Freedom to Teach

Secondary English - Building Learning Power

2012-03-05T08:00:00.000Z

Sometimes you need to make sure your class knows a deluge of information; this might be before an exam, before you start a topic or midway through to check understanding. As we are told again and again, simply ‘telling’ your pupils means they retain very little of the information, ‘doing’ increases their ‘Learning Power’ and allows them to remember the information due to the way it was taught.

With this in mind, ‘Building Learning Power’ lessons work really well and create a lively learning atmosphere in your room. These lessons also engage all learners, use group work and work especially well with classes where pupils have issues sitting still!

How it works
Before the pupils enter the room, set up a couple of tables in an area that has a lot of room. Station yourself at these tables with a timer or have the timer running on your interactive white board. On the tables place your ‘fact sheets’ face down, make sure you have enough for one between two for each group. (See my example for the novel ‘Of Mice and Men’)

Put pupils into groups of 4, 2 ‘runners’ and 2 ‘writers’. Each table should have one blank grid sheet. (Download an example grid here)

Your ‘runners’ have one minute to get to the table and memorise as much as they can from their fact sheet. After the minute they put the fact sheet back face down and return to their ‘writers’ who need to record the right information into the right box. This is repeated around 10 times, depending on how your group is progressing. What I love about this activity is that most of the groups will come up with a strategy, some memorise different areas of the sheet and others make up rhymes for key events or mouth the words over and over.

After the activity is over you can give groups a mark out of 5 (1 for each box) for the information they retained. It is also worth doing a plenary that involves the groups having to put their sheets under their chairs and asking them questions from the fact sheets to test how much they can remember. I always back this up with a similar style starter for next lesson to ensure the information is really wedged in there! The resources can be tailor made for any event, I’ve used them for Media lessons when pupils need to learn a lot of terminology as well as A Level lessons where pupils need to memorise poems.

Joanna Fliski
Teacher of English, Media and Drama, Lliswerry High School

Secondary Citizenship - Whose human rights?

2012-03-02T08:01:00.001Z

The release of Abu Qatada has led to headlines designed to convince newspaper readers that human rights should not be promoted or defended. This raises plenty of issues for Citizenship lessons. They range from the need for world agreements on human rights to actions of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and the way the British legal system operates.

Any of the articles in the popular press provide opportunities for students to distinguish between fact and opinion. An easy example, if students need to be introduced to the idea, would be ‘Best friend claimed Qatada came to London to enjoy free speech - and NOT because he was fleeing torture’

The following link takes you such an article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2101283/Abu-Qatada-Wembley-Hate-preacher-freed-live-near-prime-terror-target.html

The lessons that you might teach about this issue will vary from year group to year group. It’s very emotive so it would be wise to stick to simpler issues with younger students so using it as a starter for human rights would be interesting. The European Court refused permission to deport him to Jordan because if he was put on trial, the evidence used might have resulted from torture. Students readily follow the basic human rights of housing, food and education but it is useful to have examples of ones which, thankfully, are less familiar.

Older students might be asked to explore the issue to find out what lies behind the headlines. Abu Qatada had been imprisoned for seven years without trial. Is this right? Why was he held for so long without being brought to court?

Liberty, the pressure group which aims to protect civil liberties and promote human rights, has a website which explains its campaigns and views on current issues. It believes that Abu Qatada should be tried in Britain and questions why this hasn’t happened.
http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/news/2012/abu-qatada-the-unanswered-questions.php

Liberty has a great website to use when exploring human rights. The organisation ran a competition for schools last year. Students were asked to write a short piece of poetry or prose inspired by any or all of the Articles within the Human Rights Act and the winners came from schools across the country. Keep an eye open for future competitions.

If you want to keep up with ongoing human rights issues, Liberty’s blog is a useful tool and they have plenty of resources for schools.
http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/news/index.php

Jenny Wales is Chair of Examiners for Edexcel Citizenship Studies and author of Citizenship Today for GCSE, published by Collins.

Secondary Business - News Quiz 01/03/12

2012-03-01T10:16:00.000Z

Here is this week's Business News Quiz! You can print off a Word version (with answers and weblinks) and use it with your classes.

You can download the Word file here.

