Virtual discussion with staff/pupils (padlet)

A fantastic way to get either pupils or staff to ‘respond’ and’discuss’ elements during live learning is by placing a QR code in your lesson to a padlet page in order to enable all participants to share ideas. In addition all members of the ‘class’ can see one anothers’ comments and use their ideas in …

Flipgrid: An app to empower pupil voice, discuss topics and share learning

Flipgrid is an app that facilitates collaborative discussion between pupils and teachers. Teachers can subscribe for free and create an online ‘class’ where video lesson introductions or discussion topics can be recorded and posted. Pupils are then able to record their own response to be viewed by the class and teacher – a great tool …

Collaboration: Sharing the load (pupils)

Pupils are allocated a task to complete and share for all peers to access via padlet. This can be a great revision tool, additionally pupils use it to support them in answering questions. Similarly using Googledocs to create a shared revision document that has been collaborated on by an entire class considering one single aspect …

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 …

Post it storm

The teacher poses a question for pupils to consider independently. They write their response on a post it note and collate these on the board. Pupils then collect a couple, and discuss, respond, agree or disagree with their peer comments. Post it storm

Group roles

A resource designed to allocate pupils clear roles within group activities to ensure all participate and furthermore develop their oracy/communication skills at the same time. Roles

Talk tasks

Another partner talk strategy using visuals and sentence starters to promote structured dialogue between pupils. Talk tasks

Talking Point

A partner talk strategy where pupils enter into a structured dialogue about their learning prompted by sentence starters. Great idea to encourage pupils to debate or evaluate something. Talking point

Hunt the clues

At the start of the lesson, give pupils three ‘items’ to look for in and around the classroom. (the subtler the better) Ask them at the end of the lesson to identify how they were relevant to their learning today.

‘Live’ lesson objectives

Display a picture or word related to the focus of the lesson and get pupils to ask as many questions as they can on that particular topic. Identify a ‘thread’ amongst the questions and set ‘live learning objectives.’ Pupils work together to then spend the lesson finding answers to their queries.