Quiz Shows in class – trivia or truly useful?
The release of Sir Alan Steer’s report into behaviour in schools has sparked debate on two counts.
Firstly, many teachers really do not agree that behavioural standards in school are improving. It’s probably impossible to generalise, but at least in some schools behaviour has got worse.
Secondly, there has been some derision at the idea of improving behaviour using ‘quiz show’ style games, such as Who Wants to be a Millionaire lessons. At Teachable we believe this is already a popular strategy with teachers across the country, judging from our lesson downloads, and could be extended to liven up lessons everywhere.
The most disruptive children will always need some (metaphorical) ‘stick’, but we believe that engaging lessons are a crucial ‘carrot’ the encourage better behaviour.
Many of the examples Sir Alan uses in his report have already been put into practice by Teachable contributors:
Students play ‘word bingo’. Words in English
are numbered on the board. Students have
a grid of random numbers on paper. The
teacher speaks the words in French and the
students mark them off on their grids. The
winner is the first with a ‘full house’.
pupils travel across a grid containing initial letters to answers.
And our favourite idea, demonstrated with science concepts, doesn’t need digital resources at all – just post-it notes!
Students are studying ‘refraction and colour’.
Each student sticks an unseen word onto their
forehead, for example dispersion, spectrum,
dye, filter, optical fibre. They have to ask a
partner questions in order to work out what
the word is.
We hope teachers everywhere can boost enthusiasm for their subjects by using these simple, adaptable resources. Teachable.net already has over 200 teachers who have downloaded Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and nearly 1,000 teachers who have made use of our free and exclusive Bubblesplat resource.
Our most recent contribution was a series of whiteboard quizzes based on Battleships, Frogger and that classic 80s quiz show, Bullseye. We encourage teachers to contribute their best examples of fun and interactive lessons, and our collection of 3,000+ files is growing daily.
It is also quite possible to miss, within the 200 page tome of Sir Alan’s report (where ‘achievement’ and ‘development’ are mentioned over 60 times each), that there are some good and practical ideas for starters – both subject specific and general. You can download the 5 page excerpt by clicking on the icon.