Which banks annual profits rose 15% to £13.8bn ($21.9bn) in what it called a year of "major progress"?
Santander ( )
HSBC ( )
HBOS ( )
Lloyds TSB ( )
Which business' profits have been boosted 14% due to Downtown Abby and The X factor?
Sky ( )
Pizza Hut ( )
Domino’s ( )
ITV ( )
ECB has provided further 530bn euros ($713bn; £448bn) of low-interest loans to 800 banks, who is the ECB?
Eastern Committee Bank ( )
European Central Bank ( )
European Committee of Businesses ( )
European Central Business ( )
Northern Rock is expected to return a profit of up to £11bn to the taxpayer over the next 10 to 15 years, the body which manages the government's bank investments has said. What is Northern Rock soon to be known as?
Virgin Bank ( )
The Governments Bank ( )
Virgin Money ( )
The new Northern Rock ( )
The Raspberry Pi went on general sale on February 29th 2012, what is it?
A bare-bones computer ( )
A new exotic raspberry mouse ( )
Raspberry coloured mobile phone ( )
The largest raspberry ever found and sold by Tesco in the UK ( )
Apple has announced an event on 7 March at which the company is expected to launch its latest what?
iPhone 5 ( )
new iPod nano ( )
iPad 3 ( )
new iPod touch ( )
Who has stepped down as executive chairman of News International, the UK newspaper business that owns The Sun and The Times titles?
James Murdoch ( )
Rupert Murdoch ( )
Simon Cowell ( )
Rebekah Brooks ( )
Whose stock market value closed above $500bn (£314bn) this week, cementing its position as the world's most valuable company?
Exxon ( )
Microsoft ( )
Blackberry ( )
Apple ( )
Shares dip for which airline as the carrier says it is in a "crisis" after reporting a loss for the last financial year?
British Airways ( )
Malaysia Airlines ( )
Singapore Airlines ( )
Virgin America ( )
Microsoft has launched the preview edition of what new product/service?
Windows Phone ( )
Tablet computer ( )
Windows 8 ( )
Windows Store ( )

Donna Jestin

Teacher of Business Studies Notre Dame College & Senior Examiner for AQA

Secondary Psychology - Do they ‘get’ the topic? (aka. medium term planning for progress)

2012-02-28T08:00:00.001Z

It is important to plan for progress at a medium term level as the new OFSTED framework places a specific emphasis on evidencing pupil progress. This means not only over the course of a key stage, but also within lessons and over time.

Each subject necessarily has its own way of doing this, but within Psychology I was particularly keen to develop something which was useful to students and teachers alike. I was also keen not to have to spend too long developing the system and because of time constraints I also wanted to ensure it was an easy method to use in class.

What do we do?

I, along with my departmental colleagues, developed a system which teachers use when they have delivered a whole topic. In our centre, that’s about every half term.

Step 1: Highlight what the student knows (or not)

Students are given the topic progress sheet to look through in class (an example for the Approaches section of AQA Spec B is available to download here). We use one of these for each topic and the content is exactly the content of the specification. This ensures students are familiar with the potential wording of the exam questions.

Students are then given 3 different coloured highlighters. We encourage them to look carefully through the content and highlight (with one of the highlighters) parts of the content they feel they know well, and can evaluate in detail. This would be equivalent to an A grade skill level.

They then do the same with the second colour highlighter and identify which areas they know reasonably well. That should equate to a B/C standard.

The final colour should be used for areas they only have a basic understanding of, so this would gain them a D or E grade in the exam.

Step 2: Identify areas to focus on

Students are then asked to see what the predominant colour is, that should give them the sense of what they will get in that topic (although of course it depends on the questions set). They can at least target their revision wisely by tackling their problem areas first.

Step 3: Identify areas teachers need to focus on

We collect the sheets in from the students and look at them to see if we, as teachers, need to target any areas specifically. Patterns of areas where classes are less confident can occur and that helps us target any revision we might do with them. We then hand the sheet back to the students for them to put it in their files.

The system works and helps show areas where progress is less good. We’ve also found it to be teacher and student friendly. It’s also OFSTED friendly and the sheets can be compiled really quite quickly... always a bonus!

Eleanor Hills

Subject Leader Psychology and Sociology

Roundhay School

Secondary History - The White Slave Trade

2012-02-24T08:00:00.000Z

We all teach about the triangular slave trade, but how many of us teach about the White Slave Trade?

In June 1636, seven boats fishing off the Cornish coast were taken by the "Turks" and their crews, around 50 men in total, and were carried away as captives. The same Turkish vessels had just previously taken 5 boats off the fishing port of Looe. The men that put to sea were never seen again. This was only one of many examples of the actions of Barbary Pirates, from Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli who, for several hundred years, raided shipping and coastal towns across Europe for slaves. Admiralty records show, between 1609 and 1616, 466 British ships were attacked in this way. It is estimated that, between 1580 and 1680, nearly one million European men, women and children were captured and taken into slavery by Muslim rulers.

Slaves were captured for work and for ransom. Those that survived the sea trip to North Africa were auctioned off on arrival. Men were often put to work in the galleys - capturing more slaves - and in mines; in hard manual labour. Life was often brutal and short. Women were often kept as servants or in harems. Samuel Pepys records in his diary in February 1661 spending an evening in a tavern talking to two men recently returned from slavery.

In 1645, the English Parliament was so concerned about the condition of slaves held there that they sent Edmund Casson to Algiers who managed to ransom 244 slaves. Arriving in September 1646, he paid about £40 per head for men, but women cost at least double that! From time to time naval expeditions were sent against the Pirates, and peace treaties were signed and broken. Charles II and his strong Navy were more successful in dealing with the problem. Tunis, for example, was bombarded in 1675, and Algiers made peace after similar bombardments in 1682, 1683 and 1688, and Tripoli in 1686. It was only after 1815 and the end of the Napoleonic Wars and a return to more peaceful conditions that the threat of the Barbary Pirates was finally removed.

