The children wrote the most wonderful stories and for those that struggle with ideas, the story was already there in their heads they just had to write it down or record themselves saying it.īut for children to learn something deeply, it needs repetition. Using a story by educational author Pie Corbett, we acted, storyboarded, mapped out and learned the story off by heart, focusing on punctuation, vocabulary and improving work.
It was a class of English as an additional language (EAL) students in year 2. If best lesson means which lesson ensured maximum learning, then perhaps it was a literacy lesson on story writing. But it was dependent on the children's behaviour, their enthusiasm for the subject and even the weather. It looked pretty exciting to passersby and felt pretty exciting to be involved with. I decided that it was the right thing to do for that year group at that time. Some rather hilarious and enjoyable role-play ensued.ĭid they learn anything? I'm not sure. They held them up one after another to represent the lighting of beacons to warn off the Spanish Armada on the coasts of Britain. I remember taking 90 children to line up around the playground with strands of fire-coloured tissue paper. If best lesson means that lesson was most like that teaching advert which depicts a science teacher's class outside spinning balloons on their heads to represent the planets, then I'd choose a year 4 history lesson. A rule of thumb to consider using here is that if a resource takes longer to prepare than for the children to use, is it worth it? In the case of the Top Trumps and song, I can use them again for the rest of my teaching career, but I know I will keep looking to use something even better. I had dotted all the Is and crossed all the Ts and even managed to end with a 3D shape song that I wrote specifically for the class.īut I dispute that this was my best lesson because it required so much time planning and resourcing that it was followed by one of my worst literacy lessons.
There was paired work, group work, visualising 3D shapes, peer-assessment and ample time given to children to explore independently. Then I created several sets of Top Trumps-style cards of the superheroes where children had to work out the characters' vertices, faces and edges and give the shape its correct name along with an alliterative superhero name.
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