No Pens Day 2021

As part of National Dyslexia Awareness Week, staff and students took part in ‘No Pens Day Wednesday’ last week. For one day only, staff were invited to teach their lessons without using any pens or written communication at all. The idea of the day was to highlight speech and language skills which are often overlooked in secondary schools, but contribute so much to the future prospects of students.

Here are some examples of the great things that took place that day:

In English, groups had a lovely reading and discussion lesson. All students read aloud and some even had a go at hot seating. In other classes, there was a lot of debating and hot seating of characters. Oracy mats were used and students gained points when they used phrases to develop and extend their ideas. Another class acted in role as characters from the story. Other pupils took part in a mock police interview and developed empathy skills through speaking in role as different characters.

In Maths, groups were constructing curves of pursuit, creating curves using only straight lines. Others were doing constructions of angle bisectors, working on compass skills and problem solving with visual geometry. Other classes were constructing labyrinths and drawing “impossible” structures such as a Blivet and a Penrose triangle. Again, working on compass skills and introducing some culturally diverse curriculum and ethnomathematics.

In Science, classes used playdough to create specialised cell models such as ciliated epithelial cells and nerve cells. Students thoroughly enjoyed making them and justifying the structures related to the job of the cells. In other classes, students held a really interesting debate on in vitro vs in vivo research. Everyone argued their side really well, used laptops to do research on the topic and then each side spoke for 5 minutes to argue their case, we had a rebuttal and then a vote for which side we agreed with.

In Geography, classes had great fun doing cards sorts and tarsia in group work with lots of discussion.