House Style (and How Teachers Can Develop One)

Variety is the spice of life and all that. But trust is vital when building impactful teacher-student dynamics in your classroom. And you gain trust from regularity and routine...

So with that in mind, here are a couple of plenaries that could become ‘go-to’…

House Activities

There are so many variations of starters and plenaries out there. If you can’t find one that suits your specific purpose, you’ll likely add to the catalogue by inventing your own! That’s fine, of course, but do consider that starters and plenaries are usually diagnostic in purpose; they all share the same aim of assessing pupils’ progress. So, the number of variations that exist is perhaps a little unnecessary. A quick three-question quiz is most often all that is required

Establishing a house style by settling on two or three ‘go to’ starter/plenary activities that work for you and your pupils is a far better plan than constantly striving to add to your repertoire. This helps you because it takes away what could quickly become a debilitating decision-making process, and it helps your pupils because they enjoy the familiarity and routine you are embedding.

Aside from quick quizzes, here’s a couple I use on a regular basis:

321:

Add this to your box of go-to plenaries:

• Firstly, pupils write a summary of their learning in 3 sentences.

• Next, they write a summary of their learning in just 2 words. (Forcing them to think of two words that would best trigger their recall of the topic)

• Finally, they write a summary in just 1 sentence. (A nice cognitive trick, this: allowing them to flesh out their two words; with a constrict of succinctness still in place).

Run this activity a couple of times and before you know it, you’ll only need to shout out 321 and your pupils will be away. A Ted Rogers finger gesture is optional (apologies for the dated cultural reference here - for the record, I only just make this one myself).

A nice companion starter is achieved by beginning the next lesson by shouting out a number from 1 to 3 and asking pupils to remember their corresponding words or sentence from the end of the previous lesson. 

Acrostic Name Challenge:

Another consolidating exercise - useful at either end of a lesson - is to ask pupils to write their name vertically down their margin. Pupils then use the letters to structure a piece of summative text about their previous learning. 

So, if Jon had just been taught about paragraphs, he might write:

Join sentences

On similar topics in to

Nice, readable chunks. 

Or, if Mary had been taught about volcanoes in her geography lesson, she might write:

Margins in the earth’s surface cause volcanoes.

A volcano is formed when two crustal plates move together or apart.

Rising magma fills the gap between them.

You could say a volcano is basically an exploding mountain.

Whereas Mary’s classmate Ellie could write:

Earth’s crust is

Living.

Live volcanoes occur when crustal plates move towards each other.

In doing so they force magma to rise.

Exploding molten rock bursts out of the gap. 

The process of deconstructing knowledge and then reassembling to fit the arbitrary parameters of their name encourages active retrieval, in addition to providing a sometimes-tricky literacy challenge to pupils. It is worth remembering that the partaking in the cognitive challenge of this exercise is more important than whether they complete a satisfying acrostic. 

Undeniably, it takes a couple of try-outs to embed. But that’s the beauty of committing to a routine - and sticking with it pays off. This one is particularly rewarding because, if nothing else, you can usually rely on students to remember their own name. Which is always a good start.