Was it a race issue, or a religious issue, or a trade issue? Certainly the peak of the Barbary Pirates coincided with Muslim dominance in the Mediterranean, and the attraction was to capture Christian slaves to work for Muslim rulers. Their dominance also coincided with rivalries – both religious and political – between leading European powers. But it is a fascinating and fairly well documented episode that is rarely taught in schools.

Alf Wilkinson
CPD Manager for the Historical Association and previously National Strategist for Key Stage 3 History. Alf has over 30 years history teaching experience and was lead author for Collins Key Stage 3 History resources.

Secondary Business - News Quiz 23/02/12

2012-02-23T09:48:00.000Z

Here is this week's Business News Quiz! You can print off a Word version (with answers and weblinks) and use it with your classes.

You can download the Word file here.

Which bank has been fined £1.5m for being too slow to explain to customers whether investments were covered by a financial safety net?
Santander ( )
HSBC ( )
HBOS ( )
Lloyds TSB ( )
Which car companies shares have jumped 15% after the firm said it was in talks about possible "co-operations and alliances"?
VW ( )
BMW ( )
Peugeot ( )
Ford ( )
Banks paid out £1.9bn in compensation in 2011 for the mis-selling of PPI, according to the Financial Services Authority (FSA), what is PPI?
Protected payment insurance ( )
Payment protection insurance ( )
Personal payment insurance ( )
Protected peoples insurance ( )
Fashion retailer Peacocks has been sold, out of administration to Edinburgh Woollen Mill, saving 6,000 jobs, but how many jobs will still be lost?
2500 ( )
3100 ( )
2100 ( )
1500l ( )
Which bank has reported £2bn loss for2011, this week?
Virgin Money ( )
RBS ( )
HSBC ( )
Natwest ( )
…And the same bank is due to pay out how much in bonuses to its investment bankers?
£90m ( )
£190m ( )
£390m ( )
£290m ( )
Malaysian budget airline Air Asia has reported a 56% fall in fourth-quarter profit, they claim to have been hurt by what?
Higher fuel prices ( )
Holes in the wings of aircraft ( )
Fewer passengers ( )
Lower revenue ( )
Greece is braced for large protests against further budget cuts, following a bailout deal aimed at avoiding bankruptcy, worth how much?
100bn-euro ( )
30bn-euro ( )
10bn-euro ( )
130bn-euro ( )
Pinterest moves to address copyright fears this week, who are Pinterest?
An online shop selling pins ( )
A new tablet computer manufacture ( )
Social networking service ( )
A website for people who are interested in pins ( )
File-sharing site The Pirate Bay has said that it will adapt rather than die as it faces legal blocks in the UK. On Monday the High Court ruled that the site facilitates, what?
Internet dating ( )
Data protection infringement ( )
Copyright infringement ( )
Sharing of bank details ( )

Donna Jestin

Teacher of Business Studies Notre Dame College & Senior Examiner for AQA

Secondary Sociology - The weird and the wonderful!

2012-02-21T08:00:00.000Z

My main subject specialism is RE, and so in my second year of teaching when offered KS3 Geography or A2 Sociology of Religion I jumped at the chance to explore ‘religion’ with the students from an angle other than Philosophy of Religion and Ethics!

Our A2 sociologists are usually pretty eager, but sometimes the thought of a year of the ‘religion’ unit isn’t too appealing. However, along with the usual games and activities, the New Religious Movements (NRM) / New Age section is a total crowd pleaser! I tend to introduce them to as many weird and wonderful movements as possible, as I believe they need a broader perspective on what it means to be ‘religious’ in the 21st Century. These ideas also really complement the section on Postmodernism, Spiritual Shopping and the Religious Revival.

A few ideas:

Visit a local centre – ISKCON (http://iskcon.org/) are very accommodating here in Newcastle and I imagine they would be most places. They do charge £2 a head, but it is well worth it – especially since they don’t see themselves as a NRM (despite what our text book says!), so it gives the students a great example of how sociologists’ perceptions may be different to that of the actual subjects.
Video clips – BBC Learning Zone Broadband Class Clips has some great Peter Owen-Jones clips from his amazing ‘Around the World in 80 Faiths’ (search 'Peter Owen Jones' from the main page). I like his Tennessee Snake Handlers, New Age Spirituality in Brasilia, Rastafarianism – always gets a good discussion going, especially the snakes!
Again, from ‘Around the World in 80 Faiths’ (youtube have the episodes in parts) try Summum in the US, paganism in Australia.
Mr Men books – divide class into pairs and assign each a Mr Men character based on NRMs – they need to produce a ‘book’ or Powerpoint to be ‘read’ to the class to illustrate their life in the movement, reasons why they joined etc. (E.g Little Miss Scientologist, Mr Summum, Mr Hare Krishna, Little Miss People’s Temple etc).
Talking heads – use www.voki.com to create avatars of different sociologists (or NRM members) who describe their views – students have to guess who they are as a starter. This is a little time-consuming to set up, but once you have them saved they can be handy for revision.
Bruce’s bonus ball – Bruce, a Unit 3 favourite, makes a simple starter or plenary. Give students a list of 5 key concepts for a topic and give them a few minutes to get ready, then simply throw a ball around and ask for explanations of each concept (I originally did this with Bruce on secularisation, but they get so sick of him throughout the unit that this cheesy gimmick works quite well, as does a picture of his face on a snooker ball on the board to accompany the game!)
Reflexology charts – Get students to draw around their foot, and having seen a reflexology chart, get them to create one with their notes on the New Age divided into relevant sections.

