Plenaries

Plenaries to check learning can be carried out in many different ways. It should be an opportunity for students to reflect on their learning and for you to evaluate the effectiveness of the lesson. It is an opportunity for you to develop effective question and answer techniques in an imaginative, challenging way. Plenaries should not only take place at the end of the lesson. You should use mini plenaries throughout as a way of assessing knowledge and understanding, demonstrating progress, identifying where there are misconceptions in order to intervene and adapt your lesson plan, reminding students what they need to be doing and bringing students with low concentration spans back on to task.

In your final plenary you should refer back to the learning intention and success criteria and select appropriate strategies to assess what the students have learnt and achieved.

This is important because:

Effective learning only takes place when we have time to reflect on what we have done

Effective teachers make students feel clever and valued and that they can be successful

Effective teachers give relevance to the work of the student and prepare them for the next lesson and new learning

The best thing you can do for your colleagues is to have your students leaving your room feeling that they have achieved, because that means that the job for their next teacher is so much easier.

Examples of plenary strategies and techniques:

Progress line Iceberg

Traffic light activities ‘What did I learn? How did I learn it?’

Progress ladders ‘Phone a friend’

‘For and Against’ tasks Keyword bingo

Fist of 5 Mini whiteboard tasks

Rank ordering Wingdings

Exit tickets Question Dice/Cubes