Coach-Couch gains momentum! Session 3 ...

Had you been "on the coach-couch" this week, you'd have explored these two questions:

1. How can I consolidate the learning of pupils in my KS3 lessons effectively?

and

2. How can I develop pupils' abilities in reading and selecting the appropriate information from an article (or any text) at KS4 and KS5?
Here are some ideas and solutions we discussed ...

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1. How can I consolidate the learning of pupils in my KS3 lessons effectively?

- use a shocking real-life fact as a plenary; pupils are asked to make the link between new knowledge or skills and this fact

- use mini-whiteboards / post-its in plenary on which every pupil indicates her learning

- link the learning objective to the plenary

- make the learning objective a question or problem to be solved by the end of the lesson

- use "how confident are you that you can x,y,z?" as self-assessment at the start and end of the lesson so pupils develop their own awareness of their progress.

- do a quiz as a plenary

- use this quiz as a starter in the next lesson to see if pupils have retained learning

- use a series of quizzes over a series of lessons with an overall winner (team or individual) at the end of the term or unit.

- punctuate a double lesson with a series of mini-plenaries so that students consolidate learning and understand their progress in a more explicit and scaffolded way

- use KWL to top and tail the lessons (AW)

K (Know):	Students list everything they think they know about the topic of study.
W (Want to know):	Students tell what they want to know about the topic.
L (Learned):	After students have finished reading or studying a topic, they list what they have learned. They can also check the W column to see which questions were answered and which were left unanswered. Then they should revisit the K column to see if they had any misconceptions.

- use KH's three boxes idea ...
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COMING SOON: a bank of resources shared by Coach-Couchers including a list of STARTERS and PLENARIES adaptable to all subjects and key stages ...

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2. How can I develop pupils' abilities in reading and selecting the appropriate information from an article (or any text) at KS4 and KS5?

- when introducing a reading or text-based activity, distinguish between using reading skills and developing subject-specific-knowledge; teach rather than (accidentally) test reading skills.

- make reading skills explicit ... and make the interdisciplinary transferability of these skills explicit.

- ask students to pick out the topic sentences in the text and, using these produce a summary of the text.
- based on the title or topic sentence, ask students to predict what the text / rest of the paragraph will cover.
- based on the title or topic sentence, ask students to write questions which they hope will be answered in the text / paragraph.

- during reading, students put signals in the margin, eg: a tick by something they agree with, a cross by something they disagree with, an exclamation mark by something that surprises them, a question mark next to something that puzzles or confuses them.

- direct the reading and distinguish between reading for content and reading for expression and language (depending on the skills you want to build).  eg. ask students to underline in one colour three new or useful ideas or bits of information and to underline in another colour three different expressions or phrases which would be helpful to them when writing their own (case study / essay / report).

- based on the content of the text, give students a series of statements and ask them to decide which statements correlate most accurately to the text.

- give students a non-related-text which follows the same format as the text to demystify the format or layout.

- cut up the text and ask students to work out how it would logically fit together and explain how they worked this out.

THANKS to Mary, Keira, Tom,Vishal, Peter, Alistair, Anna and Robin for your very positive contributions.  Remember we said we would each implement one new strategy in our teaching and post our experiences here ...