My Favourite Teaching and Learning Strategy

This is one of my favourite teaching and learning strategies. It is commonly referred to in the teaching profession as 'marketplace'. Even when I was studying at GCSE and A-Level (yes, all them years ago!) our teacher would use these strategies for complex theories or key studies.

It can be done as an individual task or in pairs/groups. In my Psychology A-Level class, I use this as an individual task as I only have five students. The reason it becomes so effective is that it uses all of the concepts in Bloom's Taxonomy to promote higher levels of thinking among students. Geoff Petty (2012) also recommends this strategy, particularly in post-compulsory education (age 14+), because of this promotion of critical thinking.

Setting The Stall

This strategy can be used either as a consolidation of new information learned or as an introduction to a new theory/topic that students can research first.
It's important that for this strategy:
- it is relevant to the class
- students are given clear guidance (e.g you could tell them to explain only using pictures or have a word limit.)
- used as an assessment tool and not focus on the creative design (students are learning psychology, not art).

For my classes, I tend to use it as an assessment of understanding. Once students have learned about a topic, not only do I get them to produce a piece of work but I also get them to explain their ideas to other students. It works well for more difficult topics such as the structure of the neuron.

An Extension
So now that students have designed their beautiful posters, it now needs a purpose. This can be taken anywhere you like! I tend to give students a couple of exam-style questions using trigger words:
Identify
Describe
Explain
Evaluate

You can set the questions yourself or even get the students to create these types of questions (I would only recommend this for 'higher achievers' to incorporate differentiation into your lessons).

By the end of the process, another student should be able to look at that piece of work and be able to answer the questions that the student has set.

You can see some of my students work linked to this post. Some of the designs are incredible and explain detailed concepts and studies. There is also an example of an essay plan which a student has created which fits the criteria of the Edexcel IAL AO1 and AO2.

* Apologies - Some of the information is not very clear due to scanning the image *

Image 1 - Explaining infradian rhythms (as a part of biological rhythms).
Image 2 & 3 - Brendgen et al, (2015). An outline of the study and also a sample essay plan including A01 & A03 points.
Image 4 - Structure of a neuron.

Credit goes to my Y12 Psychology students who have displayed great enthusiasm and attention to detail.