These articles contain ideas from teachers on how to improve the quality of student learning during assessment, or how to assess for a wider range of skills. Assessment may not be the main feature of the article, but we have only included articles where it has some prominence.
Class Discussion
These articles contain PEEL teachers' descriptions of ways to encourage and promote quality
class discussion.They may describe lessons where either class discussion was a dominant
feature of the lesson(s) or lessons that provided the basis and stimulation for quality
discussion.
Debates
These articles include those describing both traditional, formal debates as well as other ways of
structuring discussions where there is an emphasis on argument and counter argument.
Other Oral Work
These articles include oral work other than class discussion or debates, including (among
others) formal presentations, other oral assessments tasks, peer and cross-age tutoring, and
speaking in a LOTE. They do not include question-asking, which is listed as Procedure C4.
Analysing Non-Print Materials
These articles describe ways of stimulating students to analyse and search for rich meaning in
non-print materialssuch as maps, diagrams, photos, pictures and television advertisements.
Reading Literature
These articles focus on what English teachers would include as literature all works of fiction
including fictional films. Works called faction could also be included. The articles do not include
documentaries (see Using Videos) and biographies where the emphasis is on factual content.
(See Understanding Other Text Material.)
Understanding Other Text Material
In these articles, the text material to be understood is (primarily) printed words and neither
something that will be part of student notes (see Note-Taking) nor a piece of literature (see
Reading Literature). Typically it involves textbooks or articles.The focus here is on building
meaning for the text.
Drill and Practice
These articles include those which aim to improve students' thinking when doing tasks such as
memorising a list as well as when doing numerical exercises and using other skills that require
practice. These activities commonly involve very low level thinking and the articles in this field
all aim to make such practice more consistent with the goals of PEEL. They do not include
articles that describe application or creative activities which require students to apply learned
skills to a new area.
Field Work/Excursions
These articles involve getting the students out of their normal classroom environment. One
common problem here is building links back to classroom activities and ideas.
Games and Puzzles
These articles describe ways of using games and puzzles in the PEEL classroom, many of them
involve taking an existing game like Pictionary or Bingo, and applying it to school content,often as a form of revision or practice. They also describe ways by which games and puzzles can be
used to introduce new content.
Homework
Articles selected here must do more than just report on a task set for homework, per se. We
have restricted this to reports of tasks that students found particularly engaging to do at home,
or that could not be (easily) be done at school - i.e. there was a need for home work, or where
the home aspect clearly gave students more opprtunities for independent decision making . We
also include a few articles that reflect on homework as an activity.
Getting Started/IntroducingNewInformation
These articles discuss ways in which teachers have introduced a major new topic that does not
have links to the previous lesson.
Group Work
In these articles, teachers report ways in which they have been able to engage students in
quality groupwork-where the students actively discuss the work, using hypothetical,exploratory
talk and listening seriously to each other's ideas. The articles coded for this field are those that
provide advice about how teachers can achieve quality group work.
Library/Research Skills
These articles describe ways in which teachers have improved some aspect of a library
assignment, or improved students' skills in library research, such as processing of library
sources.They also include articles which increase the level of student engagement in research,
such as students' owning their own questions.
Note-Taking
All these articles have a focus on the notes in students' book. They describe ways of actively
processing notes, creating notes, and any activity which challenges the idea that copying equals
learning.
Practical Work
By practical work we mean hands-on tasks involving equipment, apparatus and/or physical
skills. These are important in subjects such as Art, Home Economics, Physical
Education,Science, Technology and Textiles. Often students have instructions to follow and they
often follow these with very little reflection about what they are doing, the purpose of the task
and its links with theory, as well as with a high level of dependence on the teacher to sort out
problems.These articles describe ways of tackling these problems
Problem Solving Tasks
In these articles, the focus is onthe students finding the way to solve a problem or complete a
task.Studentshave to consider alternatives. This often requires open-ended lateral thinking.This
category does not include articles where students are solving routine numerical exercises; these
are coded under Drill and Practice.
Remote or online learning
These are articles stimulated by school lockdowns due to the COVID 19 pandemic. They
describe teachers setting up tasks and structures for students to learn at home with online and
often parental support.
ParentTeacher Meetings
These articles either offer ways of enriching or restructuring the formal parent teacher meetings
that occur each term in most schools, or report other ways of including parents as active
participants in the learning of their children.
Revision/Feedback Understanding
These articles include activities such as going back to previously learned information in the lead
up to a test; bringing together a number of ideas; and looking at previously studied information
in a new way. They also include ways of encouraging students to reflect on what they have
learned, identify key points and giving students feedback on their understanding of the work.
Starting the Year With a Class
The title is self-explanatory.
Unit of Work
These articles discuss ways by which teachers have developed a unit of work or sequences that
include a number of different activities.
Using Information Technology
The articles report ways of using information technology to improve learning in classes that are
not formal IT classes, but that focus on using aspects of IT to improve learning in other content
areas. Articles dealing with teaching IT as a subject,which also often contain innovative ways of
using IT, can be found under Information Technology in Subject Areas.
Using Video
Watching videos can be a very passive activity, another common problem is that videos typically
present a lot of information very quickly. These articles report ways of tackling these problems.
The focus is on either an imaginative use of the video, e.g.,sound off/stop for prediction, or a
strategy for processing the video.
Using Visual Aids/Posters
Some of these articles involve visual aids that the teacher brings into the classroom, a number
of these involve posters that are permanently in the classroom and used regularly to aid and
improve learning. Other articles involve the students, either individuallyor as a class,
constructing non-print representation of part of the work.
Writing Skills
These articles focus on improving learning when students are learning to write and edit texts of
various forms as well as to analyse texts for structure, style and linguistic devices.They include
all the articles coded in Group H: Procedures for LearningWriting Skills (as well as many others).