My students asked me to put this presentation on last minute revision strategies on my blog to share. The presentation focuses on revision strategies that take little time to implement but can make a huge impact on the application and recall of information. Hope it is useful to teachers who might want to make a similar presentation to their students.
Connection Maps are a classic lesson strategy and an ideal way to summarise and make connections within a topic on a single sheet of paper. Additionally, preparing these tasks takes no time at all. Bonus!
What are they?
Connection Maps are a collection of key words relevant to a single topic – these could be people, events, years or policies – which are written/typed on a sheet of A4 or A3 paper and are scattered across the document with spaces between them.
How does the activity work?
Students are asked first whether they understand the key words on the sheet and their relevance to the topic. Once this has been established, students are asked to make connections between the different key terms by drawing a line between the relevant words and writing a short explanation of the link on or beside the line. Students should make as many connections as they can on the sheet. These links can be then shared in a class discussion.
Adaptions?
Connection Maps can be used as a collaborative activity where you can pin up around your classroom Connection Maps that cover a large topic – preferably A3 size – and students can independently go around the classroom adding connections on each map. Once completed as a class, students can record the collective class responses by either taking a photo of each on their ‘phones or [if you have time] give each students an A4 copy of Each Connection Map and they have to summarise the class responses on their own copy. This is a great addition to a revision session.
To add differentiation to the Connection Map activity, you can ask students to colour code their links dependent on how many key words they add together. By colour coding their links you can easily see how far students have challenged themselves in making as many complex connections as possible. Here you can challenge your more able students to make connections between as many key terms as possible, with the ultimate challenge of connection ALL the key terms together in a single chain.
Please find below electronic copies of the Connection Maps I make on the Cold War topic. However, these can be easily adapted for any topic and for any subject.
Connection map – Origins of the Cold War
Connection map – Cuban Missile Crisis
Connection map – Cold War 1950s
The big 16 mark judgement question at the end of the thematic paper for the Edexcel GCSE course can make or break a student’s performance. Here is a PowerPoint I use for a lesson which focuses purely on the techniques needed to produce a successful answer for this demanding question. Not only is there a PowerPoint but also the structure strips students can use to support them writing their answer.
Structure strips – Judgement 16 markers
Making Judgements – 16 markers
Last week, I had the pleasure of presenting at the Dacorum Teaching School Alliance’s third teachmeet. I completed a three minute presentation on structure strips with clear reference to the work of Stephen Lockyer and the response was excellent and the word of structure strips is spreading …..
As a Year 7 form tutor in September, I am looking for effective activities to help this new form bond and work together in an effective manner. Let’s face it, they are going to be together for at least the next five years and will need to accept each other and form positive relationships. A great source of activities and tasks is Molly Potter’s 100 Ideas for Secondary Teachers: Tutor Time and the Secret Best Friend activity is ideal to help students foster good relationships within the form.
Inspired by Molly’s idea, I have created this slide which explains the Secret Best Friend challenge which I am going to print as small cards and distribute to each student when setting the task. This will be accompanied by a draw where each student will randomly select a name out of the hat to see who their secret best friend is.
Structure strips are probably the most helpful literacy tool I have seen in a long time. Created by primary maestro, Stephen Lockyer, who can be found on Twitter at @mrlockyer, and championed by Caroline Spalding, @MrsSpalding on Twitter, structure strips are a tool which can help focus students on how to structure their writing and what to include in each paragraph. Although first used in primary education, they can easily be translated and used in the secondary classroom.
Structure strips are like bookmark strips of paper which are stuck in the margin of a page in a student’s exercise book. The strips are divided up into clear areas – each area represents a paragraph within the piece of writing or essay the student has been set. Each area contains information and guidance on what to include in that particular paragraph and the size of the area roughly represents how much the students need to write in that section. So, for example, the introduction section would be typically smaller than a section on a factor in the main body of an essay. With the structure strip stuck down in the margin, students write the essay using it as a guide on what to write and how to write it. An example of a piece of GCSE writing using a structure strip can be seen below.
Information which can be included in a structure strip can include –
The beauty of structure strips is that they can easily be tailored and differentiated for the particular type of writing the task focuses upon as well as for the students you are teaching. For example, giving less able students more guidance and detailed information compared with a more able student.
