  This will also allow you to introduce the idea that force in terms of inertial mass is the amount of force it takes to get an object moving.  In this task, I like to get students to manipulate newton’s second law equation using an equation triangle, to construct the equation for inertial mass.  Once students have the equation they will need a chance to do some calculations using it.  You could give students a list of questions to work through which would do the trick but would be very dull.  The way that I like to approach this type of task is to let students work in pairs, rolling a dice to pick which question to answer.  After giving students enough time to have a go at working out three or four, pick specific students to give you the answers to the six questions.  As they give you the answers, note them down on the board as you will be using them in the next task.

Task 2

It’s at this point in the lesson that you bring it back to looking at inertia in relationship to drag racing b carrying out the slowest drag race in history!  Set up the four cars of different masses on a table, and attack a Newton meter to each of them.  Get four students to pull the four cars forward, recording the reading on the Newton meter at the point when the car just started to move.  This will give you a value for the force of each car.  You can then tell students how quickly the cars are accelerating so the inertial mass for each can then be calculated.  This activity is designed to help students see what inertial mass is and will ensure that they have full confidence in using the equation.  This activity will also give the lesson another element which helps keep students engaged in the lesson.

Task 3

Now that students are happy that they can calculate the inertial mass of an object, they can start to look at how inertial mass and force are connected.  Ask students to quickly get down a table with what they worked out earlier in the lesson, and include an extra column for momentum as they will be using it later.  Once students have these results down ask them to sketch a graph of force against inertial mass in their books.  This graph does not have to be precise as students just need to be able to comment on the relationship between these two variables.  If you had a lower ability class, you could sketch the graph on the board and then discuss what it shows as a class.  Students need to be able to explain that as inertial mass increases so does the amount of force required to get an object moving.  Once students can describe the relationship between inertial mass and force, they can start to think about how momentum is related to inertial mass. 

Task 4

Now that your students can work out inertial mass, momentum & have recalled how to work out acceleration I thought that I would take the opportunity to connect them to calculating acceleration from a speed time graph.  Dependent on the level your students are working at you may need to fully explain how to calculate acceleration from a graph again, however with a high ability class you can leave them to it.  After you have explained the task to students I placed six of these questions around the room for students to work through.  By placing the questions around the room, it got students up out of their seats so added another element into the lesson.

Plenary

The type of plenary I used for this lesson was quick and simple.  All I asked the students to do was to describe the inertial mass, momentum and the effect they would have on stopping distance to each other.  First get students into groups of four then give each student a vehicle to talk about.  Give them a bit of time to decide what they are going to say then set them off.  Whilst students are working circulate so you can assess how much they have learnt.

By the end of the lesson I found that my students understood the content and at the same time had a bit of fun.  One word of warning, students may start making car noises at various points during the lesson!

You can follow me on twitter @teacherchalky1 or on Facebook @teachlikeahero. 

Thanks for reading

D Chalk

How to teach Newton's 2nd Law of Motion Using F1

As part of the new Science GCSE, and for the first time that I can remember, Newton’s three laws of motion have to be taught as Newton’s laws.  As a non-physicist, when changes like this happen in the curriculum I find myself filled with dread as it’s unlikely that I’ll have given the content any thought since finishing my GCSEs (which is longer ago than I’m willing to admit).  So, as we move into a new era in Science education I’ve decided not to see new & unknown content as a problem but as an opportunity to improve my teaching practice. 

This story begins on a Sunday afternoon when I was watching the F1, enjoying it however getting a little bored of the same two drivers winning every race.  It got me thinking about how could I teach using formula 1 and hopefully make it more interesting than this race?  So, when I came to the point where I had to teach acceleration this year I realised that my time had come.  That evening I reminded myself what Newton’s 3 laws of motion are and set out planning Newton’s 2nd law on acceleration using F1.

The Pre-Starter

It’s at this point of the lesson when you have one chance to convince your student’s that they want to engage with the lesson and use calculations.  In the past I’ve always had students that have moaned about having to do maths outside of a maths lesson, however I’ve found that grabbing them straight away and introducing one of the equations that they will need to be able to calculate answers with by using something like racing works really well.  The way that my pre-starter works is by drawing a race track over a few tables, then as a class, get students to use the basic equation for acceleration to do a series of calculations around the track.  The main stumbling point of this activity is making sure that all students have a calculator handy, however, if your school allows it phones have calculators on and the majority of students will have one of them.  After this activity student’s should have a basic understanding about what the lesson is going to be about and it really sets the scene for all of the other tasks they are going to work through.

