Thursday 24 April 2014

This week I've tried...

We had a great department meeting this week (how often do you hear that?!) where our Head of Department shared a brilliant revision idea before getting the rest of us to this of quick, easy, low preparation revision activities to use with our classes over the next few vital weeks before their exams. 

All ideas from the Greenford High School Science Department :)

Revision ideas

Pub quiz – with a spelling round, picture round, etc

Exam questions/parts of a topic on A3 – students have 3 minutes at each station

60 second lesson/summary – students then present/go around and learn from each other before going back and adding information to their own 60 second lesson

This is the answer, what is the question?

12 squares – key words and definitions, ideas and explanations, cut up the 12 squares and use as a pairs game or as a weakest link style question session (this one was from our HoD!)

6 mark exam questions – write out all the key words and then number them in the order that you would use them in your answer, could use connectives to turn into a full answer

Just a minute – students have to try and talk for a minute about a topic, if they pause another student can interrupt and take over. Could include a list of key words that must be used/could be ticked off as the student is speaking

Taboo/articulate – students are given a word(or words) that they aren’t allowed to use and they have to draw/act/describe so their team can guess the word

3 colour notes – one colour for what you remember, one colour for what you looked up in your notes but DO understand, another colour for what you DON’T understand/always struggle to remember

Make a bullet point list of notes and then cut up the bullet points, muddle up and then reorder

Exam questions in pairs with a different colour pen for each person in the pair

Using Jenga blocks in groups to assign different parts of the topic/different things to do

Each one teach one – students teaching each other. Can be done by creating an ‘expert’ group that then presents to the class, or by taking one expert from each group and putting them into a new group.

Find someone who – fold a piece of paper into 12 and write a question or part of the topic on each square. Students go around and write the answer/explanation and the name of the person that told you

Quiz quiz trade – students have a slip with a question and the answer on it, they go around and ask each other their questions before trading slips

Split a page into 4 and use it for four different parts of a topic with each section needing to have key words and equations, 3 bullet points and a written explanation (variation on a mind map)

Mandelas (variation on a mind map)

Cut and stick parts of the specification onto an A3 sheet and then annotate with questions where the spec points are the answers

Speed dating Arrange students in two lines and get pairs to question each other before moving one line along to create new pairs

On the VLE/internet: SAM learning, doddle, GCSEpod and http://www.my-gcsescience.com/