15 | Key Stage 3 National Strategy|Pedagogy and practice
Unit 5: Starters and plenaries
© Crown copyright 2004
DfES 0428-2004
Developing whole-class interactive teaching skills
The following whole-class interactive teaching approaches facilitate the effective
organisation of plenary activities and help to ensure they achieve their purposes:
- questioning and discussing;
- consolidating and embedding;
- summarising and reminding;
- reflecting and evaluating.
Refer back to page 9 for more detail on each of these.
Task continues
Task 9
Plan a plenary 30 minutes
Design a plenary for one of your lessons. The activity could be task-based or
involve whole-class teaching. If possible, work with another teacher who teaches
the same unit of work.
Try to use one of the approaches described above or shown invideo sequences
5f, 5g and 5h.Use the following prompts to help.
- What are the key aspects of learning you wish to identify?
- What would be an appropriate activity? Choose one that enables your pupils
to demonstrate the outcomes of their learning and allows you to note the
progress made. What whole-class interactive teaching skills will you use to
bring the learning of individuals and groups to the attention of the whole
class?
- What is the purpose and the link to the lesson objectives?
- When will it take place in the lesson and how long should it take?
- What specific preparations do you need to make for the organisation and
management of your classroom, for the preparation of teaching resources and
for pupil grouping?
Teach the lesson with the planned plenary. Reflect on how it went and evaluate
the pupil response. If you planned the work in collaboration with another teacher,
compare your evaluations.
Task 10
Observe and analyse effective plenaries 2 20 minutes
Video sequence 5ishows a Year 8 geography lesson.
The teacher uses the plenary to debrief the class following the use of a thinking-
skills strategy called ‘maps from memory’. Pupils have worked in groups to build
up a map from an original one that the teacher has shown them. Each pupil from
the group has seen the original in turn and at least once, but for only 10 seconds
on each occasion.
