Extension Activity of the Week - 15

This week: Haiku

Five syllables, then
Seven syllables, then five
more, make a haiku

Students summarise
Lesson content, encouraging
Lateral thinking.

The style is strict but
encourages brevity
(which is positive).

I used this with
My year 12s and they loved it.
Try it out some time.

West Wilts Federation Sixth Form Leadership Conference

This event takes place every year for lucky year 12 students who are selected to go. This year's conference will be taking place at KYUEM, a private sixth form boarding school in Malaysia, which aims to prepare its students for university in Britain and America.

The trip is aimed at broadening the horizons of our young people, by giving them a taste of education in a far-flung location. They will be working with students from the college to research and make presentations on a global issue. This will encourage them to improve their research and presentation skills, as well as heightening their awareness of world problems.

I am delighted to be accompanying the trip this year, along with two students from Matravers and 14 others from four more West Wiltshire schools. We leave tomorrow, for a week of hard work and plenty of gun. Follow our antics here.

Extension Activity of the Week - 14

This week: Improving word power

I am minorly obsessed with word puzzles and Boggle is my favourite. I find that playing regularly helps to improve my vocabulary.

The two online Boggle simulators below can be used as an extension, as long as you don’t need to have instructions on the board for the rest of the class, or you don’t mind having pupils sitting at your computer.

I suggest loading up a board and giving pupils a dictionary, if you have one handy, so that they can check their words. If you freeze the board, there’s no need to worry about the time limit, either.

http://www.fun-with-words.com/boggle.html
http://www.wordtwist.org

Extension Activity of the Week 13

This week: Acrostics

A definite favourite with my year seven class, this simply involves inviting them to create a poem, in which the first letter of each line spells out a key word or phrase. The longer the phrase, the more challenging – and if you can include a word with an X in it, all the better! This activity encourages pupils to use words imaginatively and make connections between topics.

Dauntsey's Lecture Programme

Dauntsey's School have sent through details of their Mercers' Lectures programme, which runs through the year roughly once a month. They are already halfway through this year's lectures, but there are some exciting speakers coming up, including Germaine Greer talking about her experiences on February 5th.

There are details of the lectures here.

If you are interested in attending any of these lectures, please let me know, via a comment here or an email; we are not running any official trips yet but if there was enough interest I'm sure we could take a minibus down there.

Extension Activity of the Week - 12

This Week: Pupil....you'll be the teacher, soon

This is especially effective if the pupils in question have a younger sibling because they will have willing guinea pigs on whom to test it.

Invite pupils to prepare a learning activity for children 2 or more years younger than they are. They will need to consider the lesson content and then pick out the most vital portions, simplifying it for a younger audience. This will encourage them to think deeply about the learning they have done during the lesson, and if they get to try out their activity, they will also be recapping their learning within 24 hours of it taking place - a prime strategy for cementing it in their brains.

Exciting AG&T courses at Braeside

Braeside, in Devizes, has provided enrichment courses for AG&T pupils for nearly a decade now and is an ideal setting for trying something out of the ordinary.

This autumn they are offering two courses to AG&T pupils at Key Stage Three - a survival skills day at the start of November, and a creative writing course in the middle of December. Full details, and an application form, can be found here. I would be more than happy to endorse any applications for places made by Matravers students.

Extension Activity of the Week - 11

This week: Superchallenge

At the AG&T parents' meeting this week, a parent commented to me that she'd like her son to be set some work he struggled with. A lot of high achievers rarely get a taste of failure and therefore don't benefit from the learning experience that comes with getting it wrong and trying again.

Therefore, if you're stuck for some extension work this week, break out the really hard stuff - those bits and pieces you keep tucked away for your year 13 students; sudokus or crossword puzzles you yourself might struggle with; the problems and essays from the obscure, undisturbed bits of the textbook that you never teach. Try to push your most able out of their comfort zone.

Extended Project

Yesterday, I found out about the Extended Project.