Key tips for using structure strips in the secondary classroom based on my experience are –
An example of structure strips can be found here to download and for you to adjust – Structure strips – narrative 4 markers
The latest book in the 100 Ideas series from Bloomsbury Publishing is on Outstanding History Lessons by Emily Thomas. In effect, this is a rewrite of the Julia Murphy title published by Continuum Press in 2004. However, this is a substantial improvement on the previous titile as this is a more thorough and detailed coverage of relevant history teaching techniques and gives many links (including from this blog) to further thinking and resources.
The book is logically structured, covering such areas as the role of evidence, teaching big concepts, revision, learning key information and setting creative tasks. Such a structure makes locating information and ideas simply and with ease. The material draws heavily on the work of cutting edge teachers, such as those found on Twitter, as well as Emily’s colleagues and people who she works closely with. Consequently, there are many great teachers referenced here which provides the reader an excellent list of people to research and draw further ideas from. Tweachers, further reading and blogs used to write the book are all listed and provides a superb reference point for further research.
The book is a mix of tried and tested Ideas which would be particularly useful to NQTs and trainee teachers, ideas which are developed and given a different twist as well as original ideas which can be applied to not only history topics but many other subjects as well. Particularly shining highlights include Idea 5 – Causal Equations, Idea 23 – The Selfie Portrait and Idea 9 – The Significance Tournament. All these ideas, I will adapt and try out in my lessons in the next few weeks.
This is a bumper time for History teachers in terms for subject specific teaching and learning books with Russel Tarr’s excellent A History Teacher’s Toolkit: Practical Classroom Strategies. Emily Thomas has produced an excellent title that compliments Tarr’s book and can add new ideas as well as revitalise more established ones to any history teacher’s armoury. Highly recommended!
The teaching and learning focus for this term at school is developing independent learning in lessons. Having been asked to take a leading role in this CPD for all staff, I began by summarising some tips and pointers for teachers in this Keynote presentation. Keynote is a great app and was highlighted recently by @ICTEvangelist and @87History on Twitter as an excellent presentation tool. This poster is to be presented in all classrooms at school as the first stage of developing awareness of developing independent learning. I hope it is of use to others.
I first saw Scrabble being applied in lessons by Amjad Ali and his original post can be found here – https://www.trythisteaching.com/2013/07/scrabble-tiles/ – since then, many others have used the idea with variations with great success. Indeed, when I used it in an interview lesson, the students gave it a round of applause they liked it so much.
A variation of this idea I have used recently, is to give the students the Scrabble value of a ‘mystery’ word which is linked to the lesson. Using the Scrabble score card, students have to work out the ‘mystery’ word – it could, of course, be more than one word.
An easy to apply extension is to challenge the students to set each other mystery words and exchanging the value of their mystery words to work out.
Plenary – a touch of Scrabble Version two
A fantastic and easy to implement activity, summary pyramids helps students to summarise their learning and reduce their notes to the key salient points. Initially, I came across this idea from a slide promoted by @cyahistory, which can be seen below. However, after a little research the original idea is from Carmel Bones (@bones_carmel) who shared this idea at the SHP conference in the summer of 2016. Carmel deserves every credit for this superb idea, which has had a very positive impact upon my students.
The activity focuses around a pyramid with four or five layers of empty squares. Each layer has a question and students have to complete each layer by writing a single word in each block or rectangle in the layer that relates to the question. Students have to start at the top and work their way down with each question or task becoming increasingly demanding. In writing the questions it is helpful to use the Blooms taxonomy to make the tasks gradually more demanding and, therefore, building in an element of differentiation and stretch and challenge to the activity.
Below are examples of the worksheets and completed activities which show how students can complete the activity. Links to blank worksheets which can be adapted for any subject can be found at the bottom of the post.
The activity can be used in a number fo ways –
Alternatively, rather than giving students to a blank summary pyramids to complete such as the one in the photograph, students could be given a complete pyramid and they have to create the questions which relate to the words in each layer, therefore, reversing the activity and encouraging the students to discover links and formaulate their own questions using the Blooms taxonomy framework.
A superb activity which can be used for any subject and huge thanks to Carmel for sharing this idea.
jivespin 