Asking the right questions... And airing the hexagons...

Year 11 - Chapter 11 and 12 - LOTF

ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS: Always a favourite lesson - Always works a treat.

Students are asked to ask questions about the text, plot, characters and relationships, themes... Well, not in so many words initially.
Initially: Jot down any questions (groups of 2 or 3) - I did show them some examples of interesting questions after a couple of minutes.
Then: Rank them / group them
And: Choose most important/ relevant ones...
OR  which questions is most likely to be asked to test your knowledge and understanding...

We had a bit of reading to do.

Then easy questions addressed first. Time to discuss some of their big questions. Some initial feedback and class discussion, stretching ideas.
Back to their big questions and extended responses in note form on the sugar paper.
Final plenary:
One question /group is answered/presented to class.

Note taken of any question that might have been too hard to answer fully or that we feel has not been done justice --> to be tackled in next lesson.

Below is a mix of slides and photos (taken at an early stage of lesson 1 for the questions... as usual, forgot to take more pictures... Doh. The other photos are from lesson 2). It's all a bit mixed up for now...

NEXT LESSON: AIRING THE HEXAGONS

Starter was easy: looking at our question (there was only one) to be revisited and after a few min of Think, Pair, Share, some good class discussion.
Reminded us of what makes a good answer.

But first, we have abandoned the SOLO levels for now and refocused on GCSE grades, but at least they understand the progression better between one grade and the next.
Most of the revision books focus on C grade and A* grade answers so it made sense...

I also reworked David's grade ladder as spotted in one of his posts about Zooming in and Zooming Out (@LearningSpy) (I should tell him)

Anyway, this time, they had to write one or 2 'good' questions in pair on a post-it on the final chapter; should be a question they would be happy to answer in an exam as they would have plenty to say.
The twist was that instead of answering their own selected question, they swapped questions with another pair (they actually loved that).

Cue good look at the ladder (by now, the vocab is fairly familiar but at least the focus is firmly on the fact that ALL can progress further)
Hand out envelopes with hexagons to pairs, some with prompts, some blank. Back to question we started with to demonstrate how the hexagons could help build the answer. To be honest, that was quick as they felt they 'got' the idea straight away.
They then build their points and fleshed them out.

I remembered to take pictures as they were needed for plenary (no visualiser in department).
Plenary: Pop memory card in USB and into computer. Pairs came up to present their work and some of 'richest' connections they'd made.

We watched a few more more the next day after they had been given time to add to their initial work, improve, analyse further.

I'm happy with that.

chp 11 and 12