Stretchandchallenge
- 1. 20 teaching ideas for stretch and challenge © www.teachit.co.uk 2013 21442 Page 1 of 2 Who’s coming to dinner? With a list of characters from a novel/ play or a group of writers (such as WWI poets), students organise the seating for a dinner party. They need to decide who can sit next to whom and why. Get some paper plates for them to write names on. Retail therapy. Save, find or make up some shopping receipts. In pairs, students infer what kind of person is represented and why. Alternatively, they could make up a receipt for a literary character and get other students to guess who it is. La poésie. Take a poem and change a few key words into French – or any other language. Students then have to translate the word correctly. This is good for focusing on a theme or a particular rhyme scheme within a poem. Calling SMSC! Students research the seven deadly sins. Set up a debate in which groups argue that one sin is more deadly than the others. Teen teachers. Students are given a feature of grammar and asked to prepare a short presentation/lesson on it. They then deliver this to younger students or peers. Avoid too much guidance – they’ll be far more creative! Competitions. There are usually writing competitions available at any stage of the year for which students’ work can be entered (check Teachit Talk). These work very well as extension activities, as they are usually easily linked to whatever you are working on in class. Text U L8R. Choose a chapter from a novel/ scene from a play and get students to imagine a text conversation between characters about that ‘moment’. They write out the text talk – perhaps omitting the names so others can guess who is interacting. Pastiche. Get students to write a ‘missing chapter/ verse/ paragraph’ for a text in the same style as the author. This can be a very taxing activity (particularly if you’re studying Shakespeare!), but it can also easily be done in pairs or small groups if students need more support. Handouts. More able students can be given the extension task of devising revision handouts for the rest of the class on whichever topic you are addressing. This works well as on-going extension work throughout a course. Decisions. In groups, get students to come to a complex decision about something. This works best if it is grounded in a ‘real world’ scenario e.g.: a) deciding what should be done about a 13 year old who damaged property in the London riots, or b) imagining they are the new PM and outlining their top ten priorities for change.
- 2. 20 teaching ideas for stretch and challenge © www.teachit.co.uk 2013 21442 Page 2 of 2 Music, the food of love … To engage students with poetry and make it relevant, suggest the poem is the lyric and they need to find a song that would fit with the words. Those brave enough to sing it/ record it get a reward! Chop it up. Using Teachit’s whizzy tool, Choptalk, take a section of text (paragraph or stanza) and cut it up. Students have to try and piece it together considering meaning and using punctuation as a guide. Devil’s advocate debate. Set students a debate task in which they have to take a side with which they definitely disagree e.g. ‘Corporal punishment should be brought back in schools’. This also works well in mixed ability classes as weaker students can argue the other side. Spelling bee. Organise a class spelling bee. Students learn new words (and tricky words) weekly. Bring in lots of ‘Wow’ words and have groups of 5 or 6, then a semi-final and a final of the top three. Allow time to revise between rounds. Reading list. Provide a reading list around the module for any of the more able/ interested students. From A to B. Show a picture of a person or animal (could be a literary character or sportsperson) plus another ‘random’ image (like a waste bin or an orange). Students have to come up with an inventive narrative that connects the images in exactly six moves. Assessment criteria. In a class group task, more able students can be given the additional task of assessing the work done by the rest of the students. They should identify the assessment criteria and give their reasons for these decisions e.g. if the class are creating radio adverts, your stretch and challenge group could become the ‘advertising standards agency’, deciding which adverts are acceptable and why. Marking. In a possible extension to the above task, a more able group could actually do the marking for you, as this first requires the group to find the answers themselves and then apply this knowledge to a range of slightly different interpretations. Works particularly well with comprehension questions. Laminated lovelies. Have a series of interesting articles, poems or extracts laminated for students to read when they’ve finished their work. If you think they need a more structured activity you could either give them a standard structure for analysing the texts, or ask them to develop their own. Open-ended questions. Develop a selection of open-ended philosophical questions to help with students’ thinking skills e.g.: ‘Does God exist? Prove your view’, or ‘What is Literature?’. You could have these displayed in your room, or already cut up in an envelope to give to students who finish work early/ need an additional challenge.