Overall, the Beliefs in Society unit is a great one for raising awareness of different expressions of spirituality, and hopefully really getting them thinking about what is out there…

Esther Zarifi
Prudhoe High School, Northumberland

Health and Social Care - What care workers can do when consent is witheld

2012-02-15T08:00:00.011Z

Why is consent sometimes withheld, and what can care workers do to establish consent?

This blog expands on issues around consent that candidates studying Levels 2 and 3 of the Health and Social Care Diploma, BTEC Health and Social Care, Dementia Care units and other courses relevant to the field of health and social care will encounter.

What is consent?
Consent is giving permission to do something. In health and social care settings it usually means that the individual gives consent to take part in an activity or to accept some kind of care or treatment.

It is important to remember that:

It is a legal requirement that consent is established before any intervention or care-giving activity takes place
Establishing consent is one way care workers can demonstrate they respect the individual and the individual’s personal dignity
The process of establishing consent is instrumental to developing trust between care worker and the individual
The individual is more likely to want to take part in an activity they have given permission for

Consent can be given in a number of ways: verbally, in writing or through actions. The individual might also allow another person to do something with or to them, perhaps by raising an arm to be supported when dressing, and thereby imply consent. Informed consent is given when the individual understands what they are consenting to.

However, it is not always possible to readily establish informed consent, and in some circumstances, consent might be withheld.

Why would consent be withheld?
Individuals might withhold their permission for an action to be performed because care workers:

Do not understand the individual’s needs, condition or capacity to make decisions
Do not have the relevant information or be able to impart information in a form that is understandable to the individual
Do not themselves understand available options, and potential or actual risks to the individual

What can care workers do to establish consent when it is withheld?

Ensure they understand and act on understanding of the health status or condition of the individual
Ensure they understand the individual’s needs and preferences
Ensure they understand the individual’s ability to make decisions
Ensure they have available the relevant information in a form that the individual can understand
Ensure they themselves understand the information and options open to the individual
Listen to the individual and observe for other responses

Conclusion
Consent is giving permission for something. Sometimes permission is withheld but there are actions that care workers can take to establish consent where it is withheld. These actions are in keeping with an approach to care that respects the individual, improves care and sits securely within the legal framework for practice.

John Rowe works for the Open University and has a wealth of practice experience in health and social care settings.

Primary - Using Dickens in History

2012-02-14T14:43:00.001Z

Activity One – What Happened During Dickens’ Lifetime?
Year 2 to Year 6

So much of history is difficult to understand because the context is difficult for children to grasp. As teachers we often try to give the children an idea by saying, ‘back when your grandparents were born’ or ‘after the Romans but before the Tudors.

If we try to teach the children about Charles Dickens, not only do the children have to get their heads around a funny looking old man who wrote stories but also try to place him in history.

A better way of doing this, especially with recent history, is to contextualise it with contemporary events.
Charles Dickens was born in 1812 and died in 1860. He lived through the heydays of the industrial revolution and the empire as well as the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign.

Using the span of his lifetime, ask the children to research and ‘fit in’ to it, the main events of the time. You can ask them to find the events themselves but the difficulty with that is that they are likely to come up with obscure ones that they won’t understand.

Instead look for around eight to ten important events and ask them to find out the dates and the story of the event and plot them on a timeline. It’s a small, but worthwhile exercise to ask them to draw Dickens at the age he would have been at the time. Some children think that events in someone’s lifetime happen when they are adults but events happen all the time, even when we are children.

Some suggestions are:
-    Dickens was three years old when Wellington won the Battle of Waterloo defeating Napoleon.
-    He was 13 years old when the first train carried its first paying passengers.
-    He was 25 when Victoria became queen
-    When he was 28, the first letter using a stamp was posted.
-    A year before he died, Isambard Brunel built a revolutionary new bridge linking Devon and Cornwall.
Use the website http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/interactive/timelines/british/index_embed.shtml to help you.
The children could also illustrate their timeline ready for display.

Activity Two – The Contemporaries of Dickens
Year 3 to Year 6

So much of history is taught through events but of equal interest are the people of history.
A great activity is to organise a ‘Dickensian’ evening and ‘invite’ Charles Dickens and his famous contemporaries to it.

Each child should be encouraged to research famous people who were alive at the same time as Dickens such as Napoleon, Wellington, Victoria, Brunel, Peel and more.

