Teach17

Sometimes the planning window disappears. You still need a lesson with purpose, challenge and enough structure to keep everyone thinking. These ideas are designed to work across secondary subjects with almost no preparation.

1. The Best Wrong Answer
   Put a plausible but incorrect answer on the board. Ask pupils why somebody might think it is right, where the thinking goes wrong and how to fix it. Good misconceptions make excellent lessons.
2. Rank and Defend
   Give pupils four or five ideas, causes, examples, methods or interpretations. They rank them and then defend their order. The ranking matters less than the reasoning.
3. What Is Missing?
   Show pupils an incomplete explanation, diagram, calculation, paragraph or process. Their job is to identify exactly what is missing and improve it.
4. Agree or Disagree?
   Put a provocative statement on the board. Pupils choose a position, gather evidence, listen to another view and then decide whether they want to change their mind.
5. The Four Corners Lesson
   Give four possible answers or viewpoints and assign one to each corner of the room. Pupils move to the option they support, discuss their reasoning and nominate someone to defend it.
6. Create the Exam Question
   Give pupils an answer and ask them to invent the question that could have produced it. Then make the question easier, harder or more precise.
7. The Prediction Lesson
   Stop before revealing an answer, result, next event or next step. Pupils predict what will happen and explain why. Reveal it, discuss the outcome and refine their reasoning.
8. One Idea, Three Levels
   Take one concept and ask pupils to explain it first to a five-year-old, then to a classmate, then to an expert. Each version requires a different level of precision.
9. Which One Would You Choose?
   Give pupils two methods, explanations, sources, approaches or solutions. Ask which they would choose and why. Then change the situation and see whether their choice changes.
10. The Question Generator
    Give pupils a key word, image, quotation, graph or short piece of information and ask them to generate as many worthwhile questions as possible. Sort the questions into factual, explanatory and challenging.
11. Find the Weakest Link
    Give pupils a chain of reasoning containing several steps. One step is weak, unclear or wrong. Pupils have to locate it and explain why it undermines the whole argument.
12. The 60-Second Summary
    Teach or discuss a chunk of content, then give pupils one minute to summarise it without notes. Compare several summaries and decide what absolutely had to be included.
13. Improve This
    Put an average-quality response on the board. Ask pupils to improve one sentence at a time. Add precision, evidence, subject vocabulary or clearer reasoning until the answer is transformed.
14. Give Me an Example
    State a rule, definition or principle and ask pupils for an example. Then ask for a better example, an unusual example, a real-life example and finally a non-example.
15. Ask the Teacher
    Give pupils two minutes to write the hardest sensible question they can about the topic. Answer some yourself and let the class help with others. Strong questions often reveal what pupils are really thinking about.
16. Build the Lesson From Yesterday
    Open exercise books and choose one piece of recent work. Use it to revisit a misconception, extend an idea, improve an answer or connect previous learning to what comes next.
17. One Resource, Five Uses
    Take one existing resource — a graph, paragraph, diagram, photograph, source, textbook page or exam question — and use it five ways: describe it, explain it, question it, improve it and apply it somewhere new.

The important thing when time is short is not to fill the lesson with activity. It is to create enough thinking.

A useful rule is this: if pupils have to explain, justify, compare, predict, improve or apply, you probably have the foundations of a worthwhile lesson.