G&T missions
- Get your G&T students to lead and stage a debate in your subject, e.g. medical ethics, creationism, the value of languages in the 21st century.
- Give a G&T student the role as ‘teacher’ for at least 15 mins of your lesson.
- Ask G&T students to make videos about your subject to promote it.
- Use GCSE questions and resources with top set KS3 groups. Or A Level questions and resources with G&T GCSE students.
- Students design the marking criteria for a piece of work.
- Use the TASC wheel for independent/group work projects with a top set class.
- Mystery lesson – base your lesson around a mystery question, e.g. a coastal erosion lesson based on the question ‘Why did Jim and Betty have to pay higher house insurance?’
- Develop a cutaway table – a table where students complete extension work.
- Get a G&T student to lead the question and answer session.
- Student voice – create a survey for G&T students to get their opinion about what does/does not challenge them in your lessons. Then act on it!
- Extension menus – provide a variety of different tasks for G&T students to encourage independent thinking. This could relate to schemes of work, or be general for the subject/year group.
- Odd one out – use as a starter. Identify the odd one out and give a reason, identify a second odd one out with a different reason or add another item to the list keeping the same odd one out. Justify your answer.
- Presentations – ask G&T students to research and present a topic to the class.
- Tailored questioning – challenge G&T students to start with a more difficult question or to pose the questions for the rest of the class.
- Answers/questions – provide a list of answers. Students have to guess what the questions are.
- ‘Becoming an expert’ – Groups of students are given topics to research which they will then teach to one member of each of the other groups, who in turn will teach their own group.
- Research tasks – challenge students to use more difficult resources for a research task so they have to synthesise from a wider range of resources.
- Bloom’s Taxonomy – Set questions from each level of Bloom’s taxonomy. In addition, ask learners to create questions from each level of Bloom’s taxonomy.
I really enjoyed this evening's meeting (20.10) - great to chat and share ideas. I will work on extension menus for my next mission and also try to introduce a 'odd one out' activities.
ReplyDeleteMarie C
I tried out Answers/Questions, and 8a1 said that it challenged them because it was "back to front thinking". It would be a good revision tool. I liked the suggestion at last night's meeting that it could also be used for getting the students to study a piece of text.
ReplyDeleteI'm doing a 4 lesson TASC group work project with 9a1 at the moment, and will feed back after I've seen their finished work!
Alison
I tried the "Ask G&T students to make videos about your subject to promote it" with my 7A2 ICT class. It worked really well, although I added my own twist. I had the students make video tutorials on how to carry out technical tasks within website development. I will definitely keep using this method of video production. The students enjoy doing it and it lends itself to being a useful resource, produced by the students that will support other students; saves me producing these video support materials myself. A definite winner!
ReplyDeleteDavid Kelly
I had a go with 'Odd one out' with Y10 this morning - great success. Little teacher prep, high student engagement - went on for a quite a while and stimulated much discussion.
ReplyDeleteIt's a winner!
Marie C
I had a go with 'If this is the answer, what's the question' with my Y10 (v able, v small group so ripe for all kinds of experiment). It took a while to get them going but I'm sure they'd do it better next time!
ReplyDeleteI tried to show a Youtube clip - no sound - and get them to commentate on it (as in 'Mock the Week' but Youtube failed. I'll try again....
MCO
My 9a1 class fed back on their 4 lesson TASC projects the other week. I enjoyed watching them, and they said they enjoyed learning in groups doing a research project. They wanted to do it again on another topic later in the year.
ReplyDeleteI have started getting G&T students in year 8 to plan the starters, and they really enjoy being taught by one another (not the teacher!). I'll try plenaries next time I think.
Alison
I did a debate with my year 11 mixed Humanities class the other week, and it was the first time I had ever done a whole class debate... loved it! The students enjoyed the fact it was something different, moving the furniture around for a different context for class discussion. Steph provided some fab debating rules which worked a treat complete with a point scoring system to decide on a winner. I certainly can't wait to try it out with KS3, including with G&T students.
ReplyDeleteAlison
Time for me to update!!
ReplyDeleteDebate - 9A1
We had planned a gifted and talented debate against Chamberlayne Park on whether religion causes evil and suffering in the world but Chamberlayne Park withdrew at the last minute. We then changed it to a debate within the class. I think it was challenging for the students and they enjoyed a different activity in a different environment but as a class they are not effective participators and are much more self-conscious than lower ability sets. I think that we will do a debate again but we need to plan how all students get involved.
Extension Menus
I have made these for year 8 and year 9 classes. They have generic short extension tasks on the front and then unit specific ones on the back. I have only just had them colour printed but am planning to start using them this week and in the new year. I am happy to share this.
Yr 11 Survey with G and T
I asked my year 11 Psychology class 3 questions:
Are they enjoying the lessons, why/why not?
Are they coping with the challenging material?
What could be done to improve their enjoyment and learning?
It was really informative. The survey confirmed that they were enjoying the lessons and that they liked the activities that i thought they liked! They really enjoy planning questions to test each other and then having a winner stays on competition - it's always a winner.
However, they all seemed to want to do more group-work and interactive activities, and interestingly I also learned that many don't like segmented activities. They would rather have one main activity that they got on with for the lesson.
I implemented a group work competition producting poster presentations for a case study and found videos to support their learning. I have also thought more about how to give them bigger and longer tasks to achieve the objectives.