IS SU E 6
June
2015
PedEx WBGS IM AGINE, IMPROVE, IN SPIRE
CONTENTS Page 1: Editors needed! Page 2: Socrative, rotating mind maps and fun timers Page 3: Comprehension questions
It’s Summertime! The summer has now officially begun with the solstice on the 21st June and I’m sure many of you are enjoying the little peeks of sunshine we are seeing! So why not take a copy of PedEx out into the garden and start using some of these fab new ideas to help plan for September. We’ve got fun timers to use, revision tips and activities and some great ideas linked in with the new literacy and comprehension initiative.
fresh faced editors to take over. Could it be you? If you’d like any more details about the role, speak to us , or let Maureen know if you think you’d be interested.
Page 4: Edmodo Page 5: Venn diagrams and ‘a pronounced difference.’ Page 6 Coffee break fun—games, puzzles and more
PedEx WBGS is published once a term by WBGS Teaching and Learning Group.
From September PedEx is looking for two brand new,
Editors—Hk and Wk Contributors—Wk, Hk, Sy, Wa, Rp, Cx, Dw, Ck, Bm, Cw Thank you very much to everyone who has contributed to this issue. 1
Socrative This is a great website for testing the knowledge of your students, either as a homework task, as exit questions from a lesson, for starters or for plenaries. It’s free to sign up and only takes a couple of minutes. The link is below:
https://b.socrative.com/teacher/#dashboard
This can be used in all subjects as a quick analysis of the theory knowledge of students, and you can choose from multiple choice, short answer and true/false questions. It can be done in class, with live results given, so that students can have instant feedback. Socrative is excellent as an AFL tool as it quickly highlights areas that the class, or individual students, are struggling with. With short answer questions, real exam questions can be copied and pasted in, or multiple choice questions can be lifted from past papers and entered in. Other uses include team quizzes and revision activities – all great for showing progress!
Rotating mind maps
Fun timers!
This is a useful activity when revising for end of year exams. Put the class into groups and allocate one topic per group, they then have five minutes to start a mind map on A3 paper on their allocated topic. After five minutes the mind map is passed to the neighbouring group, this can be repeated as many times as required. Revision guides or other support material can be provided to groups if required. The teacher can circle the groups providing prompts of any major concepts that have been omitted.
Ever get bored of keeping track of time in lessons with the clock? Use these fun timers to keep kids on track with time, allowing you to focus on helping them, rather than clock watching. There’s loads of great ones to use, from digital clock timers, to sand timers (where you can see the level of the sand decreasing over time!). They’re set up for an assortment of time periods already, but these can also be edited before you use them to give a wider variety. They can also be imbedded into your normal powerpoints. Find them here on the T-drive: T:\Teaching and Learning Group\T&L Magazine\Articles
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Reading for Comprehension Could our students be better at reading for comprehension? Do we need to set more tasks and homework with reading comprehension as the aim? A working party comprising teachers from a range of subjects at the school thought that the answer was yes! Currently, students are required to read to complete homework. Often the reading might be part of a ‘research’ homework. Students will typically ‘Google’ the topic and be faced with a plethora of internet articles, many of which are either too difficult, too lengthy or of poor quality. Many students are not able to navigate this terrain effectively and respond by doing some ‘copy and pasting’ with perhaps more focus on the pictures and the ensuing PowerPoint presentation. Research type homeworks are useful and do have their place but perhaps we could help students develop reading confidence in their early years at secondary school by sometimes setting homework where ‘what to read’ is selected for them. Such homeworks are more focused than the ‘research’ homework. It is the teacher who puts the work into finding something to read that is of an appropriate level, quality and length. The student can then be focused solely on comprehension rather than be distracted by other tasks. The following ideas were suggested at the working party held in early June. The process of Selecting an article (from the New Scientist) for students to do as a comprehension required me to read the article and therefore get up to speed with the topic The (hard?) work for the teacher is the selection of an appropriate article The job of selecting articles could be shared amongst a group of teachers Students don’t have to understand all (or even many) of the words in the article (this applies to reading MFL texts as well as English) We could get students reading the (maths) textbook chapter in advance of the lesson and proceeding lesson starts with questions that test comprehension. Would this only work with older age groups? Have a weekly article that is required reading for a whole