Fiona adapts her teaching for different confidence levels, gets to know all her students and creates a supportive learning environment. The formative assessment helps them to build skills for the assessment. Her inclusive approach leads to high student engagement, including among those who experience anxiety.

Teaching area

Seminars

Course

Law of Succession, optional Law Level 6 module, 30 students in each seminar group.

Description

I use whiteboard exercises for teaching the rules of intestacy. This law applies when someone dies without a will. If you’re thinking about the distribution of property on death, it’s useful to know what the shape of the family looks like. If the person was married or in a civil partnership, their spouse or partner will inherit; if there’s no spouse/partner but the deceased had children, their children will be the beneficiaries. If the deceased was not married and didn’t have children, you look to see who their other living relatives are and then the law determines to whom property will be distributed.

Family tree

Drawing a family tree is important because it shows you who the potential beneficiaries might be. I ask the students who would like to draw a family tree on the whiteboard, and usually, lots of students volunteer, including students who rarely speak in group discussions. They come to the whiteboard, draw the family tree and explain who’s in the family before going on to discuss who the estate is likely to go to. During seminars, I provide other opportunities for students to write on the whiteboard too.

Building confidence

I adapt my approach for students with different confidence levels. I scaffold all my teaching, so I always start with easy questions, and they get progressively harder. I encourage the students who I know are less confident to answer a question early on before the questions start getting harder. When the students first draw the family tree, they simply need to describe it, which is quite straightforward. Then they need to apply the law, which is more difficult. For example, how do you define a grandchild? What if a daughter is pregnant when her mother dies – does her unborn baby count legally as a grandchild?

A supportive group

I have an advantage in teaching Law of Succession because it’s a final-year module which the students have selected. They all know me already because I will have taught them previously on a core module. So, it’s a really nice group dynamic. It’s become a cohesive group, and the students tend to support each other. They root for each other, saying to a shy student, ‘Oh, go on, you can do it!’ And if a student is writing something on the whiteboard and they miss something out, someone in the class might ask in a non-confrontational, non-critical way if they’ve thought about this or that family relationship.

The impact of anxiety

Mental health issues such as anxiety are the biggest barrier to attending seminars. Once the students have come to the session, I make sure to keep them engaged and feeling confident and well supported so that they’ll come back again. The main way I do this is by simply getting to know them. I have three groups of 30 students, and I work hard to learn all their names. I always arrive ten minutes before the seminar, and those who don’t have a class beforehand also arrive early so we have a chat before the class starts. They feel that the class is a safe space. My students know that I’ll never put them on the spot and throw a question at them without preparation.

Outcomes

Student engagement

Law of Succession recruits well – I think that’s because students on the module tell students in the year below that they enjoy it. Students vote with their feet. If they like the seminars, they come along: attendance is almost 100 per cent. I always think that having many students actively involved in seminars is a measure of success because they’re feeling confident enough to want to talk things through.

Academic skills and student support

We do a formative assessment in Week 4 and in Week 9, so I can see how they’re getting on in terms of preparing for the exam and I know that they’re on track with their learning.

Comments

We know that students tend to feel anxious when we put them on the spot and ask them a question about their prepared learning. And it’s the prospect of being made to look foolish in front of their peers that discourages them from wanting to take part. Anything that gives them an opportunity to get involved in a less threatening way is good, whether it’s writing on the whiteboard as a way of not having to look at their peers or using Lego or mini whiteboards and then holding up their answers. I think writing on the whiteboard works well for my module.

Student feedback

Feedback for the module has been overwhelmingly positive.

I have really enjoyed Fiona’s Succession Law seminars. I found them engaging and easy to follow. We answered problem questions in class by drawing family trees and working in groups, which helped to cement my understanding. Applying the law and building on the pre-reading has improved my confidence ahead of exams.

Elle O’Riordan

Link

Clements, F. (2026) ‘Building Students’ Confidence to Speak Through Interactive Law Teaching’, Learning Matters blog, University of Sussex (accessed 6 May 2026)