year 12/13 intervention

[ginny84]

Hi,

Anyone teach year 12 and 13? We've just had mocks and some have not done as well as expected (a few surprises but mostly the year 12's are due to a lack of revision). Now the results are in our heads of year/ department are starting to talk about the intervention to put in place. It all just seems to be more stuff for us as teachers to do... lunchtime sessions, marking extra past papers, chasing pupils. Does anyone do anything that is more student focused that works? I want to do all I can to help the students but I teach 9 exam groups (including ks4, two subjects), I already give up loads of time outside the lessons for revision and the like.

Thanks!

I'm trying to think of ideas for this at the moment, especially strategies that don't create extra work for me or the other KS5 teachers. Some ideas I've had...

1. Add supervised study periods to their timetable - they work in your room for an extra hour a week in one of their frees, on your subject, doing extra revision. You are on hand to answer queries.
2. Set a specific revision task for them each week on top of their weekly homework, e.g. create revision notes on topic x. Then you just check they've done it, but don't mark it.
3. Get them to self assess against the topic checklist then make a revision plan based on areas of weakness. You check the plan and see their revision resources each week.
4. Maybe pair up the Y12s with a Y13 resitting the same unit? Paired revision each week? They report back to you.
5. Set exam Qs then they swap and another student marks it with feedback - you provide the Q then the markscheme.
6. Look online for revision workbooks - I found one today for a key part of our syllabus. Get these photocopied and set a certain number of pages per week.

All of these ideas rely on you just giving students ideas on what they can do to revise, but don't require you to mark anything. Of course with this there is no guarantee that they are actually remembering or understanding it..
But having said all that, guess what I'm doing.... giving up an hour a week to teach an extra support session for those who are underachieving!
So, I'd love to hear some creative ideas from other teachers!

We pair up kids who bombed out with kids who got As for a half hour a week study session. The kids who bombed out need to identify topics to work each week and bring questions for the other kid to help with.

So the one who failed gets help, and the one who did well gets to quickly refresh their knowledge in ongoing revision which will lessen their workload in June.

Keep these ideas coming!

Wow, thanks, loads of great ideas!

At the moment we have a teacher timetabled to run a support session after school, this is a twilight with an extra free in the week in his timetable. Also we are taking it in turns to run a lunchtime drop in session. Plus for our resit students we set up a revision pack with questions to do each week. Though they are supposed to hand these in and get them marked. I also have 3 A2 students sit with me in one of my frees (they are free too) to do extra work, they generally get on with it and I do my own work but help them if needed.

Love the ideas of more pupils supporting other pupils. I have just put my groups into a seating plan to allow for the stronger ones to support the weaker ones. Working well so far. noblegiraffe is it a timetabled slot they have for their support session? Do the kids who did well not resent it a little?

kitchengirl thanks for the great list. Going to try the setting of extra homework revision notes. We do give them a revision booklet with notes in but sometimes I feel we give them too much, I'd sooner them create their own so that its sinking in slowly. Going to set some exam questions and do the swap marking as well. The group I'm thinking need the most intervention I see 5 times over 2 weeks (2 week timetable). I'm going to use the every other Mon lesson to keep the revision of the first unit going. Will set a couple of exam questions, prob a mix of topics in the group and then swap them round to mark for the starter the following fortnight.

I wanted to bump this up to see if anyone else had any further ideas. Another that I was given is to set students homework of planning a 10 minute plenary on an aspect from earlier in the course (e.g. for me that would be unit 1 from the Autumn term where as we are now onto unit 2). Then the following week they deliver their plenary. So hopefully they will have benefitted from having to create the plenary, the rest of the class take part and therefore review the topic and you benefit from having less homework to mark and less plenaries to plan! Sounds perfect..... I have yet to try this though.

ginny it's a lunchtime slot, although if the kids wanted to rearrange for a mutual free period we wouldn't stop them. The kids who do well who tutor are sold it as an opportunity to do ongoing revision and improve their own knowledge. A lot are happy to do it anyway as they are a nice bunch of kids. UCAS applications have already gone off but it's also something that could be mentioned at uni interviews.