Starter
As usual, on the board as they came in. My goal here - productive panic. Students had become a little overconfident in how prepared they are for the exam, so I needed them to feel what it would be like if the exam was tomorrow, in the panic zone.
We then reflected on feelings: too hard, panic, didn't know what a frustum was etc. This was the motivation for the lesson, they now knew why it was that we needed to revisit the IMCA model that we'd started the year with.
IMCA Model
Next they were given the template below, same question but guiding them through each aspect of IMCA. After a discussion with the English dept, some comprehension style questions were given for Information.
Methods were given to choose from, with the idea of there being some red herrings in, e.g. if the question was about circumference, area was also an option.
- PAUSE -
Students were only allowed to answer these first 2 sections, and this was done in silence. Only at this point were they allowed to collaborate to do the calculations, though most chose to carry on independently.
Here we really emphasised that before writing the answer, they should revisit the "what is the question" in the information section to make sure they were actually answering it!
Reflection
Pupils now felt more confident again, they were back in their comfort zone. I asked for feedback on the model, to which I had a fantastic response:
"I feel really confident answering these questions when there is guidance, but in an exam I could never think of this myself."
This led neatly on into the second phase... creating the scaffolding.
Phase 2
Students worked in pairs on an unseen problem (each pair had a different problem) to create scaffolding similar to what I had given them for the first phase. This enabled them to really think about what the important information was so they could ask questions about it. They were also great at being mean and choosing really similar topics for the methods section which weren't quite right!
Phase 3
Quick task, which involved swapping with another pair, and using their scaffolding for guidance.
Plenary
We agreed that they would become better at coming up with the questions if they had more practice, so that's exactly what we'll do! We also agreed that the end goal was for the template to become internal, so they were self questioning rather than peer questioning.
Resources can be found here.