They can then choose who they want to be and must research the person and arrange for a suitable costume.
Invite parents along to the evening at which the children can introduce themselves before mingling with parents as their character ‘in role’.

Done very well, the activity can also act as a battle of egos and if the characters would have met in real life, give an indication of their interaction.

Activity Three – The Industrial Revolution
Year 4 to Year 6

The subject matter for many of Charles Dickens’ work was the living conditions and poverty of the people who were affected by the industrial revolution. Again, out of context, children often fail to understand why the people were poor or how they had got into that situation.

For that reason it’s worthwhile finding out a little about the industrial revolution and its effect on the people of Britain.

The best way to do it is by flow chart as it’s very much a story of cause and effect.
Write the key facts of the industrial revolution on sets of cards, post it notes or as notes on an interactive white board and together try to order them using arrows to indicate cause and effect.

Key facts to include are:
-    New farming methods make large scale farming more profitable needing a smaller workforce.
-    New or more efficient forms of power developed, reducing workload.
-    New machinery invented which can vastly increase output whilst reducing labour.
-    Greater demand for manufactured products requiring larger workforce.
-    Growing markets through the empire requiring more products.
-    Development of cities
-    Child labour
-    Growth of schools
-    Migration from country to city
-    Emigration to new countries

The exercise is a good one for developing the important notion that in history every cause has an effect and that often, several link together and will help the pupils in future historical investigations to understand why some events happened.

Activity Four
Year 3 to Year 6

The subject of this set of activities is the great novelist Charles Dickens and it wouldn’t be right to work on the topic without an understanding of the man.

We are going to do a biography of the man but in the format of ‘Did you know…’
This way, instead of a long piece of writing all we need from the children are some facts about the man, written as sentences, or at most, short paragraphs. We’ll put up a life sized picture of him then append the facts around the picture.

Other children in the school will be able to find out more about him just by reading one or two facts as they pass the display.

Give the children different material to use to research the facts including books, encyclopaedias and the internet. Whilst the children will think of using books as a bit archaic, it’s useful to practise a range of research skills rather than simply type a question into a search engine.

Dave Lewis
Primary teacher

Primary - Using Charles Dickens in Drama

2012-02-14T12:29:00.002Z

Activity One – Speaking and Listening
Year 4 to Year 6

The works of Dickens can seem inaccessible to many, adults included, but by taking them bit by bit, children can get an understanding of the characters and the plot. Select some passages from Dickens’ novels and discuss what is happening in them with the children. Talk about the feelings of the characters and where appropriate, how they interact with each other.

You can find many passages to choose from in the free download at:
http://www.archive.org/stream/pocketdickenspa00unkngoog#page/n36/mode/2up

Passage 1

Joe bought a roll and reduced his purse to the condition (with a difference) of that celebrated purse of Fortunatus, which, whatever were its favoured owner’s necessities, had one unvarying amount in it. In these real times, when all the fairies are dead and buried, there are still a great many purses which possess that quality. The sum total they contain is expressed in arithmetic by a circle and whether it be added to or multiplied by its own amount, the result of the problem is more easily stated than any known figures.

Passage 2

She was dressed in rich materials - satins, and lace, and silks - all of white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long white veil dependent from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was white. Some bright jewels sparkled on her neck and on her hands, and some other jewels lay sparkling on the table. Dresses less splendid than the dress she wore, and half-packed trunks, were scattered about. She had not quite finished dressing, for she had but once shoe on - the other was on the table near her hand - her veil was but half arranged, her watch and chain were not put on, and some lace for her bosom lay with those trinkets, and with her handkerchief, and gloves, and some flowers, and a prayer-book, all confusedly heaped about the looking glass.

It was not in the first few moments as I saw these things, though I saw more of them in the first moments that might be supposed. But I saw that everything within my view which ought to be white, had been white long ago, and had lost its lustre, and was faded and yellow. I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes. I saw that the dress had been put upon the rounded figure of a young woman, and that the figure upon which it now hung loose had shrunk to skin and bone. Once, I had been taken to see some ghastly waxwork at the fair, representing I know not what impossible personage lying in state. Once I had been taken to one of our old marsh churches to see a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress that had been dug out of a vault under the church pavement. Now, waxwork and skeleton seemed to have dark eyes that moved and looked at me. I should have cried out, if I could. (Great Expectations. Ch.8. p.67)

Passage 3

Before Oliver had time to look round, Sikes had caught him under the arms; and in three or four seconds he and Toby lay on the grass on the other side. Sikes followed directly. And they stole cautiously towards the house.

And now for the first time, Oliver, well-nigh mad with grief and terror, saw that housebreaking and robbery, if not murder, where the objects of the expedition. He clasped his hands together, and involuntarily uttered a subdued exclamation of horror. A mist came before his eyes; the cold sweat stood upon his ashy face; on his limbs failed him; and he sank upon his knees.

'Get up!' murmured Sikes, trembling with rage, and drawing the pistol from his pocket; 'Get up or I'll strew your brains upon the grass.'

