Starter activity - “Beat the Teacher”

Good one this for starter, plenary or main body. Very, very simple concept but highly effective…

The activity basically involves giving students a page of written text about the topic just covered (if used for a plenary or starter for the lesson after) which contains a number of mistakes. Students work individually or in pairs to try and spot the mistakes.

This is also excellent for differentiation, for example, a ‘beat the teacher’ activity I did recently contained the sentence, “perhaps the biggest advantage of being a private limited company (plc) is limited liability”. A number of students circled this as an error as they believed selling shares to raise funds was a bigger advantage therefore prompting class discussion (in addition to the plc mistake).

The errors can range from the obvious and the stupid to the more subtle. I have even given out a sheet with not one single error on it, however, because the students expect to find mistakes, they concentrate whilst they are reading thus consolidating their learning.

One thing though, review is vital otherwise some students may take the ‘errors’ to be fact. This activity can also be used for a main body. I once did it for a topic that I hadn’t formally ‘taught’. I gave them the page of text containing errors and in pairs they needed to find the mistakes using some source material (in this case a textbook).

Using it this way is good for particularly dry topics. Takes some preparing this one, but once you have a ‘bank’ of ‘beat the teachers’ you’re at the races.....

BUSINESS TEACHER RESOURCE NEWSLETTER
Get first news of business teaching resources, ideas and other materials from tutor2u. Over 5,000 business teachers from the UK and around the world receive our regular teacher email newsletters. Sign up for free here!

Comments