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Quick and Effective Lesson Ideas #5 – “The Big Yellow Box” (Or, How to make your students work harder than you!)
I’m cheating a bit here… this article is really a shameless plug for the “Yellow Box Methodology”, innovated by the George Spencer Academy and made famous by the fantastic Ross Morrison McGill (@TeacherToolkit). The Big Yellow Box completely changed my marking process, and made it better in every conceivable way. Not only did deployment of this strategy make it possible to zip through essays and homeworks in a fraction of the time, but it made my marking far more effective….
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Quick and Effective Lesson Ideas #4 – Take a student-focused approach to improve your marking efficiency
Two years into teaching, I was in the staffroom scribbling furiously over yet another essay in department-mandated green pen when a colleague asked me a simple question that completely changed my approach to marking. Even better, it ultimately led to my marking becoming faster, more effective, and more efficient!
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Quick and effective lesson ideas #3 – The Recall Challenge
Whenever I need to teach a large amount of dry content in a short space of time, the Recall Challenge is my go-to strategy. It’s engaging, highly effective, and turns “cramming” into a competition – and one grounded in solid pedagogical methodology, to boot!
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Quick and effective lesson ideas #2 – The Research Review
The trick to guaranteeing that independent research is meaningful and worthwhile lies in equipping your students with the tools that they need to succeed: step-by-step instructions, clear aims and a sense of purpose, and guidance as to what they should be looking for. Enter… the Research Review.
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Quick and effective lesson ideas #1 – Post-it Pass the Parcel!
This is one of my favourite variations of what Alex Quigley, writer of The Confident Teacher, calls “Post it note pedagogy”. The mileage of this task depends very much on the subject and the topic; while it may not be appropriate for everything on the curriculum, it works a treat when revising concepts that provoke discussion! I sell this to my students (with tongue ever-so- slightly in cheek) as “the educational party game where everyone’s a winner…”
Writus Andronicus
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