'Oh! For God's sake let me go!' cried Oliver; 'let me run away and die in the fields. I will never come near London; never, never! Oh! pray have mercy on me, and do not make me steal. For the love of all the bright Angels that rest in Heaven, have mercy upon me!'

The man to whom this appeal was made, swore a dreadful oath, and had cocked the pistol, when Toby, striking it from his grasp, placed his hand upon the boy's mouth, and dragged him to the house. (Oliver Twist Ch.22. p.211)

Passage 4

"Lay your arm out on the back of the sofa, my dear boy, and I'll sit down here, and get the bandage off so gradually that you shall not know when it comes. I was speaking of Provis. Do you know, Handel, he improves?"

"I said to you I thought he was softened when I last saw him."
"So you did. And so he is. He was very communicative last night, and told me more of his life. You remember his breaking off here about some woman that he had had great trouble with. Did I hurt you?"
I had started, but not under his touch. His words had given me a start.
"I had forgotten that, Herbert, but I remember it now you speak of it."
"Well! He went into that part of his life, and a dark wild part it is. Shall I tell you? Or would it worry you just now?"
"Tell me by all means. Every word." . . .
. . . "It seems," said Herbert, "- there's a bandage off most charmingly, and now comes the cool one - makes you shrink at first, my poor dear fellow, don't it. But it will be comfortable presently - it seems that the woman was a young woman, and a jealous woman, and a revengeful woman; revengeful, Handel, to the last degree."
"To what last degree?"
"Murder - does it strike too cold on that sensitive place?"
"I don't feel it. How did she murder? Whom did she murder?"
"Why, the deed may not have merited quite so terrible a name," said Herbert, "but she was tried for it, and Mr Jaggers defended her, and the reputation of that defence first made his name known to Provis. It was another and a stronger woman who was the victim, and there had been a struggle - in a barn. Who began it, or how fair it was, or how unfair, may be doubtful, but how it ended is certainly not doubtful, for the victim was found throttled."
"Was the woman brought in guilty?"
"No, she was acquitted. My poor Handel, I hurt you!"
"It is impossible to be gentler, Herbert. Yes? What else?"
(Great Expectations Ch.50. p.435-6)
Dickens was not only a great author but also a great performer and he was regularly asked to give readings of his work. Now you can ask the children how the passages should be read and encourage them to have a go. You can set a passage for homework for the children to practise and then perform to the class or in assembly.

Activity Two – Performance
Year 3 to Year 6

This year, many schools, like us, will be tempted to perform a play by Dickens. We’re looking at doing Oliver, mainly because the script of the musical by Lionel Bart has been available to schools for some time in a simpler format. Other plays are available such as Great Expectations and David Copperfield as well as more topical ones such as The Chimes and A Christmas Carol.

Doing a whole play is a little daunting so why not consider doing a series of vignettes from several Dickens’ plays. Choose excerpts from around four plays, you can choose more than one extract from each. The benefits of choosing this route are that you can select the well-known parts, adding interest for your audience as well as having the chance that the children will be familiar with them. It also won’t matter so much that you may be performing a part of A Christmas Carol in July!

Activity Three – Characterisation
Year 4 to Year 6

Dickens’ is celebrated for the characterisation in his novels. Not only are they fully painted but they are historically and socially accurate portraits of characters that fit into their roles in the stories.

This activity is similar to the first except that the pupils need to read the descriptions of the characters in the novels or passages from them and decide how the character should be played.

Using video of performances from adaptations is useful here so that the pupils can see characters such as Pip, Oliver, Fagin etc. and how they are portrayed according to their character.

Give the children a character that they need to perform. Ask them to research from the internet who these characters were and what they were like under the headings as follows:

Character
Age
Gender
Liked/disliked
Happy/sad
Good/bad
Rich/poor
Quiet/loud

This should give them a good idea of the personality of the character and inform their performance.
Now give them an extract of dialogue for their character, playing the other character in the piece yourself and encourage them to get into role. Good characters to use are Miss Haversham, Scrooge, Abel Magwitch, Fagin and Bob Cratchit amongst others.

An extension to this would be to look at the names of the more unusually christened characters from Dickens as suggested in the literacy activities and devise their own characterisation based on their names. What would Anne Chickenstalker be like or Edwin Drood?

Ask the children to write their own monologue or dialogue expressing their views on what the character may be like.

Activity Four – Where next?
Year 6

We have all read a book and either predicted how it might end or had hopes for how we want it to end and this activity tries to develop the skill in children.

I like this activity and have used it several times with different authors. It encourages children to think about the story they’ve read so far and how they think the story may continue or end.
Read passages from Dickens’ books, you can use the ones I’ve suggested earlier. Talk to the children about what may have led up to the extract and then encourage them to think of a way it would continue.
This time ask them to write the continuation as a play script and after reading out the passage they’ve worked with, continue it as a performance piece using their own work.

After they’ve all performed their work, tell them how Charles Dickens continued his version and discuss which was the better idea and why.

