One of the most useful books that I’ve read in the last few years for enhancing the instruction in my classroom is Powerful Teaching by Pooja Agarwal and Patrice Bain.
I haven’t used everything from the book yet, but it’s likely you’ll recognise and have tried some of it before too.
I enjoyed it so much I thought I would share with you a few of the highly usable takeaways and a few resources (scroll down) made for IBDP Biology with much of the book in mind – revision time is here and so these might be useful for your students as the exams approach.
Brain Dumping:
I love this one. Especially when we do it on the desks (and make a lovely mess) with chalk pens.
Practicing and rehearsing finding information in our brains is incredibly important, brain dumping helps with that.
To get the most out of this in a classroom:
- Pour everything out of your brain onto the desk – don’t worry about it being pretty.
- Read through, try to stimulate some connections.
- Visit someone else’s desk and look what they have done, add to it if possible (using a different desk pen colour). You can visit another couple of desks…
- Go back to your own, add in things that you missed and think about what other people have added to it.
To get the most out of this at home:
- Pour everything out of your brain onto a sheet of plain paper – again, don’t worry about it being pretty.
- Read through, try to stimulate some connections.
- Take your time, there is no rush, this is about what is in your head, not how fast you can get it out.
- Use your notes, specification and resources to add to your page with a different colour pen.
Spaced Retrieval:
Why is it important? It allows us to assess what is held well in our brain and find the information that we need to secure a little better – and then it helps us to think about and create the steps needed to secure the knowledge a little better! It allows us to reflect in real time. This isn’t new, and those teaching science and involved in Cog Sci Sci will have likely used Adam’s Retrieval Roulette which uses the same concept.
I use this in my planning ALL THE TIME!
These sheets are for homework/revision, students have the option to complete them on their iPad or on paper. I find it useful to bulk plan in general and so having Google Slides of this planned out for the students is helpful.
In Practice: Revision
Using the above I put together a 28 day program of questions for students to do 15 minutes of Biology per day.
Each day consists of 5 MCQ’s, 1 short and 1 long answer question.
I also really loved the concept of Retrieve-Taking which is outlined in the book. This is done rather than traditional note taking, I’ve been trying it with a Grade 11 class. Ensuring that students are really paying attention and not attempting to multi-task whilst I’m explaining a concept is great. That being said, I try to limit note taking in general and try to ensure that tasks and sheets are made to cover what students need to walk out of the lesson with.
Using information on Interleaving and Metacognition from the book I quickly put together some question packs for the SL and HL course (there are no mark schemes and the options aren’t included).
Please feel free to download and share with your students and any other IB Biology teachers that may find them useful.
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