Maximise simple opportunities to enable students to ‘uplift’ or improve targeted aspects of their work or skills. Encourage them to ‘steal’ ideas from others, also to celebrate and share their strengths purposefully. Please see examples below for variations. Uplifting learning
This concept is based on the principle that giving peer feedback is more productive than receiving it because it is more cognitively engaging. Students are trained to provide constructive critique to peers. Partnerships are based on strengths, areas for developments, NOT friendship groups, NOT who they usually work with. Critical buddies can be grouped (2 pairs …
Invent and embed easy to use systems so that common misconceptions are shared to the whole class and given students the opportunity to take ownership for addressing them. (either individually or as a class) Common misconceptions
Use various ways to create opportunities for students to reflect on their learning and targets over time. Some of these simple visuals, charts and walls can helps how students which aspects of their learning are strengths and which are areas for further focus. Target Setting Wall GCSE skills Visual targets
A great technique to get children to work on improving the quality of their responses by improving a sentence either together or on their own. See below for two versions, one with a points system attached to focus on subject specific terminology. Uplifting sentences
Read or study a piece of text. During this process get the pupils actively involved: Ask the class to stand, every time a key term, tense or equivalent is mentioned, the pupils have to sit down. Last to sit down is out…see who the winner will be!
Get the pupils to draw an image as if they were posting on instagram to sum up what they have learnt. Get them to add a suitable comment underneath to explain their image. Instagram
Get the pupils to compose a tweet in less than 20 words to sum up what they have learnt. Include a # to sum up a catchy phrase! Twitter
Select a topic and say go. Pupils are in pairs and have to say a related term to that topic and continue until their partner cannot go. You can use the scoring of tennis e.g. 15, deuce or just score one point each time. Topic tennis
Give pupils a number 1-4/5. Pose a question and say “heads together” where pupils discuss answer. Select a number 1-5 and that child from each group stands and answers the question on their whiteboards. Heads together!