This is something that has come out of the new Diplomas, but pupils don't have to be completing the Diploma to take it. This year, we're piloting it with six of our brightest year 12s, who have been specially invited, and who are working with the Head of Dance, Mr Clark, as their mentor. The qualification details are here.

It all looks very exciting, for a few reasons.

Firstly, with my History teacher hat on, anything which encourages pupils to develop their research and extended writing skills is a worthwhile venture in my book, because those skills are directly applicable to my subject.

Secondly, I think this is what school should be about! The chance to research and study something of your own choice, in a supportive environment, with access to advice and guidance from people who already know you well, doesn't come along very often. The skills these pupils will be developing will prove invaluable at university - indeed, Cambridge is among the universities who are extremely supportive of the extended project - and tick a lot of boxes for independent working too, which will be helpful in the world of work: time management; developing and testing a hypothesis; and self-motivation.

I'm really excited that pupils at this school are getting the opportunity to complete this, and hope that it will be accessible to more in the future. Look out for updates from the pupils involved on how they feel about the project.

Extension Activity of the Week - 10

This week: Key word charades

Appeal to your kinaesthetic learners by suggesting they come up with a movement or sequence of motions to characterise the key words from the lesson. The movements could represent the way the word is spelled, its meaning or its place in the sequence of learning.

This could then form part of your plenary, as the rest of the class guess what key words they are demonstrating. You could then build on this by coming up with a range of movements to cover a whole unit of key words.

Useful links for Maths Enrichment

These sites contain helpful hints and tips about Maths, including some great puzzles and problem solving activities to help you hone your numeracy skills.

Nrich - Specialists in Rich Mathematics - This website has a difference focus every month, with problems and puzzles that match that theme. You can email them with your solutions. For September, their focus is Communicating and Reflecting.

Minus Plus Project - This website, originally created for schools in the Liverpool area, contains hints, tips, worksheets and games, along with a list of useful Maths related websites.

GCSE Maths Revision Site - This website is specifically aimed at those taking the higher tier Maths paper (there is no longer an intermediate paper available), with topic specific revision notes and a forum to ask questions if you are really stuck!

Dr Zargle's GCSE Answers - This website sells past papers and exemplar answers to go with them, either via download or on a CD. Their testimonials are excellent.

BBC News Maths Test - Maybe this is one for the parents! How would you fare on a GCSE Maths paper today? Test yourself with this seven question quiz. (I scored 6/7 - but two of those were very lucky guesses!)

Extension Activity of the Week - 9

This week: Puzzling

This is a good one for gauging the level members of your classes are working at early on, when data might be scarce (oh, that such a situation should ever exist!) and your knowledge of the pupils somewhat lacking.

Set a puzzle based on some information from the textbook they are working with, or from anything you have on display. The puzzle should involve the pupils looking over the information and drawing conclusions from it. Offer a reward for those whose answers are best.

This extension activity has the double advantage of being both a way of stretching the top end, and a way of encouraging the class to complete their tasks.

For example, from a double page spread in a Geography textbook, which contained maps and information demonstrating why the southwest is warmer in both the summer and the winter, I set year 7 pupils the following extension question:

Why is the southwest the best place to live?

The weakest students came up with the answer, “The weather is good.”

The middle ability students came up with the answer, “The weather is warmer in the summer because we are nearer the equator in the southwest.”

The brightest students were able to add to this, by explaining how the mid-Atlantic drift worked.

Extension Activity of the Week - 8

This week: Sixth Form Extension Tasks Online

While setting extension work for sixth formers can be a rare occurrence - as hopefully most of them are already extending themselves independently...so to speak - it's good to have some tasks up your sleeve for research and new lines of enquiry, especially for cover lessons.

Somebody has already done this work for you! Young Gifted & Talented Activities is a website with a range of activities for sixth form (or pupils lower down the school, if you fancy giving them a challenge). They cover 20 different subjects, and each one includes an introductory video, a task and an exemplar response. I particularly like the English language task based on American Rhetoric.

