as a plenary, pictionary of the key words for the lesson. i teach a little maths as well, and easily the funniest lesson ever was revising types of graphs using twister (of the form 'right hand on the graph that you use to compare two lots of information' or 'left foot on the line graph that is drawn incorrectly' etc - using other students as referees). clearly this needs a lot of room, some preparation in drawing out the board, a smallish class and a HUGE amount of supervision! very funny, though, and could be easily transported to almost any topic.

as a plenary, pictionary of the key words for the lesson. i teach a little maths as well, and easily the funniest lesson ever was revising types of graphs using twister (of the form 'right hand on the graph that you use to compare two lots of information' or 'left foot on the line graph that is drawn incorrectly' etc - using other students as referees). clearly this needs a lot of room, some preparation in drawing out the board, a smallish class and a HUGE amount of supervision! very funny, though, and could be easily transported to almost any topic.

Has anyone tried making exercises into races? You know the sort of thing were students work in groups collecting one question at a time from you. They can only progress to the next question when they have the initial one correct.

quick plenary idea-Resource free and quick to do.A competative variation on hangman with 5 men being hanged for each group. While my pupils finish offf their final main task I draw a 5 sided shape on the board and divide it into 5 sections. Each table is named after a different scientist for ease of grouping them. each section will be named after a table. Now I start asking questions on what we have learned, both today and previously and if a pupil gets it right they choose a table and that table has one bit of the Hangman drawn. If the pupil gets it wrong then it's drawn off their own group. It gets very competative, the kids like nothing more than infulencing other teams score and directing who wins. Naturally any table that talks has another drawn off their own (makes them quiet very quickly in most cases) and the winner is whom ever has the least of their hanged man drawn wins. Keep score over a term with a prize every weeks and the kids do their best to remember everything. You have to put up with regular "Are we playing that game" questions which I answer "If we complete our work and don't mess about". Encourages them to learn, work encourages them to kee their behaviour in check and adds a easy, resource free positive reward to give them.

I have made headbands out of strips of cardboard which can be used for several things - What am I? plenary activities. Forming compounds (have cards with different atoms on them, blu tacked to the headband). I split the class into groups and ask them to form things like CO2 etc and they need to find the correct atoms to join together. Reactivity series where they have to put themselves in the correct order. The applications are endless and it doesnt take that long to make.