In the last section of this week, we will look at some examples of activities and approaches, and

consider:

 how to develop or adapt the activity to target a specific skill

 how to use or adapt the approach to create opportunities for AS & A Level Business.

If you have any points to raise or questions on active learning, raise them in the whole
class Week 5 class discussions.

Read about possible approaches for AS & A Level Business

Take some time to look at each of the approaches, keeping in mind the points above.

Assessing Learning
Gathering feedback from your learners is an essential way to assess how well they are
progressing. As well as asking questions, you could ask learners to rate themselves Red, Amber
or Green (RAG). By RAG rating their progress, both you and your learners will be able to use
the success criteria to establish targets for development.

One way of using the RAG ratings would be to ask learners to pair up, with a learner rating
themselves as red on a particular task or skill pairing with someone rating themselves as green.
The learner who feels confident will then need to explain the topic, this develops understanding
in both learners. Similarly, two amber learners might pair together and try to work on the task
collaboratively.

Another possible approach would be to develop a sequence of lessons to revisit and revise
skills for given tasks. This might be in the form of a whole class lesson on an aspect which a
number of the learners found difficult, or might involve small groups or individuals working on
different tasks depending on their RAG rating.

I am confident, but there are

I am not confident with I am confident with
some skills or activities I am
this skill or activity this skill or activity
unsure of

Closing the loop

Once learners have completed some work to develop new skills or address problems they have
had, it is important to confirm whether or not this has been successful. We can do this by
‘closing the assessment loop’ by assessing the learner against the targets or success criteria for
a particular activity. This could be either in the form of a test, or as a piece of work which
allows learners to demonstrate the knowledge or skills they have developed, e.g. an oral
presentation.

Think, pair, share

This is a cooperative discussion strategy. Three steps describe what the learners are doing at
each stage:

1. Think – provoke learners' thinking with a question, a prompt or an observation. They

spend a few moments thinking about the question individually. This builds in wait time
where learners get to think about their answers. This silent thinking time eliminates the
issue of learners who shout out the answer before others have the chance to think about it
and ensures everyone is engaged with thinking about the question.
2. Pair – learners pair up with designated partners and discuss their ideas. They can try to
identify the answer that they think is the best, the most convincing, the most unique, etc.
3. Share – ask the pairs to share their thinking. This could be going around each pair in turn
or sending one partner on to a new partner to discuss, compare and refine/extend ideas.

Rainbow groups

In this type of activity, learners take responsibility for teaching others in their class. Group
learners into sixes. They then complete the following:
 1. In their groups of six, learners work on a case study or piece of data. This could be taken
from a business website, a news story, a past Paper 2 data response, or an extract from a
Paper 3 case study.
2. Each group has a different area of the specification. For example, one group might work
on the marketing aspect, another group on the human resource management aspect, and
so on. Alternatively, it could be different aspects within a function, such as each group
looking at one of the 4P’s/4C’s of the marketing mix.
3. Each learner in the original group of 6 is then assigned a number or colour.
4. Learners now regroup according to their colour or number. This means each learner in
the new group has investigated something different.
5. In their new group, each learner should have a maximum of 5 minutes to teach the rest of
their group about what they have learnt.

You may want to provide learners with a sheet to complete to summarise the learning from
each person.

Assigning roles in a group

Assigning roles in group work can help learners to meet certain learning objectives.

Below is one strategy you could use to assign roles. By assigning specific roles you encourage
all learners to actively engage. Being able to give specific tasks also helps to differentiate for
learner ability within a group.

1. Groups are given a problem solving task within a business and role descriptions on a
card. For example, the task could be to recommend how a group of workers could be
motivated using non-monetary methods within in a specific business scenario such as a
supermarket.
2. Hand out role descriptions with the problem to solve. For example, a checkout/till
operator, a shelf stacker, a trolley collector, a manager. Each card will contain some
details about the situation of the person/group. Each worker will represent the interests of
their group and try to understand how motivation within that role is different from the
others. For example, the managers are likely to be motivated by a laissez-faire approach
to leadership whilst the shelf-stacker might need a more task-orientated approach.
3. Additional roles include:
o Facilitator: Your job is to help the group understand what they need to do and to
make sure everyone takes part. You need to remain neutral so you can get involved
in the discussion, but you must make sure you contribute to all points.
o Summariser: As well as getting involved in the discussion your job is to make a note
of all of the ideas of your group.
 o Presenter: Your job is to tell the rest of the class the outcome of your group
discussion
o Challenger: Your job is to challenge the thinking of your group by offering different
views and suggestions.

Flipped learning

Flipped learning is designed to encourage learners to engage in some of the content of the
lesson before they arrive in class.

For example, set learners a homework task to search for the online accounts of a well known
public limited company. Some learners might look at the statement of financial position whilst
some look at the income statement. This could be split further and learners might look at the
fixed assets with others looking at the equity. Learners should compare the previous years
figures and, for their given area, state whether the change has been beneficial for the business
or not.

In the lesson the different aspects can be brought together on a table or a whiteboard to
discover if the business is overall more or less successful than the previous year. This is a
particularly useful exercise because the use of numbers builds up better arguments, especially
on Paper 3 case studies. Learners often miss these opportunities.