Dave Lewis
Primary teacher

Primary - Using Charles Dickens in PSHE

2012-02-14T12:26:00.003Z

Activity One - Child Poverty
Year 3 to Year 6

Child poverty was a major problem in the Victorian era, something that Charles Dickens knew all too well for himself having been sent to a workhouse after his father was put in a debtor’s prison. Many of his works use his own experience to inform the writing of such characters as David Copperfield, Oliver Twist and Pip. Child poverty is something that still affects Britain and the world today and this activity links the problem of two periods of history through one organisation, Barnado’s.

Gather together resources such as the description of the lives of Pip, David Copperfield and Oliver Twist and details on the lives of poor people in Victorian England including debtor’s prisons and workhouses. Ask the children to read the descriptions and imagine life under those conditions. Now read the history of Barnado’s or better still, invite a local representative into school to talk to the class about their work. You’ll discover the transition over the century and a half of their work in the kind of assistance they give but the underlying problems are the same.

After the presentation, ask the children what they think poverty means in Britain and what the effects of it are? Do a written comparison of the two ages and what the remedies to poverty are under each system.
Ask them to say what the things are that humans need to be able to survive and thrive. How many of those are missing from poor children’s lives? If appropriate you could undertake a fundraising event for Barnado’s.

Activity Two – Doing the Right Thing
Year 1 to Year 6

The thread running through Oliver Twist is of a good boy who is led astray by bad influences and sometimes necessity. Use a synopsis, abridged version or selected parts of the story to illustrate these events. A good plot summary is available in Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Twist

When we’ve done this activity in school we highlighted the events and made decision trees from them looking at how the decision Oliver made affected him and discussed what may have happened if he’d made a different decision.

It is interesting to listen to the children’s ideas of how events unfolded and we often have divided opinions on whether what Oliver did was right or wrong.
When you have completed this part of the activity, ask the children to say or anonymously write down examples of where they have been faced with choosing between right and wrong saying what influenced their decision and how it turned out.

Activity Three – Bullying
Year 1 to Year 6

In several of Charles Dickens’ books, characters which include children and adults are bullied by others.
Use examples from Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby or Bob Cratchit in A Christmas Carol to illustrate the effect of bullying. These examples come from books written around 150 years ago but are based on the experiences of Charles Dickens himself or of people he saw in his work.

Ask the children to identify the form of bullying which ranges from belittling someone to making them do something for someone with the threat of violence of they don’t comply or pure physical and mental bullying in the case of Nicholas Nickelby.

Ask the children if they can identify any forms of bullying that they’ve encountered in their lives that compare to some of the examples in Dickens’ work.

Find out from each story what happened to the bullies and what happened to the people being bullied. Did they receive help from anyone to overcome the bully? In each of the Dickens’ tales, the victim was triumphant in the end whilst the bully failed to prosper.

The stories illustrate how bullying is not only destructive for the victim but also for the bully.

Dave Lewis
Primary teacher

Primary - extract from Oliver Twist

2012-02-14T12:24:00.000Z

For use with the Literacy activity in the previous blog post

The room in which the boys were fed was a large stone hall, with a copper at one end; out of which the master, dressed in an apron for the purpose, and assisted by one or two women, ladled the gruel at mealtimes. Of this festive composition the boys had one porringer and no more – except on occasions of public rejoicing when he had two ounces and a quarter of bread besides.

The bowls never wanted washing. The boys polished them with their spoons again till they shone again; and when they had performed this operation (which never took very long, the spoons being nearly as large as the bowls), they would sit staring at the copper, with such eager eyes, as if they could have devoured the very bricks of which it was composed; employing themselves meanwhile, in sucking their fingers most assiduously, with the view of catching up any stray splashes of gruel that might have been cast thereon.

Boys have generally excellent appetites. Oliver Twist and his companions suffered the tortures of slow starvation for three months. At last they got so voracious and wild with hunger, that one boy who was tall for his age, hinted darkly to his companions that unless he had another basin of gruel, he was afraid he might some night happen to eat the boy sleeping next to him, who happened to be a weakly youth of tender age. He had a wild, hungry eye and they implicitly believed him. A council was held; lots were cast for who should walk up to the master after supper that evening and ask for more; and it fell to Oliver Twist.

The evening arrived; the boys took their places. The master, in his cook’s uniform, stationed himself at the copper; his pauper assistants ranged themselves beside him; the gruel was served out; and a long grace was said over short commons. The gruel disappeared; the boys whispered to each other and winked at Oliver; while his next neighbours nudged him. Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said, somewhat alarmed at his own temerity,-

“Please, sir, I want some more.”

The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed with stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds; and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralyzed with wonder, the boys with fear.

“What!” said the master at length, in a faint voice.

“Please, sir,” replied Oliver, “I want some more.”

The master aimed a blow at Oliver’s head with the ladle, pinioned him in his arms, and shrieked aloud for the beadle.

Primary - Literacy Activities for Dickens

2012-02-14T12:22:00.004Z

Activity One – Beat the Deadline
Year 2 to Year 6

This activity helps pupils to write to a deadline including structuring and editing. It encourages them to take notes and then expand upon them.