Extension Activity of the Week - 7

This week: A-Z of Relevance

Challenge students to create an alphabetical list of key words and terms relating to the lesson or topic. Not only does this encourage them to make links within the topic or between the lesson and prior learning, it also draws on their cognitive skills, as they might struggle to think of 26 words and will have to justify their use of some more obscure terms.

Extension Activity of the Week - 6

This week: Six Degrees of Separation

This is an activity I've had some success with in my year 10 lessons.

Invite pupils to write six sentences to link two words. Each sentence must begin with the last word of the last sentence - see the example below. It's often quite difficult to think of six steps to link when one would be sufficient, but the activity encourages pupils to make links with prior learning and bring in knowledge that they might not otherwise have associated with the lesson content.

A sheet with the example below and space to write in your own words is available on the system.
Keep a few handy for the end of a lesson - it takes next to no time to set up.

Example: Link Westbury with the White Horse.
1. Westbury is a town in Wiltshire.
2. Wiltshire has many historic sites.
3. Historic sites often commemorate big historic events.
4. A big historic event in Wiltshire was the Battle of Ethendune.
5. The Battle of Ethendune was when the Vikings were beaten by Alfred the Great.
6. Alfred the Great’s victory is commemorated by the White Horse.

Extension Activity of the Week - 5

This week: Creative writing

An esteemed colleague commented this week that writing was not considered a fun activity anymore. I couldn't help but wonder - is it because, so often, it isn't? I'm certainly guilty of doling out writing tasks that consist chiefly of formulaic exam answers and essays, with only the odd bit of creative writing thrown in here and there as a homework.

However, pupils of all abilities and ages enjoy the opportunity to write stories, as evidenced by the three page American West tale an often difficult pupil lovingly crafted for me one lesson.

Set pupils an extension task of writing a short story in which all the main characters are key words from the lesson. For example, in science, Mr Red Blood Cell might get in his car and drive down the Vena Cava for a meeting in the Atrium....evidently my creative writing skills are as strong as my knowledge of the circulatory system, but hopefully you get the idea.

The "stories" can be displayed in your classroom, or photocopied and distributed, or placed on the school webpage. You could offer a small, sugar-based prize for the most creative, or the best use of key words or connectives. And perhaps, the more "fun" writing they complete, the less onerous they will find writing in general.

Helpful Facebook Apps

This post lists 101 Useful facebook Applications, though a lot of them are aimed at American college students. Here's my pick of the most useful ones for school pupils.

• Flashcards: Create virtual flashcards tailored to your subject.
• Make a Quiz!: Create quizzes to test yourself and your study partners.
• Quiz Monster: Prepare for exams by creating quizzes.
• Box files: Provides 1 GB of free online storage, where you can store files in various formats.
• Calculator: A functional calculator app.
• Dictionary: Use this dictionary like, well, a dictionary.
• Google Docs: Monitor your Google Docs from within Facebook.
• Google Translate: Get help in language classes with this app that translates Arabic, French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Russian, Portuguese, Greek, Dutch, Korean, Czech, Croatian, Hebrew, Swedish, Turkish, Thai and more.
• Language Exchange: Connect with language exchange partners teaching more than 70 languages, with lessons managed through your Facebook profile.
• Learn 10: Daily content designed to help you learn one of 20 different languages.
• Task Master: To-do list manager with color-coded tasks, due dates, sorting, filters and task sharing with friends.
• To Do List: Helps you organize, tag and color-code all of your tasks and errands.

Extension Activity of the Week - 4

This week: Twittering

The Guardian's annual April Fool this year told of how they were going to transfer all their archived material onto Twitter. For those who haven't heard of it, Twitter is a website in which users "tweet" to each other about what's going on in their lives, in 140 characters or less.

This sort of summarising can really help pupils to pick out the important bits of information from a lesson. Challenge students to squeeze all the information they have covered into one sentence. Set some boundaries, for example, it has to make sense, it cannot involve text abbreviations, it has to be a sentence and not just a list of keywords. After the lesson they could even text the message to somebody who missed the class.

