Accelerate Your Learning

Friday 21 January 2011

As a school we are taking part in the CQS (Classroom Quality Standards) to ensure that we are providing opportunities for pupils in our lessons to be challenged and to access higher level thinking.

potential + opportunities/support + personal drive = high achievement

Teachers often use probing and Socratic questioning to encourage pupils to think more deeply.

Pupils can also take responsibility of their own learning. Below are some suggestions of how they can progress their learning further and develop essential skills:

1. Coach – try to teach a concept to someone struggling. This helps you to retain information and understand at a deeper level.
2. Think like Socrates - can you think of another way of explaining the idea? What is the evidence?
3. Make Links - can you link what you have learnt with other lessons? What have you learnt that could be useful elsewhere? How will you apply what you learnt?
4. How are you going to remember? Pneumatics, rhymes, image association.
5. Further reading - Be resourceful. Is there anything you can read that will further your understanding or broaden it?
6. Think outside the box E.g. interview questions: What type of fruit would you be and why? If I gave you a brick what would you do with it? Why are manhole covers round?
7. Don’t be afraid of challenges. Failure is often an essential stage on the way to success. It can be used as a great learning tool.

All these strategies and more are going to be discussed in the KS4 ‘STRETCH’ session taking place on Thursday 10th February at 3.30 in E5. We look forward to seeing KS4 pupils there.