Tests!

They are part of the education system, but how much notice do students take when you go through the paper? If you did well, a lot of a review lesson is wasted. If you did really badly you either are struggling and don’t want to be reminded of your weaknesses or you didn’t revise and don’t care. That means you have a fair few disengaged students that lesson.

One solution that a colleague and myself developed for use with a C/B grade KS4 class is the independent open-book review.

Open-book
Give the marked test papers back and allow the students half the lesson to try the questions with their books. This addresses whether the issue is memory or understanding.

Independent study
Make the answer scheme available to students. I put it on our school website. The students could download it onto classroom laptops or their mobile phones (paper copies could be an option). The students re-marked the new work at their own pace and reviewed their tests.

The high fliers looked at the difficult questions, the strugglers identified where they had lost easy marks. The class were engaged with their learning and asking astute questions.

And of course, letting them use smartphones in class was an instant hit. There was a lot of positive feedback from students and I’ll be doing this again.