If you fancy trying Twitter for yourself - it's not just for gossip. Try searching for #SMARTboard for messages which will give you some good tips on using your IWB.

A parent view of differentiation

This blog post is written by the parent of a gifted child, about her view on ability groupings in the classroom.

As I've mentioned before, in the feedback I receive from pupils and parents here, the desire for setting appears consistently, every time. It seems this is the case with gifted children everywhere!

QCA Guidance

Here's some QCA Guidance on teaching the Gifted and Talented.

I particularly like the case studies - lots of them, not all subject specific, and the ones I have looked at seem really easy to slot into my practice.

Extension Activity of the Week 3

This week: Challenging Texts

Using a more challenging source of information is a good way to add extra detail to a lesson topic through the extension task. The text might be a technical manual, an article from a journal, a primary source, a weather log, or pages from a textbook aimed at an older age group. We've probably all got university textbooks left over from our past studies - now's the time to put them to good use!

What can they do with it? Here are three examples: answer questions; use a highlighter to pick out key points/words - perhaps any specialist vocabulary used; draw a diagram or cartoon for each paragaph to summarise - this sometimes leads to some very interesting pictures.

Extension Activity of the Week - 2

This week: Odd One Out

Studies show that AG&T pupils often perform poorly in multiple choice exams because their reasoning skills are better developed, so they come up with different answers to everybody else. In addition to this, many AG&T pupils find it very difficult to accept that there is more than one solution to a problem - particularly when they are certain they have the "right" one.

Odd One Out can tap into these reasoning skills and encourage students to think about how they reach solutions, and also to consider alternative points of view.

The length of time taken to complete an Odd One Out exercise can vary according to how many words, pictures, calculations, diagrams etc are included in the puzzle. Challenging AG&T students to come up with several solutions and justify each one will encourage them to think creatively - and it's the sort of puzzle that could just require typing the key words into a slide or a word document and having it ready to show at the end of the lesson.

Extension Activity of the Week - 1

Each week I have a slot in the staff bulletin to share an extension activity.

I decided to put them here as well, mostly so I don't forget which ones I've already done.

Let's Get Quizzical
A recent study showed that regular testing helps us to remember things - what a breakthrough! In addition to this, Matravers AG&T pupils tell us that they enjoy learning more when there is an element of competition.

As an extension, students could write a short quiz on the lesson content for the rest of the class to complete as a plenary.

A range of styles could be used, such as true/false, multiple choice, odd one out, or Jeopardy-style, where the pupils come up with the answers and the rest of the class has to guess the question. Look in the Extension Activities folder for more examples.

Pupils could create the quiz in the back of their exercise books, on scrap paper, on mini whiteboards, or on the classroom computer - in which case, the quiz could be placed on the VLE and set as a homework activity.

Interesting article on differentiation

This article, by researchers at Duke University in the USA, talks about how ability groupings can affect AG&T pupils. It reminds me a little of the old research about single sex schooling - girls do better in single sex, but boys do better in mixed. This article suggests that gifted learners do better when they are streamed with others of their abilitiy, whereas those at the other end of the scale do better in mixed groups.

The research is backed up by the questionnaires I have been doing with pupils at my own school. Every year, pupils and parents alike hold up the subjects which set their groups by ability as the best learning environments. I'm personally quite a big fan of mixed sets, but I can easily see why the AG&T pupils prefer to be with people of their own ability. For a start, the work is usually going to be pitched at the right level, since most teachers differentiate down very well, but not up.

I'm looking quite a lot at top down planning this term. I want to launch it with the teaching and learning group next term. It involves planning for the brightest kid in the class and then differentiating down, which should reduce the amount of work required, since you're only going one way.

There's not much out there about top down planning, though, apart from references in dozens of AG&T policies and the Lead Teacher handbook.

New blog

I'm frustrated today, because I can find a hundred blogs about AG&T education in the USA, and a hundred blogs about general education in the UK, but I can't find anybody blogging about AG&T education in the UK.

So, I decided I might have a go myself - if only to post links to things I find, so I don't lose them.