“Miss, look! I’ve given Curley’s wife sausage curls like in the book!” I looked around the room, admiring how hard Year 11 were working on their Play-Doh models of one of the characters in Of Mice and Men.

“Do you like how I used red to symbolise danger and sexuality, Miss?” Every pupil was engaged, their fingers delicately moulding little mules and ostrich feathers out of the dough, referring back to the passage of text I had marked up for them.

What an excellent lesson, I told myself. They’d have no problem remembering quotations for Curley’s wife by the time their English exam rolled around.

Wrong.

A week later, I set the class an exam question on the character in question, hoping they’d be able to draw on the memory of their Play-Doh sculptures to recall key quotations. The work I received back was flimsy at best, with misremembered quotations or none at all. The analysis was poor and lacking substance.

I couldn’t understand it. I’d planned for everything that I’d been told an “outstanding” lesson contained: engagement and exploration. I’d even got them to peer-assess each other’s figurines at the end of the lesson. What had gone wrong?

Many experienced classroom practitioners are probably raising an eyebrow in disbelief at my naivety right now. These days, I would be, too.

However, back then, I was a newly qualified teacher and I spent a long time mulling the problem over. I taught a couple more Play-Doh lessons, each stimulating and fun, yet again not leading to the progress I had envisaged.

So, I decided to throw what I’d learned on my PGCE course out of the window and change tack. I ditched the Play-Doh, instead drilling students with quotations. This involved modelling of a very different sort: reading the quotation aloud to students and having them repeat it back exactly as I had said it. By doing this, I was able to give immediate feedback on their pronunciation and tone.

The approach, named “call and response” by Doug Lemov in Teach Like a Champion, still allowed for maximum student engagement but with benefits that far outweighed the Play-Doh method.

By keeping quotation drills short (ideally five minutes or so), using them as part of a routine in every lesson and relaying the expectation that everyone participated in the response part, I was able to ensure that all my students were getting the same diet of quotations and the same opportunities to speak them aloud.

Over time, I found that students were able to recall the quotes much more quickly when asked. The repetition of key quotations on a regular basis ensured that they were always being brought back into students’ working memories, thus increasing their storage strength and the likelihood of actually being able to remember them come exam season.

Were those lessons as fun as sculpting “sausage curls” out of Play-Doh? Possibly not. Were they a whole lot more useful to my students? Absolutely.

Laura Tsabet is director of continuing professional development and initial teacher training at a school in Bournemouth

This article originally appeared in the 29 January 2021 issue under the headline “Play-Doh does not a model lesson make…”