Strategic Thinking Plenaries or Starters

Purpose: To gauge student progress and to generate enthusiasm for a topic by using personal reflection to demonstrate overtly to students how they have benefited from a learning task

Why would I want to use this resource?

This is great tool for introducing a topic.

The slides are constructed to reveal explicitly to students how their learning is developing through the practice of different skills. If pupils are taught to perceive the connection between their progression and their unique learning style, they are likely to engage more deeply with the learning context and curriculum. Thus, using a purposeful teaching tool like “Strategic Thinking Plenaries and Starters” exposes students to the benefits of each topic/lesson.

My suggestion is that the teacher use one slide at the end of each lesson (or at the end of every second lesson if they see a class more than 3 times a week) for the first two weeks of a new topic to demonstrate explicitly to students the thinking skills they will be developing as the content is taught. Also, a slide could be used as a mini plenary in the middle of a lesson (or as a consolidating task at the end of the starter) when the teacher needs to show clearly that the students have benefited from the activities the teacher has facilitated. In this sense, a teacher could use more than one slide in any lesson

What is the Purpose of this Resource?

This set of slides is based on strategic thinking skills using the acronym RESPECT, which itself is a new perspective that improves the quality of academic dialogue between teachers and pupils. It also empowers students to participate in the topic/lesson by strengthening communication across the curriculum.

It is inspired by the paradigm of “Learning to Learn”. Thus, the focus is placed not on students simply doing something because a teacher tells them to; it’s built on creating lifelong, enthusiastic learners who want to commit to scholarship in the classroom.

The emphasis is on refining the classroom ethos and linking life at school to the world of work ( i.e. the connection between soft skills and curriculum content)

Overall, RESPECT (see below) is a tool that enriches the learning experience.

The RESPECT acronym means:

R - resilience
E - expectations
S – scanning
P - pace
E – entrepreneurial
C – collaboration
T – three mistakes a day or you’re not trying