Starter

The starter activity leads straight on from the pre-starter, so hopefully as students have just worked through something similar they should have no problem working through it.  Before setting students off briefly on the board, explain to students how to calculate basic acceleration again using the correct equation.  Using the table off the board, get students to calculate the acceleration of the car in each section using the information from their race track diagram.  By working through this activity students will have a range of acceleration values to use during the next part of the lesson when they have to calculate the force of the car in each sector.

Task 1

The first task in the main part of the lesson continues to focus on calculating acceleration, but this time from graphs.  Students should have already have developed this skill previously in the calculating basic acceleration lesson, however, they will need this skill re-enforcing so this is the ideal opportunity to do this.  Start this task of by reminding students how to calculate acceleration from a graph by working out the change in speed & the time taken from it.  They can then use the acceleration calculation to work out the acceleration shown in different sections of the graph.  After your student’s have had the task explained to them place a series of graphs around the room for students to work through.  This will primarily enable students to become more confident with this way of calculating acceleration, and will get students up and moving around to ensure that they don’t feel like they’re just sat down working through equations.

Task 2

Now your students have been reminded how to calculate acceleration, it’s time to finally tattle Newton’s 2nd law.   The first thing you really need to do is explain to students what it is and then how it is calculated.  At this point I re-engaged the students by relating it back to F1 and showed students a few youtube clips which as a class we calculated the force of different F1 cars from.  This first part of the task played 2 roles in that it gives the lesson another element which helps students engage and it gives them a chance to use the equation in a low risk way as they will be using it as a class.  The task finishes off with students going back to the starter activity and using the mass of a F1 car, to calculate its force in each sector of a race track.

Task 3

Now that students can use Newton’s 2nd law they need to manipulate it especially as in a few lessons they will need to use this equation to describe inertial mass.  This task starts with as a class asking students to rearrange the equation using an equation triangle.  The way that I stepped this task up to start off with is to give students mini white boards to rearrange the equation on before holding them up to assess how many of them had done it correctly.  The second part of this task lets students pick a series of questions to answer using their rearrange equation using a dice.  This gamifies the task giving students the impression that they are playing a game rather than using a calculation, and gives the lesson a different dimension as we move towards the plenary activity.

Plenary

To finish this lesson off I, like to use a task that not only pulls together what students have covered in this lesson, but brings together many concepts they have covered over the last few lessons.  It starts off by giving students a time distance graph that they can use to calculate speed at different points.  Once they’ve worked out the speed they can calculate the acceleration at different points.  Finally using the mass of a F1 car students can calculate the force of the car at different points on the graph.  This activity will not only enable you to assess how much students have taken from this lesson, but will also let you assess how well students have done over time.

By the end of the lesson I found that my students understood the content and at the same time had a bit of fun. 

You can follow me on twitter @teacherchalky1 or on Facebook @teachlikeahero 

Thanks for reading

D Chalk

How to Engage Students Using Displays

11 years ago, I walked into my lab for the first time.  Ask yourself this question, when starting your first proper teaching job, what sort of room would you like to be teaching in?  Dark, a little damp with walls covered in shelves that had very little on apart from dust was not what I had in mind!  I believe that it was at that point that my passion for making classrooms places that promote progress and help enthuse students was born.  As I’ve progressed though my career I’ve come to the realisation that students perform better when there in an environment that stimulates them. 

The holy grail of teaching is to stimulate students in a way that enables them to make progress without realising that they are making progress.  As you may have guessed by now, I think that your classroom environment plays a key role in this and that within this your displays are vitally important.  So, with this in mind how do you approach designing and putting up a display?  As a Science teacher who mainly teaches KS4 & 5 my approach may differ from how it may be thought about further down I the school system, but I think the basic principles should still apply.

• Start with an exam question or concept that you want to build your display around.  I usually start off with a long 6-mark exam question and ensure that there is enough information in the display for students to answer it and gain all 6 marks. 
• Plan your display out before starting to put it up.  This is a lesson that I have been reminded of more than once as when I’ve tried putting up displays without properly planning it out, it’s ended up taking longer and they’ve been less effective in the long run.  If you plan for students to use your displays (especially during revision) it helps them to have a pre-drawn diagram of the display.  If you plan out your display like this you already have your diagram done.  You can then spend some time annotating a photocopy of this diagram to work out what text you are going to include.
• When putting together content to put on your display type it up and save it.  I can virtually guarantee that you’ll be able to use it later when putting together other resources.
• Make your display noticeable.  This almost sounds like common sense, however, over the years I’ve seen many displays that have looked dull due to a lack of colour or have had too much writing on in too smaller font to be easily read from a distance.  Make your display colourful and use a font size of over 40 as this will be easily read even when students are not next to your display.

