One of the great things about my job is that I get to see some fantastic lessons being taught by some amazing teachers. This week we had our teaching and learning review day which was a huge success. We saw a 6% increase in the number of good and better lessons which was a big step forward for us.
I'm going to describe a year 10 PE revision lesson which was in preparation for an upcoming exam.
As I arrived to the room, students were being met at the door by the teacher and assigned to one of three groups. I could tell at this point the students were being grouped on ability. The lesson started with the teacher explaining that each group had a dry wipe pen and they had to write on the desks everything they could remember about bones and joints. Students had been given two mind maps to revise from over the Easter holidays on these two things. A simple strategy of writing on the desks made it different and immediately engaged the students. As the groups were working the teacher approached one group and got them to look at the board which had extra words and numbers on it. For example, 206 and cranium. Students in this group had to explain what they had to do with the topic. This ensured the more able group were extended.
The teacher stopped the activity and got some feedback from the groups about what was on their desks. He then explained what the next task was going to be. This is where teach, do, review comes in! The teacher explained that they needed to move themselves in to one of three groups. If they felt that they were really unsure about the topic they had to move to the teach group. The teacher would work with them and teach the material again. If the students felt that they were reasonably confident on the topic but maybe needed to deepen their understanding they were going to go to the do group and do a number of activities. Finally if they were really confident on the topic and knew everything they possibly could, they would go to the review group to have a go at an exam paper. Each group had a learning objective to achieve and an extension task.
It was really interesting at this point as the class was composed of a number of friendship groups and I wondered how they would sort themselves out. That is, whether they would stay with their friends! However, up they got and moved themselves to where they felt they needed to be and therefore took control of their own learning. This was really impressive to see.
As the groups worked on their tasks the teacher spent most of his time with the teach group but checked on the do and review groups every so often, intervening with prompts such as mnemonics that had previously been learned. There was real collaborative learning taking place, particularly in the do group.
At this point I had to leave the room to observe another lesson but I was so impressed at how such a simple strategy had ensured that the needs of all learners had been met!
After reading this post I tried it out with my Year 11 GCSE PE class. Again, it was a revision session for their upcoming GCSE PE exam in a few weeks time. I used SOLO taxonomy to design the tasks for the Do and Review groups. As expected, my Level 4 boys and a few C/D borderline students independently chose to work with me. My B students (weirdly - as if I had set it up) all chose the Do task and my A*-A students (plus a C grade student) chose the Review task.
ReplyDeleteThey worked really well on the tasks and completed almost all of the work (I always set challenging tasks). I went around and asked if this was beneficial and what should I change and 99% of the class said Teach, Do, Review was very helpful. One student said she would rather prefer to independently revise a topic that she knows is a weakness which I will have as one of the tasks for the Do tables next time.