This is a fantastic lesson that I’ve used many times as part of a skill-based curriculum. The topic here is ‘Time’ and this lesson takes students on a journey through time and space, through the ‘Cosmic Calendar’. This topic and the clips included are super engaging and thought-provoking. I’ve had some brilliant lessons following this structure (including tricky classes!) The lesson begins with a clip and brief discussion, relating to how we (the average person) spends our time - e.g. 1 of every 5 minutes on social media. Eeeeek! Students are then given questions for the quiz ahead and have a few moments to look at this as a team - the idea is that they work together to note down and recall specific pieces of information… but I don’t tell them this! We then watch a clip - link included - of Neil DeGrasse Tyson presenting ‘The Cosmic Calendar’ as students jot down notes. Following this, there’s the quiz which they answer in teams. We then peer assess answers, before uncovering how the winning teams managed to remember the info (this is where we discuss team strategies!) After a little discussion - lots of opportunities for SMSC - we have an independent sketching plenary which allows students to demonstrate understanding of this complex concept at its base level. I’ve taught this lesson as a single hour with year 7 students, but I’ve also extended it as a teamwork project in two or three lessons, with students presenting their own alternative version of the Cosmic Calendar. It’s easy to differentiate as low down as year 5 students and as high as year 11, with only a few tweaks! Whether your goal is to learn about Science, Time and Space; to build up note-taking skills in Literacy; or to work on teamwork/retention skills, this lesson is an engaging way of doing them all.

This is a lesson that I created for all year 7 teachers upon our first meeting with students - it’s a great project to try out with KS2 or KS3 pupils. It will help you to really see who they are, how they think, what their team skills and confidence are like, across different subjects. In a nutshell: there’s a mix of speaking and listening tasks, amidst the introduction of P.M.I (plus, minus and interesting.) At the beginning of the lesson, we model a task, via the example: ‘what if money grew up on trees?’ - Pupils have to really consider the realistic positive, negative and interesting outcomes. This isn’t so much about getting the ‘right’ answers (though one laptop or ipad per group will certainly help with research), but more about engaging students in thought-provoking, curiosity-based discussion. The P.M.I topics here bring up some really interesting ideas and debate, whilst students develop their teamwork, research and presentation skills too. Included here is: ppt. slides for the full lesson, slides to hand out to groups (different scenarios for each group), a blank P.M.I grid to support note-taking and group research/ideas, an assessment grid to judge presentations and a full walkthrough of the lesson.