TELL meeting ideas about independent learning

Ideas from Charlotte Hawker:
Students teach each other
1) Give students section of text/information/key ideas/processes that they need to understand
2) Assign them each one specific part of the process/text/information that they need to teach themselves by turning it into their own words/own explanation
3) Next, everyone tours around the room in search of other pieces of the puzzle. So, 2 students meet up and teach each other their bit of information - no copying from books! They must explain and teach each other.
4) Once this has happened, the students walk onto the next person where they will then explain and teach both pieces of information to each other, thereby collecting double the amount of information with each person they meet until they have the entire piece of information/process complete.

Ideas from Becca Jones:
Students acting as “experts” on exam paper questions:
Give students a number and a letter
Group in letter groupings (i.e. all A’s together) and work through an exam question (or a few short answer questions), ensure that all group member are confident with the question and with the solution
Re-group into numbers groupings (i.e. all 1’s together) and each student takes it in turns to teach the others in the group how to do their question

“Mystery” type problems:
Students work in small groups
Each student is given some information which feeds into one big problem (encourage verbal contribution of their information rather than just putting all information on the desk!)
Student’s work as a group to solve the problem.

Ideas from Judy Brandham-Carter:

ACCESS FM = Aesthetics, Cost, Customer, Environment, Safety, Size, Function, Material. A strategy to structure and support independent analysis of products.

I used this strategy with a yr 9 mid set textiles group to carry out a product analysis using a bag / container. This was my first lesson with the group, and I had a seating plan based on behaviour and avoiding placing certain students together.

I explained the ACCESS FM strategy which was already printed in the student booklets, I then place them into grps of 4 based mainly on where they were sitting. I used my collection of bags and students chose the one by a lucky dip of choosing one from a big bag. In this way students didn’t choose a bag they liked or one they were familiar with i.e their own pencil case/school bag. So students had to think more about a product they were unfamiliar with. Students did work well in the groups and all took part in discussing points, but when I marked their work I did find that some of the boys had written down scant information although had contributed well to the discussion and some of the girls had written down far more detailed information.