Below I have included some of the displays I have put together, and have tried to talk through some of my methodology on how they were put together.  To anyone who is not a Science teacher I’m sorry that they’re all Science based.

Rain Forest Display

This idea originally came out of a cultural day based around South America where I taught a lesson on rain forests.  So, at the end of the day I had an abundance of printed trees that I needed to do something with.  I began thinking about topics that students often struggle with and the two that came to mind were consequences of rain forest destruction and the use of belt transects.   The first step I took was to find two exam questions to construct the display around.  Luckily, when looking on Exampro I came across a question for each.  To enable belt transects to be taught using this display I put drawing pins in at regular intervals at the top and bottom of the display so that white string can be used to split the display up into belts.  I then stuck on a range of different animals so that students can use the display to try and estimate how many of each there is.

Electrolysis

A large part of the KS4 Chemistry specification is based around electrolysis, so it only made sense to put a display together on it.  Over the years there have been loads of 6 mark questions on electrolysis, so it wasn’t hard to find a couple.  There are a few key ideas about electrolysis that are needed to answer every question on it so that’s what I based the large central focus of the display on.  Around this central focus I then put up information about specific examples that come up in exams.

Making Oil Useful

In terms of making oil useful there are three areas that students must understand.  These are; fractional distillation, cracking and polymerisation.  This is a good example of a display that was constructed to help students connect three key concepts together and make connections between different ideas.

The production of insulin through genetic engineering

For whatever reason this is always a concept that students seem to get confused about.  The way that I always teach it is to get students working through a diagram showing the process.  The next logical step seemed to be to put together a display based on the diagrams students have annotated to allow them to answer an exam question on genetic engineering.  This display is an example of where I’ve used pictures and content from a pre-prepared power point to help construct it.  The lesson to be learnt from this display is not to re-invent the wheel.  If something already exists don’t be afraid to use it.

Leaf Adaptation

As a biologist, one concept that I always enjoy teaching is how the structure of the leaf is adapted to carry out photosynthesis.  This is an example of a display that is constructed using lots of smaller interconnected parts.  When putting together a display like this don’t be afraid to get students to help.  All the individual cells on this display were produced by students at the end of the year.  As with all the other displays it is based around a 6 mark question on the structure of the leaf, so all the information around it is geared to help students answer this question.

The Haber Process

The last display that I want to discuss is one that focuses on a high level concept, but also brings together lots of other key ideas.  On the Chemistry GCSE paper a regular question that comes up is on the haber process, so given that a diagram showing it is striking, why not turn it into a display?  The main aim of this display it to enable students to logically describe the process, but as the rate of reaction is changed throughout the process, it can also be used to teach rate of reaction.

Once you’ve spent time putting your displays up the next question to ask yourself is how can they be used to help increase student progress.  Below I have summarised some of the things I use displays for throughout the year.

• During the course of normal lessons you can gather students around them to explain a particular concept.
• You can use them to help show students how to construct detailed diagrams that focus on content rather than just drawing pictures.
• Large displays can be used by students during peer teaching activities where they explain the concept to other students.
• During revision students can work through the displays using the information on them to answer the 6 mark questions that they are based around.
•  If displays link together lots of different topics they can be used to teach students how to construct concept maps.

I hope that this has given you some inspiration about things you can put into place in your own school.  The main thing is to have fun with your displays and remember that the sky's the limit when being innovative and imaginative.

If you have enjoyed reading this you can find me on Facebook @teachlikeahero and on Twitter at @teacherchalky1

Thanks for reading

David Chalk

Using role play to teach complex ideas

Over the last year there has been a lot of talk about the use of play in teaching.  Many teachers may consider that this should be abandoned after primary school.  Over time I’ve come to ask myself, why?  Why should techniques that work within a primary school setting be set aside once we begin to focus on student success using ever more academic pedagogy.  Students enjoy playing, even when they claim not to, so why not continue to make the most of this.  One of the key lessons that I have learnt over the years is that if you can get students to understand content without them realising that they are covering it you’ve almost won the battle.  One method that I like to use to do this is using role play within lessons.

