What’s inside my head? – a quick and easy plenary

This is activity involves the teaching thinking of a key word/event/idea related to a topic. The person/people who are doing the guessing need to write 1/2/3 on a piece of paper. The person who is giving the clues asks the group to guess the key word/event/idea they are thinking of by giving three clues to the answer. On each clue, the group members write down beside their 1, 2, 3 what they think the word is. The clues range from the very broad to the last that is highly focused. Each clue is a separate round.

Example
Key event – Dunkirk Evacuation
Clue one – Event in the Second World War.
Clue two – Happened in 1940
Clue three – Involved the BEF crossing the English Channel.

How to do well in Key Stage 3 History worksheet

This double-sided worksheet focuses upon the skills and attributes needed to succeed in Key Stage 3 History. I usually use this as an opening lesson for Year 7 students. Hope you find it useful.

WIH – Lesson 1 How to do well in Key Stage 3 History

Media coverage of the Vietnam War PowerPoint

This information PowerPoint covers the development of media coverage during the Vietnam War. Hope it is useful.

Media coverage in Vietnam

Making your sourcework TASTY guidesheet

Just a little acrostic to help students consider what they need to include in writing answers to source questions in history. Found it useful to use alongside the Nature, Origin and Purpose {NOP} framework. Include this as part of the Year 11 revision programme.

TASTY NOP

The Pen of Power – a starter that checks understanding of learning objectives

This little starter with minimal preparation was taken from Claire Gadsby’s recent book, Perfect Assessment for Learning. I presented this at a couple of recent workshops called Signposting Progress as well as had excellent feedback on this strategy by my friend @kelliano35 who is a Head of Art at a Bedfordshire school. The Pen of Power starter is as follows –

Begin by giving a randomly selected student to use ‘the pen of power’ to highlight key words within the objective presented on the board and to explain their choices. This encourages the student to talk about the objective and annotating it to show their understanding.

US tactics in the Vietnam War resources

This PowerPoint outlines the key features of US tactics during the Vietnam War and comes with two activities – a series of anagrams based on the key vocab of the topic which can be used as a starter and a learning grid which can be used as a lengthy plenary to check progress and understanding. For more about learning grids, please see a previous post of this blog which outlines this activity in detail. I used this with my Y11 class.

US tactics Vietnam War

Propaganda and recruitment during the First World War PowerPoint

This is an information PowerPoint I created for my Year 9 group which aimed to introduce the key concepts of the topic of recruitment and propaganda during the First World War. I hope others will find this useful.

Recruitment during first world war

Initially speaking – a lazy plenary that RINGs!

As a summary to what has been learnt, ask the students to use their initials to come up with a phrase or a set of keywords from the lesson. They can then share this with the rest of the class. Absolutely lazy in the best possible way but also meets the RING – Relevant, Interesting, Naughty and a Giggle – principle.

What could [have] happened next? – a short lesson activity

An image based activity that can be inserted into any part of a lesson. Present students with an image and ask them to predict/guess what happened next. I used this with a picture of US soldiers on patrol in the Vietnam War and asked this question. This encouraged students to think about how they could be attacked by the VC and apply their knowledge.

Tattoo Review – a cheeky plenary

At the end of a lesson, announce that the students have to come up with an image or a word that best sums up the lesson. They are then to draw the said word or image on the back of their hand as a reminder which they then present to the person next to them. The best one in my lesson was a Year 7 boy who drew an English flag in the shape of the crown to summarise a lesson on the contenders to the crown in 1066.

This idea was taken from Invisible Learning by Dave Keeling and neatly fits his RING principle of teaching.