This guide explains how you can select students at ‘random’ to answer questions or complete tasks and also match abilities of learners to the tasks or questions. It is a really effective way of differentiating tasks and questions. It offers more flexible ways of selecting names than purely random name generators.

This activity allows students to indicate their perceptions on a particular question. The question might be a debate e.g. ‘Should we build more nuclear power stations?’, ‘Is cloning a good idea?’ or ‘Should social media be banned?’. To use the cards, print and laminate the cards. Lay the cards out along a line and ask the students to stand near the card that represents how strongly they agree (not on the card due to risk of slipping). Then ask them to justify their reasoning. This works really well when carried out before and after a debate. Designed for use in science, these also have use in other subjects such as Citizenship, PSHE and RE. Inspired by an activity at the NCT.

This resource is a collection of 6 slightly different see-saw balances that can be used with learners to help them develop the skills to weigh up an argument. The idea is that students will list reasons on both side of an argument (e.g. Should we have Nuclear Power?). They then use this to help make a decision. The scoring column on some sheets allows learners to score each argument out of a maximum of say 3. Add the scores on each side to see which has the stronger argument. This also includes phrases to support a more detailed conclusion. This was inspired by 21st Century Science.