A History session, John is talking about signposting progress and promises we will all have something we can slot into our lessons straight away. There is certainly a good booklet of stuff to take away.

Make you lessons ring: Relevant, Interesting, Naughty, Giggle.

Starters, plenaries and mini-plenaries are the order of the day. Lots of ideas presented in a history context, backed up with examples of how they have worked in John’s classroom. I especially like the idea of putting up a picture and asking students to predict what the people in it are thinking. We also have a look at some 12 sided dice: thrown a 6? Then summarise the lesson in 6 words. Or use an alphabet dice and challenge to find 5 words beginning with that letter.

John also reminds me of how much I love Storycubes and how I must use them more often. He suggests getting students to throw one of the action cubes at the start of the lesson and then they have to include that in their work at some point during the lesson. He suggests downloading the app so this can be done on the whiteboard.

We look at word clouds and getting students to create their own, picking a shape for summarising the topic and identifying the most important words before starting to construct it, so they can write those ones bigger.

Extend an A-Z activity using a bingo card – pick their top 9 words that summarise the learning for them and put them on a bingo card. Teacher selects first letters and when a student calls house, they have to explain why their words are important.

Shopping! You have £8 to spend in the history shop: create a list and they have to buy factors. eg, what was important to getting the liberal reforms passed. This is a way of creating an essay plan without them really noticing.

Learning grids: 12 images, 12 sided dice – throw two numbers, now explain the link between those two pictures. We get to throw our own dice and have a go! Dice to take away too. Winner.

John finishes by talking about effective feedback. He sticks “good progress” stickers in books and students have to fill them in to explain why (this would make a fantastic addition to scaffolded marking). Students can become “learning spies” too, going and sticking their own in their peers’ books.