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How to stimulate interest in Precedent?

Jim Riley

31st March 2014

Teaching precedent can be a challenging for a teacher as there is so much for learners to learn and concepts to understand, aside from tackling the topic in bite size pieces I engage my learners by setting my starter to a time challenge and to draw out the competitive nature of students for example. Learners were required to work as part of a relay team sharing and providing knowledge which they understand. Learners are put into 4/5 differentiated teams and each have a blank A3 wipe board. They enter into the centre the element of the topic of which they are being tested so today's lesson was 'Supreme Court'.

With a timer on the board the team stand in a line in front of their A3 board and have to identify key features of the Supreme Court, then passing the pen to their peer so they complete the same, they then join the back of the line. The idea is that learners recall prior knowledge of the topic and evidence this by writing it down, it may be the case that one learner simply writes 'The Practice Statement 1966', for stretch and challenge I would encourage my learners to expand upon when it can be used, and recite the 3 criteria. This is completed under a time limit of 2 minutes. Once complete, learners then move clockwise to another groups A3 wipe board and read their answers. The clock is then set to 1.30 mins and learners have to correct/expand upon another groups answer, this is completed until the groups are back to their original A3 board, with a 30 second reduction each time.

Learners then review their own A3 board and the annotations provided by others to allow them to become visually aware of additional knowledge they can learn, and to expand upon what they already knew. To consolidate this, I ask learners to take to their seats and complete a 10 question test which assesses the learning that has just taken place but allows me to see the progress of each learner as I take in their answers and use the same as feedback for a subsequent lesson.

Jim Riley

Jim co-founded tutor2u alongside his twin brother Geoff! Jim is a well-known Business writer and presenter as well as being one of the UK's leading educational technology entrepreneurs.

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