This document provides 5 tips for making learning activities more challenging: 1. Start lessons with thoughtfully prepared challenges to engage students' curiosity. 2. Have students lead class discussions and check each other's understanding. 3. Assign students roles within groups to give them responsibility for coordinating responses and making decisions. 4. For straightforward objectives, find ways to add complexity, such as reordering images or leaving pieces missing. 5. Challenge students to justify their reasoning when completing puzzles or sequencing activities.

1. • To explore what is meant by challenge
• To explore how challenge supports learning
• To explore how we can make learning
activities challenging
• To link challenging activities to the language of
learning

4. Top 5 take away tips to increase
challenge

5. Tip 1
A thoughtfully prepared challenge on the
outset, gets lessons off to an intriguing and
curious start. Competing against each other
can be motivating and create a sense of
challenge.
Lateral thinking Puzzles
Digbats
A question of ....

9. Tip 2
Student led plenaries. Have a ‘lazy teachers’
week. Tell the students they are going to be
responsible for checking students
understanding of the learning objective.
Use the Blooms thinking cube to help them
generate ideas.

11. Tip 3
As soon as students come in get them into roles within
their groupings.
You could make one the team leader: responsible for
coordinting the response from the group
Other roles include: roving reporter. Student shave to
come and select relevant information from sources
around the classroom.
Have opportunities for them to make decision about
what happens next.
Make someone responsible for being the learning
detective: Hunting out students who are calling upon
the capacities.

13. Tip 4
Learning
objective: who
were King
Henry's wives?
How could we
make this more
challenging?

15. Tip 5
Have images cut up or a sequence of images in
the wrong order.
Student are to place them into the right order
and be able to justify why.
Or recreate the puzzle picture. You could retain
some of the images and ask them to imagine
what the final piece would be?