Teach Primary Issue 19.5

F EATURE S S CHOO L T R I P S www.teachwire.net | 21 Information swap Ask children to bullet point the key things they remember. Once they have a few elements written down, they can start the information swap. Moving around the room, pupils will join into pairs, each giving and receiving one piece of knowledge based on what they’ve learnt on the trip. Once their new fact is written down, they go onto the next person. Within a short time, they should have been able to swap information with five to 10 people, meaning, hopefully, five to 10 new pieces of information. Clarify the lists Make a class list of all the facts shared. This will allow you to make sure everyone has the same information, and for you to correct any mistakes in understanding. Have this list displayed on your smart board. Share out the facts to pairs or small groups. Words to images Next, using modelling clay or playdoh, ask pupils to show their assigned piece of information visually. Give children five to 10 minutes to create their playdoh infographics, then recap their fact using only what they have made. As they recap, ask them what in their infographics communicates each fact. For example, if one element is that Romans came to Britain in 55BC, ask how their image shows this. A good variation is a ‘facts relay’. Everyone has the same facts. Once the infographics are completed, one group starts to communicate the information back to the group. Each time an element is forgotten or is incorrect, another group can pick up the ‘baton’. Whichever group is communicating the last of the facts wins the task. Music to my ears The musical world is awash with factual songs; from Hamilton to Six and Epic , the power of music to support information retention is clear. In this activity, give each pair or group part of the learning from the trip. Ask them to pick a well-known tune, and write lyrics to match, explaining the information that they need to include. We are not looking for whole show tunes, but instead perhaps four to six lines that can be easily remembered. Get them to teach their song to the group. You can put the lyrics up on the board, and as long as everyone knows the tune, the rest of the class should be able to pick it up easily. A variation of this is to pick one song, and ask each group to fit their facts to either a verse or chorus, according to the order the facts need to be in. When pieced together, you have a song covering all the key elements you want your group to remember. However you choose to do it, just make sure you always recap, cementing a valuable off-site experience into long-term educational gain. TP A day to REMEMBER Hannah Day is a teacher in the West Midlands with a specialism in art and design. HANNAH DAY Make sure learning outside the classroom doesn’t stay there, and extend experiences with six simple steps Y ou know the drill: plan the trip, go on the trip, forget the trip. Or at least that’s how it so often feels. But how do you make sure learning outside of the classroom can be used once you’re back inside the school gates? Try these simple memory-embedding techniques to make sure your time away creates a lasting impression. Memory games Research suggests that in order for information to be embedded in the long term it needs to be revisited several times. A break between information learnt and information retrieved can make it harder to remember. This means that pupils need to do more cognitive work to re-access information. This harder work means stronger neuropathways, and an increased likelihood of the information being remembered in the longer term. This has led to ideas such as the 1-3-5-7 rule. Simply put, you revisit information on the day, then on the third, fifth and seventh days after the initial learning. If this feels like too much time to invest, then simplify it. A recap on the day and then a few days later can be a great way to get started. The following memory-enhancing approaches can help ingrain learning into long-term storage: