TEACHING & LEARNING
Castles
Here are a few tried and tested ideas from the Humanities department. The ideas discussed have been observed in lesson observations and all resources have also been added for your use.
The challenge for this lesson was to make a lesson that was both engaging, challenging and with a degree of independence, as well as ensuring it was accessible for this very low ability group. I used ideas from the Teaching and Learning forum as inspiration (thanks Lucy and Natalie) and decided that a lesson with a 'mission' and a carousel of learning stations would help to sustain engagement.
The pupils' task was that as William the Conqueror's master castle builder, they had to design the perfect castle for him. Pupils worked in small differentiated pairs/groups and moved around the room to different learning stations, each with a castle related activity to develop their understanding. Due to low literacy levels the written materials were kept to minimum and the learning stations were made as visual and interactive as possible. Activities included video clips, model catapult, odd one out, card sort, map work and model castle evaluation.
Pupils then used their learning to design their perfect castle. The pupils were very engaged and on task, moreso than I have seen them before! The plenary was pupils presenting and describing the features of their design to 'William' AKA me with a crown on.
The lesson went so well that I changed my plans for the subsequent lessons and had pupils build their castle designs.
By Katy Bentley