My definition or why I like to think of role play is “role playing is a learning structure that allows students to immediately apply content as they are put in the role of that content within a certain context within the lesson.”  This basically boils down to giving students roles within a curtain context, then allow them to use those roles to explain an often-complex concept.  In working through the role play activity, you have planned, you will also allow students who find written content difficult to access to still make progress.  There are a few key things that you need to consider before planning to use any role play activity within a lesson.

Be sure you know exactly what you want students to get out of the role play activity.  It’s worth looking at you lesson outcomes when planning your activity as believe me, it’s very easy to get carried away and go off at a tangent.  Stay focused on what students need to get out of the activity as if they can’t see the point in working through it, it will have an adverse effect on the BFL in the lesson.

Plan it well in advance and ensure that you have factored it into your lesson planning.  I discovered much to my horror when I first started using role play, that it can take longer than you think.  The way around is to make sure you factor plenty of time to carry the activity out in your lesson planning.  Don’t try and rush it however, as it will then loose its effectiveness.

Make sure that all students know what they are doing and the role that they need to play.  This is another lesson that after things going wrong more than once I have learnt.  One of the most important things to put in place at the start of any role play activity, is to make sure that every student has a role and that they understand that role. If students either have nothing to do or don’t understand what they need to do, they will become easily distracted which will have an adverse effect on their BFL.  There are a couple of easy ways to do this.  You can either give each student a role card with some brief instructions about what they need to do on it, or as you become more experienced, gather students around you and tell them their role quickly, get the set up then fill in more detail about their role after.

Be mindful about students going off task.  Although most students get a lot out of role play activities, there will still be some students who will use the freedom that they have been given to go off task.  The most important thing you need when combating this s to know your class.  The way that I work around this potential problem is to (A) make sure those students are the first ones to be given roles and (B) keep going back to those students and asking questions about their role to refocus them.

Get involved in the role play.  One key thing I like to do when getting students to carry out role play activities is to get involved with it.  If you are involved in the centre of the activity it will allow you to have excellent control of the activity and student’s behaviour while they are working through it, and your students will appreciate the fact that you are interacting with them. 

Once you’ve got these basics in play you’re ready to go.  Below I’ve outlined some of the activities that I have used.  I’m afraid that they’re all science based but there’s lots of opportunity to use role play in most other subjects.

States of matter:  This is a good one to use with year 7 students.  Start off by telling students that they are molecules.  You can then talk about the fact that molecules or atoms have energy that makes them vibrate, so get the students to vibrate.  Ask them “if I heated you up do you think you would vibrate more or less?”  Following this talk about states of matter and get students to arrange themselves into a solid.  Tell them you’re going to heat them up and see what they do.  Hopefully you’ll then be able to move them onto thinking that they will become a liquid and then a gas.

Digestion:  Out of all the role play activities I use this one is my favourite.  The basic premise of this activity is that you are going to get different groups of students representing different parts of the digestive system.  One giving either different students or different groups of students a part, explain to them what that part does and keep coming back and ask them what it does to help keep them on task.  The way that I arrange students is as follows.  Two students represent the mouth and teeth.  One student represents the salivary gland.  Six students standing in two rows facing each other so they can demonstrate peristalsis, represent the oesophagus.  Six students stand in a circle and represent the stomach.  On student represents the gal bladder and another represents the pancreas.  Usually as I’m running out of students by now, four students represent the small intestines and two represent the large intestines.  Finally, one student needs to represent the rectum.  After you have arranged your students into a complete digestive system, you can represent the food and move through them, asking questions on what is happening at each stage.

How leaves are adapted to carry out photosynthesis:  This activity works best if it is carried out in the lesson after you have focused on making sure that students know the equation for photosynthesis, as everything in the leaf needs to be related back to this equation.  Start off by giving each student a type of cell to be.  After you have done this arrange them into the structure of the cells I a leaf getting them to explain how each part and layer helps with photosynthesis.

Gas exchange in the lungs:  This one takes a bit of setting up as you need to arrange the tales in your room so they represent blood vessels, the heart, the body & the lungs.  Most of the students will represent blood cells, some need to represent the lungs and take pieces of paper representing carbon dioxide and give them pieces of paper representing oxygen.  Some other students need to represent body cells which take the oxygen from the blood cells and give them carbon dioxide.  Once students are moving around you can ask a range of questions on how the system is adapted.

