Secondary Technology - Revision Games

When it comes to exams, I often find that a lot of my pupils struggle to revise for Design & Technology, finding their practical experiences hard to associate it with written exams! In lessons, they enjoy the practical side of the subject but often find sitting down and concentrating without distracting each other a challenge. I have developed several basic revision games to use with my pupils as a "reward" for revising quietly for 10 minutes. These often work as great starters to lessons especially if the pupils are in a particularly "unsettled" mood!

1. "Confidence". Pupils sit and revise a certain subject (of their choice) in silence for 10 minutes. I often put a countdown clock on the board to stop them asking how long is left! Once the time is up the pupils have to stand in a circle around a desk. The idea of the game is that the pupils have to recite some of the information they have just learnt. I often kick the game off by asking the pupil to my left a question on what they have just been revising, e.g. name a type of hardwood. That pupil then has to decide if they can name a hardwood. If they can they say, for instance, "I can name two types of hardwood". The pupil to their left then has to decide if they can name three types of hardwood and so on. However, if a pupil is not looking very confident about their statement, e.g. "I can name seven types of hardwood" then the next pupil can "call" them on their statement and the pupil who has been called has to recite the seven types of hardwood. If they correctly recite what they have been "called" on they get a prize if not the person who "called" gets to recite the correct answer.
   
   Admittedly from my description the game does sound quite complicated but it's not and the pupils get the hang of it quite quickly after a few goes. The game involves all the pupils as they never know when they are going to be "called" so it ensures that they are all thinking of the answer to the question rather than just sitting in their seats and nodding off when you just fire questions out to pupils in the class!
   
   
2. Technology Word Association game. This game improves pupils' subject knowledge and is a useful game when it comes to revising. Pupils are given 5 minutes to revise a certain subject. Again I then get them to stand in a circle around a desk. I usually then fire off a word to one of the pupils about what they have just been revising. E.g. hardwood. The pupil I point at then has to say a related word. e.g. oak and at the same time point to another pupil in the circle. That pupil then needs to say a related word and point to someone else. If one of the pupils can't think of a word or hesitates, then they are "out" and have to sit down. The winner is the pupil left standing at the end of the game. If you have a large group it might be an idea to hand out a prize as you go rather than getting the loser to sit down. This game also works well as a lesson plenary and could be based on the lesson's key words.
   
   
3. Picture, word and description matching exercise game. This game is simple. Pupils have to revise a certain topic for 10 minutes then they are given a set of cards (you'll have had to make these in advance!). You can make these quite basic - you'll need a set of pictures associated to the topic that the pupils are revising (i.e an LED), a set of words (to match the pictures) and a set of matching descriptions, which should all be shuffled up. The pupils then need to match up the set of cards again! I find this game works best if the pupils work in teams of 2 or 3, with the prize going to the team that gets all the answers right first (though if they submit an incorrect set of answers they are disqualified from the prize to stop students just guessing!) This activity works really well to encourage peer assessment and also group discussion.

James Randall
Technology Teacher, Barking Abbey High School

Secondary Technology - Sustainability

Introducing Sustainability at Key Stage 3

As a Technology teacher, one of the areas that I have discovered my GCSE students find particularly challenging to get their heads around is the new sustainable GCSE paper. The trouble often is that the idea of ‘sustainability’ and being environmentally conscious as a designer is one that the pupils are learning from fresh at GCSE. Students have often never had any practice with sustainable products and projects lower down the school and therefore struggle with even the basic subject knowledge when preparing for the exam.

I’ve come up with a solution which I began with my Key Stage 3 students, "drip feeding" them sustainable projects and ideas from when they join the school in Year 7 all the way through to when they are taking their GCSE exam. I’ve suggested some of the ways that I‘ve developed this theme with my own Key Stage 3 classes below, but there are no doubt countless more ways that projects can be adapted to focus on sustainability, depending on your resources and individual classes!

1. Recycling Theory - introduce the pupils to recycling from Year 7. Although more families are recycling at home, particularly where local councils provide separate recycling bins or collections, there are always a great number of pupils who have never actively engaged with recycling before. One of the simplest ways to introduce this concept is through recycling bins in the classroom. However, in my workshop there are not only specific bins for paper and card but also for various types of materials as well - we have plastic, metal and wood bins where off cuts and waste can be separated. We’ll then regularly go through these bins and ‘save’ any of the pieces to be used for teacher demonstrations etc. By getting pupils to actively sort through different materials and see how they can be re-purposed in the classroom, they can start to recognise that ‘one man’s trash is another man’s treasure’!
   
   
2. Projects using recycled materials. Where possible we also encourage students to think about recycling in their individual projects. A short Year 8 project I developed was a flashing badge project. The pupils cut, shaped and glued waste bits of plastic into a badge, drilled holes in it and attached a flashing badge unit. The pupils found this really fun – coming up with some extremely creative ideas from a variety of plastic waste, including badges shaped like cats, cars and even a pizza! The project was a really useful way of re-enforcing the idea of transforming recycled waste into usable products and challenged the class to approach their designs from a different direction.
   
   
3. Projects that make use of sustainable resources. One of the best sustainability projects I have seen in action is ‘The Windmill Project’. Pupils are given a fan (the source of the wind) and a hub connected to an electric motor. The electric motor is connected to volt meter to measure the electricity generated. Pupils then have to develop the best blades they can to generate the most amount of electricity. Pupils can vary the size and shape of the blades as well as the number of blades. I have found that it is best to get the pupils to work in teams, as this allows them to bounce ideas off each other and to (hopefully) collaboratively develop better products! I usually give a prize to the team that generates the most amount of electricity. This can also segue quite neatly into a discussion of other sustainable energy sources with the pupils.

As I mentioned, these are just a few suggestions to approach this topic but I’ve found them to be really effective.  Hopefully, this preparation will have ensured students have passively absorbed a lot more knowledge on the subject than they’ve even realised (always the trick when teaching…) and will find preparing for and sitting the GCSE exam a much less daunting experience!

James Randall
Design & Technology Teacher, Barking Abbey School