cohort, year group. The timing of these could be matched to year group or school assemblies You can differentiate comprehension tasks. ‘All should be able to’…..’Some should be able to’ etc. Comprehension Questions - Ideas to try Answer a number of questions to test comprehension Write the questions in an order different to the order that the answers appear in the text Students read the article and are then required to devise a few comprehension questions that other students have to try in the following lesson Read two articles on the same topic and compare Critical analysis of the article To save assessment time Peer marking Comprehension answers are just single words Make a computer based quiz e.g. Moodle quiz Next steps Teachers from the working party each take a lead in their department to find 3 or 4 articles and then develop related comprehension exercises for students to try out in the last half of term. Every department builds comprehension activities into their Year 7 schemes of work ready for use in September. Lets do it! Cw 10/6/15
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There has been a lot of discussion about the use of social media in education, and the problems that regularly come about are regarding professional boundaries and personal privacy. With most of my A level classes on Whatsapp, posting problems and discussing possible solutions, I thought it would be useful to be involved. One solution that I have found, which does not require me to hand over any personal details is Edmodo. Edmodo brings together Whatsapp, Twitter, Facebook and Moodle, all in one, free, easy-to-use website. It is set out in a similar way to Facebook, with ‘walls’, ‘groups’ and more. Edmodo is a great way to: share resources set homework tasks run debates or discussions set quizzes through its easy-to-use quiz builder
Edmodo is also easily accessible through its mobile or tablet app, allowing boys to respond ‘on the go’ and sending them notifications when a new post has been sent to them. There are a few concerns about using Edmodo, and they have all been considered in the creation of the website:
Professional boundaries – no personal details are exchanged – they only know who you are by your surname and school
Privacy – groups can only be accessed by a unique code and can be locked once all required pupils have joined
Are we encouraging cyber bullying? No. Everything that pupils post is public for everyone to see. They cannot send private messages to each other.
The more staff that use Edmodo, the better it will run throughout the school, so why not give it a go? Get yourselves to www.edmodo.com and sign up now!
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A pronounced difference With reading and comprehension becoming a key focus for teaching, here are some quirks of our language that might make reading out loud a little more interesting. 1) The bandage was wound around the wound. 2) The farm was used to produce produce. 3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse. 4) We must polish the Polish furniture. 5) The soldier decided to desert her dessert in the desert. 6) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present. 7) I do not object to the object. 8) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row. (An idea taken from the Quest journal, no. 119, Spring 2015)
Venn Diagrams
This is a great way of looking at two related areas to see how well students appreciate the links and distinctions between them. Students seem to struggle with questions which draw knowledge from different topic areas, and this is an excellent revision tool to try and encourage them to begin doing this in a structured way. This can work well as an open task - either with the headings given, or blank for students to make their own links, or with keywords provided for the students to sort into the correct sections.
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Coffee Break 1. Which fashion designer of the 1950s created the A-line look? 2. Which US State is known as "The Apache State"? 3. Which FIVE English cities begin with the letter "B"? 4. In which sport is the Westchester Cup awarded? 5. Who is the only British Prime Minister to be born overseas? 6. What is the largest bird of prey in the world? 7. What are the TWO largest islands in Asia? 8. What are the THREE most populated island nations in the World? 9. On which island are the greatest number of snake bite fatalities each year? 10. STERLET, OSSETRA and SEVRUGA are all types of
SIDE
which delicacy?
Dingbats—try to figure out the famous phrases or sayings. More can be found at: http://www.quizmasters.biz/DB/Pic/Dingbats/ Dingbats.html
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2.
Excellent to use in form time as well.
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4. 5.
Get writing… If you’ve got something you want to write about, we want to hear from you!
ANSWERS: 1. Christian Dior. 2. Arizona. 3. Bath, Birmingham, Bradford, Brighton & Hove and Bristol. 4. Polo. 5. Andrew Bonar Law. 6. Andean Condor. 7. Borneo and Sumatra. 8. Indonesia, Japan and The Philippines. 9. Sri Lanka. 10. Caviar Dingbat answers: 1. I Understand. 2. Round robin. 3. the last lap. 4. high seas. 5. in the middle of nowhere.
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