Month: October 2018

Discussion Carousel & Building Castles

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Provided by Anna George-Plunkett

The aim of using a discussion carousel is to create maximum participation, for students to work with students they don’t normally work with and to deepen individual students’ thinking.

In pairs, students label themselves A & B. They face each other and discuss the debate title for 3 minutes. Make sure both students have chance to speak (let them know half time!)

Then when time is up, A partner move to another B partner (who stays sitting down).

Before students launch in to their new conversation developing the conversation further, each one of them has to summarise to the other their previous partner’s contribution.

When time is up, repeat the process with a new partner.

Be prepared to then put these discussion points in to a whole class debate.

 

Building castles

Aim- To keep students focused in a debate and engage all students in the activity.

You will need a template of a castle and some arrows to “attack” the castle for each group.

Teams of 5.

2 students arguing for, 2 students arguing against, 1 adjudicator (more able student).

Taking it in turns, team A puts forward their point in the debate. If the adjudicator thinks it is justified (PEE), they can build a piece of the castle.

The opposing team (team B) then try to refute that point (PEE). If justified by the adjudicator, the opposing team use an arrow to attack that part of the castle. (Both the castle piece & arrow are left on the table.)

This process continues until the time is up or until the castle is built/completely destroyed.

The adjudicator then has to sum up the arguments made in the debate, evaluating the strengths & weaknesses of the arguments and decide which team has been more successful in the debate.

Castle template

Castle template

 

Reciprocal Reading

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Provided by Jane Gleaves

How to use reciprocal reading:

  1. Divide students in to groups of 4 and allocate a role: predictor; clarifier; summariser; questioner
  2. Predictor looks at text for clues e.g. title; sub-headings; images….
  3. Read text: can be one which you have chosen which dove tails in to your lesson e.g. an article on population growth for geography. Read to class or have class read silently or in group taking turns to read a paragraph. There are also presentations with reading extracts on our shared area with possible texts. There is one for each week to the October half term. Finally a student could select an extract from their library book – either fiction of non-fiction
  4. The clarifier sorts out any problems and the summariser goes next. Finally the questioner takes their turn.
  5. Pupils should use their DEAR booklets to help them as it has sentence stems for each role.
  6. You tube has a variety of examples of it being used in different subject areas.

Using Smart Note

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Provided by Chris Smye

Teaching and learning priority: Classroom Climate for Learning

Strategy / Idea: Using Smart notebook to engage learners and as a teaching tool

Smart Notebook is highly interactive, allowing teachers to highlight, annotate key points and add animations to help emphasise key learning points.

Drop and drag activities allow students to approach the board to take part in tasks and feel more engaged.

Text can be zoomed in on to help those who struggle to read small writing on the board

Pictograms

Graph