@biologyprofe

Click here to see other posts in this series:
The background context
Part 1 of how I sequence my lessons (time and interleaving)
Part 2 of how I sequence my lessons (lesson types in the sequence)
Part 3 of how I sequence my lessons (Guided application and linking knowledge)
Part 4 (this page)

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A lesson for practising application of knowledge

So, if you have read the other parts, we have so far been following a scheme such as this example:

I have implicitly taught new knowledge using well planned explanations. The students have then practised this knowledge to help pass it to the long term memory (type A lessons). The students have then done some elaboration to begin linking knowledge and identify gaps that could have prevented them from linking. Finally they have been carrying out my "guided application" questions to help them realise how their knowledge can be applied to different contexts (type B lessons). Now its time for the next step; practising applying that knowledge without the scaffolds.

It is not worth carrying out this lesson until the students are ready. Through simple retrieval practice, either with core questions or good guided application questions, I have to make a decision to whether they are ready to move on or not. If knowledge is lacking then I will have to address this first. But this is a different blog.

Here is an example of the types of questions I want my Year 7 class (11-12 years old) to be able to answer:

The lesson structure may look like this:

In which we begin with a small warm up with guided application questions, and this also serves to settle the class and begin the lesson with the same routine. Then I want them to get started and work freely. I have all my questions with answers uploaded to our online platform. For these lessons I book out the ipads. The students then work through the application questions one by one. Each slide has about three questions, as in the example above, then the next slide has the answers, so that the students don't go too far without getting feedback.

Students mark their own work, this is important

I want my students to mark their work in a specific way. This is because I want them not just to focus on ticks and crosses, but to also focus their attention on what the answers to this question look like; the concepts, and the presence of keywords.

I ask students to mark their work in a different colour. They can add ticks and crosses, but more importantly I ask them to add the information that they missed. If I catch students not carrying out this step, I am not a happy chappy, and I make sure to invigilate them for a while afterwards.

The mark scheme has to be well designed for secondary students to access it. Consider my example below (the answers to the example questions above). Each bullet point equates to one mark and I have to include all the valid answers that students are likely to come up with. Some training on this is required in the first couple of weeks of the course.

For my KS3 classes, I often make up my own application of knowledge questions with my own mark scheme.

For my IB biology lessons, the application of knowledge lessons are invariably based on the science cases from:
http://sciencecases.lib.buffalo.edu/cs/
and
https://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive

In my IB classes we don't follow the marking activity that we do in Year 7, but we often discuss the answers as a class.

Overview of lesson sequencing

So, to put all these ideas together, I can summarise my lesson sequencing in KS3 and IB biology:

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To see my post on why I prefer table formats for questions and answers, and on reducing extraneous load when using powerpoint, go here

Click here to see other posts in this series:
The background context
Part 1 of how I sequence my lessons (time and interleaving)
Part 2 of how I sequence my lessons (lesson types in the sequence)
Part 3 of how I sequence my lessons (Guided application and linking knowledge)
Part 4 (this page)