Plenaries

Plenary Takeaways

Fist of Five - pupils should rate their understanding on a scale of 0-5. This can give a quick indication of their understanding by the amount of fingers they hold up.

Give Me Five -  pupils draw around their hand and label each finger with something they have gained from the lesson e.g. index finger (what skills have you used) and ring (what have you improved on today).

Topic Tennis - pupils get in to threes (two players and one umpire). Give pupils a topic then each player has to say a related term until they run out of ideas. Points are awarded if the other player runs out of ideas.

Tweet a Friend - get pupils to sum up the lesson in less than 280 characters. 280 characters is the perfect length for a quick,

effective plenary that asks children to succinctly sum up a point from the lesson.

The ‘Taboo’ plenary - Invite two children to the front of the class and show them a ‘secret’ word related to your subject which they must describe to their partner without using the word itself.. The 'guesser' can stay up at the front to read another secret word and explain

Show me boards - call your pupils back to their desks at the end of the lesson and ask them a series of 'short-response' questions about the lesson/older content which they can answer on their show-me boards. 

Digital exit tickets -  One example is Socrative (https://www.socrative.com/) where pupils are asked to rate their understanding of the lesson, give examples of things they have learned and answer the 'teacher's question' (unique question about the lesson). 

Prove it - as opposed to confidence measures (e.g. fists of five) - use evidence measures that require students to 'prove it' against the success criteria e.g. short response questions, 'empty your brain' (pages 264 and 265 of Power up Your Pedagogy by Bruce Robertson). 

Visualising - ask students to create a visual summary of the lesson – a mind map, a flowchart, a Venn diagram, a timeline, an infographic, etc - https://www.teachit.co.uk/cpd/teaching-and-learning/engaging-plenary-ideas

Plenary Additional Reading

14 Plenary Ideas to Make your Lesson Outstanding

20 Engaging Plenary Ideas for the Classroom

10 Powered-Up Plenary Ideas

8 Closing Activities to Wrap up a Lesson

Using Exit Tickets Effectively

The Book of Plenary (by Phil Beadle) - available in the DGS Learning Library 

Great Plenaries that Work with Any Lesson and Subject

What is a Plenary?