Plenaries from the Technology Faculty
In Technology we have been looking at a few ways of incorporating exciting and new plenaries into lessons. Some ideas we are trialling at the moment:
• Pictionary: Pupils to draw the keyword without speaking or writing for others to guess what it is.
• Hot seat: One pupil to the front of the room for questioning in the hot seat. Questions must relate to the current topic and come from the whole class.
• Order me: Teacher puts 5 stages of a process on the board in the incorrect order. The class then puts them in the correct order.
• Mystic mind: The class predict the future by stating what they will be learning in the next lesson or what will be completed by the end of the next lesson.
• Brainstorm: The properties of any material or ingredient that have been used in the lesson. Ideas for a project using Access FM.
• 60 secs: Give the class 60 seconds to come up with a brief summary of a process, technique or a keyword from the lesson.
• Help: Ask the class to design a help sheet to give advice to other students about what has been learnt in the lesson.
• Blurb: Ask the class to write a blurb about their product that will help it sell.
• True or False: Write down some true and false statements about key aspects of the lesson. Pupils to hold thumbs up if they think it is true or thumbs down if it is false.
• Application of information: In groups mind map where else pupils can use information learned in lesson-link in with other subjects, homework and real life situations.
• Making a statement: Ask the class to come up with two statements in one minute about what they have learned.
• Missing words: Write a summary of key aspects of the lesson, taking out the key items, asking the class to fill in the blanks.
• Label: Find or draw an image of a tool, piece of equipment, a machine or a process. Ask the class to label each part.
• 551: Ask the class to summarise the lesson in 5 sentences, then reduce to 5 words, then reduce to 1 word.
• Role change: Tell the class to imagine they were the teacher. Ask the class what questions they would ask and why.
• Partners: Arrange class in pairs. Ask them to discuss each others work and look at their targets. Ask pupils to write a target for the next lesson in their partners book.
• Open ended: Run a question and answer session about the lesson. Do not allow the class to answer with a yes or no.
• Timeline: Ask the class to produce a timeline showing the different stages of the current project so far.