I feel that the whole task of pupils doing a bit of research then making a poster is not the most worthwhile as the pupils never seem to digest the information, nor do they read each others.
Therefore this week I decided to mix it up a little bit.
Once the pupils completed their posters on Hindu Gods, I told them they would have a quiz on the posters. I wrote a pretty simple 10 question quiz. I gave the pupils one minute to read the quiz questions, some smart cookies tried to jot them down in this time. I then gave them 15 minutes to read each others posters, take notes, ask questions and hopefully learn!
After the 15 minutes, I read out the questions. The catch? The whole class had to get 80% right in the quiz in order to get a movie the week after. I knew I was being extremely optimistic with 80% but I will explain all later.
The pupils were well warned if they shouted out answers, I wouldn’t mark that question for the whole class.
I took in all the answer sheets and put up an excel spreadsheet with all the pupils names on the smart board; I marked on the spot typing in their results on the spreadsheet and letting it show their individual percentages. (There is room for some differentiation for some children, be a little generous when marking their papers). Those that sat for the 15 minutes and got 2/10’s results were there for the rest of the class to see.
The two classes I did this with got 41% and 52% not the 80% needed, but they did learn that they all need to pitch in and do the task set in order to gain a reward. I’m going to try a similar task with the classes in a few weeks to see if they have learned anything about work ethic and teamwork. You never know some of them may be able to tell me if Shiva is a male or female or why Ganesha has an elephants head too.
Learning RMPS 