As with most pedagogical techniques give it a go and hopefully you will be happily surprised by the results

Thanks for reading

Chalky

How to Engage Students With Revision Using the Labyrinth of Revision

Have you ever sat watching a film and thought to yourself 'I wish I could use this to teach a lesson', well the short answer is, with a bit of imagination & innovation you can.  I started planning a few epic lessons around films about a year ago, mainly for my own entertainment at first, and have been amazed how much students have enjoyed them.  It's a well-researched fact that if students are enjoying the lesson they will engage with it, and if students engage with the content of the lesson they will make a greater level of progress. 

One of my favourite films of all time is Labyrinth.  For years I've wanted the opportunity to have a go at building a labyrinth and use it in a lesson.  During the revision period last year, I finally got the chance.  We all have been there, doing revision before the exams and dying a little bit more inside with every exam question we go through.  So the challenge is 'how can we get students working through these questions without concisely knowing that they are working through exam questions'.  The solution I came up with was to, as a class, get them working their way around a labyrinth, having to answer questions and work through tasks on their way to the middle.  Every time they passed over a coloured square they have to answer a question on one aspect, when they reached a character out of the film, they had to go and compete a task and (for my own amusement) I sent out goblins from the castle in the middle that if students ran into them they had to answer a 6 mark exam question.  Some of the key things to think about when panning a lesson like this are:

• Start planning early.  A lesson based around your favourite movie is a lot of fun to teach but they need to be well planned to ensure that you squeeze in the content that you need to cover.
• Ditch the power point.  Whilst power point is a useful tool which is useful to fall back on, students have become desensitised to them because they probably see one in most lessons.  I'd suggest just having one or two slides to set the scene but then try something different.
• Get students up out of their seats.  I hate sitting down in a lesson, to the point where I've used a computer remote for years so I can wander around the room as I teach.  In that case there's a good chance that students also get bored with sitting down in lessons, so get them up moving around. 
• Build in lots of different activities.  By building in lots of small activities it ensures that the pace of your lesson is fast as students will be encouraged to move from one activity to another especially if you set it up as a bit of a competition.  It also ticks your box for differentiation as a well panned series of tasks should enable all students to find something they can work through.
• Have something massive that you use to teach with in the middle of the room.  By having something that students see as soon as they walk into the room it sets the tone for the lesson and helps enthuse them from the word go.  
• Keep an eye on the time.  I say this from experience, there is a good chance that you will get as carried away as your students.  Make sure you know how long you have left and periodically stop students to check their progress.
• HAVE FUN!  Students will be as enthused as you are especially when they see that you are having fun with the lesson.

Here are a few pictures showing what I did

Thanks for reading

Chalky

Getting students building models to improve progress in lessons

What do primary schools do better than secondary schools do?  This is one of many questions that over the years I have asked myself.  Students in primary schools seem to have much more motivation than some students in secondary schools, and I hope that it’s not just down to teenage hormones.  One of the reasons that I have come to believe is that I primary school students are still given time to ‘play’ and be creative in most aspects of the curriculum, not just in Art.

Students who are given the opportunity to be creative in lessons, will often better engage with the content.  Allowing students to be creative was something I tried to do when I first started teaching, but for whatever reason, used less and less as time went on.  This might have been down to having too much to teach and not enough curriculum time, or maybe a fear of allowing students too much freedom within a lesson.  So over the last few years this has been something I have tried to rectify.

When getting students to build models to explore concepts you still need to start with the content, however, you don’t necessarily need to stand at the front of the class and physically teach it.  The first step in allowing students to construct models is to allow them to collect or put together the information they need to help them build the model themselves.  This can be done in a few ways; you can use flipped learning and set students a series of youtube videos to watch & make notes on to help them, or lay out a range of information and allow students to gather what they need in small groups.  In some cases, you can give students a sheet with the content on and allow them to highlight what they think is relevant. 

Once students have the information they need, don’t assume they will automatically know where to start.  In many lessons where students are given a chance to build models to explore concepts there isn’t just one correct answer, however, there will still be a range of criteria that students need to incorporate into their models.  Before students start building their models don’t forget to give them a rough frame work to help them structure their ideas that they will incorporate.  In some cases, when you are giving students a task to complete where there is lots of scope for interpretation, it is worth showing students examples to help them get going.

Here are a few examples of some of the activities that I have let students work through over the last year. 

If you look online there is a wealth of examples of how models can be used in other lessons, not just Science.  Remember ‘Pastercine is your friend’.  I hope that this inspires you to give building models a go. 

Thanks for reading

Chalky