Collaboration: Peer support

When pupils work together they hone their creativity and critical thinking skills to help each other make sense of new material. It increases self-confidence as they discover they’re capable of mastering difficult concepts without help. Strategies to facilitate this: 1) Live question board – Using padlet pupils post their questions on and the teacher responds …

Intervene

To decrease variation in results, teachers must increase variation in their teaching. Following AfL we should accurately assess those children who will benefit from additional support. Strategies that can be effective are: Re-group children to form a cut away group Using experts or peer support Explanation in an alternative manner, or more time Using different …

A story of…

Sometimes when a skill might be being assessed, the “answer” does not suffice, the journey a pupil takes is key. Pupils clearly outline each step of their approach to a question or answer they have constructed.This forces them to be concise in their explanations. This can be performed both verbally or in a written format and …

Target language cards/chatty mats

Use these cards to reward children for using target language within MFL lessons or just for subject specific vocabulary. Additionally chatty mats can contain regularly used phrases and sentence starters to help students feel more confident in articulating their learning in class. Target Language cards

Keynnections

Using the analogy of a tube map pupils try to justify and make links between topics, or additionally demonstrate how one thing leads to another. For each station on the journey another point must be made. See below for examples with and without scaffolding. Keynnections Keynnections scaffold    

Reciprocal teaching

Where students become the teacher in small groups. Students participate in group discussions either to consider new content or revise old content. Each child has a role to play that focuses on demonstrating different strategies: summarising, question generating, clarifying, and predicting. Reciprocal Teaching

Talk like an expert

Allow students time to verbalise their learning. This ensures deeper cognitive processing and reinforces comprehension. Simple strategies can be employed such as having key terms colour coded and worth different points. When students are checking their understanding this encourages them to use key terminology and also assesses their learning. This concept can be developed further …

Structure slips

Structure slips create a prompt to guide extended writing to allow for a more flexible alternative to a writing frame or template. Simple to stick along the edge of a page and effectively demonstrates to a student the different aspects of their writing or different assessment objectives they are attempting to demonstrate. Structure slips

QR Code

A QR code generator that allows you to create QR codes of text, videos or website links. Students can scan codes with the app or their iPhone camera Ways to use QR codes in your teaching Algorithms Marketplace exercise Hidden/unknown hints More kinaesthetic task Students having a choice of task to complete (Example image below) …

Word story

Give the pupils an essay or question title and a blank writing frame. Give them a limit of how many words they can use for their ‘story’/answer. They think of the important key terms and order them into an essay plan.