Scale Line

To allow students the opportunity to represent their opinions and thoughts on the impact of influential material in a physical way.

Structure: The purpose of this Active Break is to include activity as part of the structure of your lesson. Here you are replacing or substituting a traditionally sedentary instructional task, with an active version of the same instructional practice.

Transition: The purpose of this Active Break is to allow intentional, structured and task orientated movement as students transition between one learning task or phase of the lesson, to the next.

Teacher to stick two signs (‘influential’ and ‘not influential’) at each end of the room.

Teacher to use masking tape to mark a scale line between the two ends of the room.

Read aloud examples of influential modes/ways of influencing e.g., social media apps, documentaries, billboards, newspapers, radio ads.

When each example of a mode or way of influencing is read aloud, students should indicate how influential they believe this to be by moving along the scale line in the direction of the signage corresponding with their opinion.

Teacher to briefly question a couple of students each time, as to why they felt the example is influential or not influential. Teacher may like to use this Active Break to transition to the next phase of the lesson where students can debate/discuss/justify/compare their opinions and further explore influential material.

PRACTICAL USE

This Active Break is intended to build physical activity into the instructional practice. The purpose and intent of the instructional practice remains the same, whilst the delivery becomes active.

This Active Break is intended to be used during the transitions within the lesson. This Transition Active Break is goal orientated and purposeful as it allows students to move from where they are in the learning/lesson, to where they need to be in the next phase of the learning/lesson. In this case, the Active Break aims to transition students from one phase of the lesson to another (e.g., from explicit instruction during the ‘I do’ phase, to collaborative learning during the ‘we do’ phase).