Idea from: Irayna Owen
Who it is for:
For all teachers revising a topic or going over the key ideas and keywords in a topic.
Outline of idea:
Write a small list of keywords from a topic on the board – say 4 or 5. Challenge pupils to identify where in the topic they came across each key word, why each is important in the topic and finally what the link is between them. Can they come up with a key word which links the others? Alternatively, put some key words and a linking word up and challenge them to find other keywords which would fit in and which you have ‘missed off’ the list. This also works with numbers if they have come up in a topic.
This worked really well as part of our revision before an end of module science test. It led to a lot of pupil discussion (they worked in pairs) and ensured they looked through their notes to find the key words and check them. Some of the groups of words I put up linked to specific diagrams, which we then discussed. With one Science group it highlighted a whole chunk of the topic which the pupils did not have a good grasp of and we were able to go over the learning on this section. It really helps pupils to see the links between different ideas in a topic.
Next steps:
You could ask pupils to come up with their own groups of keywords from a topic and how they would link them, or to write questions for each other to answer. For more able pupils you could extend the idea by asking pupils to link different groups of key words and explain how they relate to each other.