OER4Schools/Techniques

Select from OER4Schools/assets.

How to make traffic lights

Making robots/traffic lights:

There are various ways of making this resource depending on the availability of materials. Some suggestions of different materials are:

• coloured paper (red, orange, green) such as charts, paper from old magazines etc.
• coloured packing cardboards such as toothpaste box
• coloured computer printouts
• cloth material
• coloured plastic bags
• coloured flags or
• simply coloured pencils or crayons (if each child has them).

Given below is one simple way of making them with a white A4 sheet of paper and marker pens.

Educator note

Provide the following materials to the participants so that they can make their own robot/traffic light resource:

• A4 sheets of paper (one per three participants, but it is always better to have some extra)
• Red, Orange and Green marker pens
• Crayons/ coloured pencils/ paints (if available)
• Scissors/ long scale (if available)

Normally 10-15 minutes are sufficient for this activity if enough material is available for each participant. Enough material means that there is negligible or no waiting time for using material.

Where materials to make the resource are not available in sufficient quantities for classroom use, you could think of alternatives, such as children giving various hand signals corresponding to red / yellow / green.

Individual work (11 min). Follow these steps to make your own robot/traffic lights resource for AfL (see pictures for reference):

• Take an A4 sheet of white paper. Fold it along the long side into 3 equal parts (one sheet can make 3 sets of Traffic Lights). Cut along the folds with scissors or tear using a long scale to make 3 strips of paper.
• Fold one strip further into 3 sections along the short side.
• Write ‘RED’, ‘ORANGE’ and ‘GREEN’ (in capitals and bold) using the right coloured marker pens (if possible) on the three different sections. You can colour them with respective colours if crayons, coloured pencils or paints are available.
• Now reverse the strip of paper or keep it upside down. Then,
  • behind section RED, write: I’m stuck. I need some extra help. I don’t feel I have progressed.
  • behind section ORANGE, write: I’m not quite sure. I need a little help. I feel I have made some progress.
  • behind section GREEN, write: I understand fully. I’m okay without help. I feel I have progressed a lot.

No hands up

This is a useful technique to engage all of the students all of the time. The teacher poses a question for the students to think about and tells them, either before or after asking the question, that there should be 'no hands up' as everyone is expected to participate. The teacher then calls on a random student to answer the question. Staging questioning this way can motivate students and keep them focused on the shared input as well as giving less confident children the chance to share their ideas.

Here are the steps:

1. Students listen to a question or a discussion point and are given wait time to formulate their responses. The teacher can introduce the technique either before or after posing the question.

2. Following the wait time, the teacher asks a random student for a response.

3. When further questions are asked in the session, the teacher reminds the students that there should be 'no hands up' and that they may be asked for a response at any time.

Tips for using the technique successfully:

• warn students that this is a 'no hands up' session
• establish a friendly, supportive, non-judgemental atmosphere using positive body language and reaffirming phrases
• remind students to listen to what other students have said as they may have to adjust their response accordingly
• praise students for active listening, for making a contribution and for respecting the contributions made by others
• differentiate questions to give students the best chance of a positive outcome

Giving students 'wait time' has been shown to significantly improve the quality of their responses.

Brainstorming

This is a useful interactive teaching technique that allows all participants to make a contribution without fear of judgement from others.

Here are the steps:

1. Students listen to a question posed by the teacher - this should be open-ended with no specific right answer in order to generate a range of ideas
2. Students offer their ideas when the teacher asks them one by one - it is not necessary for students to raise their hands as everyone is encouraged to make a contribution
3. All ideas are recorded by the teacher where everyone can see them

After the brainstorm session the ideas can be further processed in line with the plan for the rest of the lesson.

Tips for using the technique successfully:

• establish a friendly, supportive, non-judgemental atmosphere for brainstorming
• remind students to listen to what other students have said to make sure that they don't repeat any replies
• try to keep the activity pacy, adapting the length of the brainstorm session to match the flow of ideas
• praise students for active listening and for respecting the contributions made by others
• the technique works well at the beginning of a new topic as a way of finding out students' prior knowledge

Cumulative talk

Cumulative talk is co operative talk and can lead to knowledge construction through the sharing of ideas. It is limited from an educational point of view in that it does not produce critically grounded knowledge. Its real value is that it promotes group/whole class harmony whilst allowing ground rules for the more meaningful exploratory talk to become established. It also has the added benefit of allowing pupils to increase in confidence as they speak without being challenged at first.

Cumulative talk is talk in which…

• Everyone simply accepts and agrees with what other people say.
• Children do use talk to share knowledge, but they do so in an uncritical way.
• Children repeat and elaborate each other's ideas, but they don't evaluate them carefully.

The following document outlines the three types of talk that children are mostly engaged with in the classroom and provides examples:Three kinds of talk.

Think Pair Share

This technique encourages cooperative learning by peer interactivity. Teachers should cue the progress from one step to the next. In the primary classroom, hand signals for each step can be developed with the students and these can be used along with verbal cues.

Here are the steps:

1. Think - Students listen to a question (this may be an open-ended question to which there are many answers) or a presentation and are given ‘think time’ to formulate their responses.
2. Pair - Following the ‘think time’, students work together with a partner, sharing ideas, discussing, clarifying and challenging.
3. Share -The pair then share their ideas with another pair, or with the whole class. Students should be prepared to share their partner’s ideas as well as their own.

Allowing students time to think, sometimes referred to as 'wait time' has been shown by researchers to improve the quality of their responses. Talking through ideas with a partner first before sharing them with a wider audience allows for those ideas to be elaborated on and refined.