An article by Richard James Rogers (Author of The Quick Guide to Classroom Management and The Power of Praise: Empowering Students Through Positive Feedback).
Illustrated by Sutthiya Lertyongphati
Accompanying video:
Preparing resources for students can be a really massive job: especially when you have the responsibility of getting kids ready for external exams.
They’ll need:
- Presentations (usually a series of PowerPoints)
- Worksheets
- Homework
- Exam-style questions
- Practical activities (for Science, D.T. and other practical subjects)
- Learning activities along the way to make things ‘fun’ and ‘engaging’.
In the olden days I used to source a ton of stuff from the web and make some stuff from scratch. The problems this caused were as follows:
- An inconsistent teaching method/approach for each topic
- Inconsistent format and detail of resources (some PPTs were excellent. others only skimmed the surface of the topic)
- Inconsistent direction and focus of the class (i.e. the ‘road ahead’)
Kids need to be very clear about what they need to learn for their exams, and in what order/topic sequence. So please sit back and relax as I share my consistency-generating tips for exam-level students.
Share the syllabus with the students on day one
This will really help to make the ‘road ahead’ clear. Some teachers like to make a ‘kid friendly’ version of the syllabus – using language that is more easily understandable. In my experience, however, I find that this isn’t generally necessary – syllabuses tend to be clear enough.
In addition to sharing the syllabus, map out the sequence of topics you will teach for the year ahead and share this with your students too. Some more able and hard-working kids will definitely read ahead, and it’ll help prepare your students for end-of-unit tests too.
Keep the format and detail of all PPTs the same
I realized the importance of this when I was lucky enough to find Merinda Sautel’s amazing IB Chemistry PPTs on the internet.
Check them out if you want to really understand the importance of this aspect of Curriculum Clarity – her PPTs follow the same format and layout for each topic and are all detailed enough so that a complete course is created.
IB Chemistry is split into distinct topics that follow the Course Guide – there’s a PPT at Mindy Sautel’s site for topics 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 3.2, etc. Everything is sequenced and clear.
Keep homework and questions consistent and linked to the syllabus
Maybe your syllabus is split into topics A,B,C and D with subtopics for each section. Do you have exam-style questions for topics A1, A2, A3, etc?
Organizing your questions by topic in this way will really build-up the subject knowledge that your students need to pass the final exam.
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