Charles Dickens early career was as a journalist and like journalists throughout history, he had to work to a deadline. At a certain time of day the newspaper had to be printed, no matter what or it wouldn’t be out on the streets in time for sale the next day. Everyone had to work to a deadline; the journalists collecting and writing the story, the editors who had to check and agree the stories, the typesetters who got the printing plates ready and the printers who got the presses rolling to produce the daily news.

Children are occasionally given the chance to work to a deadline – you may say ‘I need this story finished by break’ or ‘I want you to do twenty questions in the next hour’. The notion is sometimes a little abstract to some children because they can’t see why it must be done by then but with this activity and the explanation around it, they’ll soon see why deadlines can be important.

Introduction:

Tell the children about Charles Dickens’ life as a reporter and journalist and discuss what his typical day may be like. You may have suggestions such as:

-    He sees something happening like a fire or a robbery
-    He asks other people what they saw and may interview those affected.
-    He’ll go to his office and write the story
-    Someone will check what he has written
-    He’ll find a picture to go with it
-    The story will be printed

Tell the children that they are going to work like they were Charles Dickens and that you will be their ‘editor’ keeping track of time. You can set the children up in groups and give them the name of a newspaper they work for. Set up a news ‘event’ which can either be a trivial one for younger pupils or a more serious issue for older ones. We’ve used a cake left on a teacher’s car; how did it get there, who put it there, who saw anything? etc. If possible, get other members of staff to act as eyewitnesses or a ‘victim’ who can give the children information. You could also report on a school sports fixture, a charity or school event or anything that is appropriate to your school.

Tell the children what you require of them in terms of the writing, the length of the piece and the deadline. Tell them that they can visit the scene of the event they’re reporting on (as long as it’s school based!) and interview eyewitnesses, victims or participants. If you want to really test them you can throw in new information for the older journalists and ask them to update or amend their story.

Activity Two – What’s in a Name?
Year 2 to Year 6

This activity helps pupils to develop characters for their stories.
Dickens uses some marvellously creative names for his characters, many of which tell a lot about their looks and character. Use a selection from his books and ask the children to sort them under the headings of good or bad people. Ask then to explain why they put them under the particular headings.

Next you can ask them to draw how they would imagine the characters looked before comparing them to the illustrations of the time. Not all characters were illustrated but many were and plates of the illustration are available on Google Images. Try this list…

Mr M’Choakumchild – Hard Times
The Cheeryble Brothers – Nicholas Nickleby
Anne Chickenstalker – The Chimes
Tiny Tim Cratchit – A Christmas Carol
Creakle – David Copperfield
Canon Crisparkle – The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Mrs Cruncher – A Tale of Two Cities
Captain Cuttle – Dombey and Son
Lady Honoraria Dedlock – Bleak House
Abel Magwitch – Great Expectations

There are plenty more suggestions to be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dickensian_characters
Now give the children brief descriptions of some new characters and ask them to come up with a suitable name for them. Select the best of the children’s ideas and for the next lesson ask them to pair the names up with the description.

Activity 3 – Writing from a Different Age
Year 5 and 6

This activity helps children to understand the different styles of writing that have been used over the centuries and the changing use and meaning of words.

The activity is quite difficult but can be very rewarding. Often, especially in history, children are asked to write as a character from the period but so often their choice of language reflects their existence in the modern age which then detracts from the content of their work. Working on a piece written in contemporary language helps children to understand not only the meaning of different styles of writing but also how language has changed over the centuries.

Use the extract from Oliver Twist and begin by reading it through. Highlight all the unfamiliar words and discuss what they mean in the context of the passage. Ask the children which words we would use these days to replace them.

You can then go on to do a verbal comprehension on the passage or in written form using questions such as:

1.    What aspect of daily life is being described in the text?
2.    Where do you think the piece of writing was set?
3.    How did the children decide who would go up and ask for more?
4.    Why do you think they get one of their number to go up and ask?
5.    What was the reaction from the master?

You’ll need to adjust the complexity of the questions depending on the age and ability of the children but try to draw out of them an understanding of the scenario and how it may differ from a school dining room today.

Activity 4 – Writing for a Different Era
Year 5 and 6

After working on a piece of writing completed in Victorian times, the children should have a good idea of how the language differed and how the author used objects and scenarios common to their era.
This activity is quite difficult as it relies on children focusing completely on a past time. It will help them practise sticking to a theme in a piece of creative writing.
It’s best to start with a piece of descriptive writing:

Ask the children to research information for a street scene from Victorian times. They should consider transport, buildings, people, their dress and occupation. From the information they have collected, ask them to describe a typical street scene. You’ll have to remind them to stick only to what they have researched as the temptation is to add in bits which usually end up as being out of context. Those who performed well on the comprehension exercise looking at an extract of Victorian writing may be able to adapt the style of their writing similarly.

Activity One – Beat the Deadline
Year 2 to Year 6

This activity helps pupils to write to a deadline including structuring and editing. It encourages them to take notes and then expand upon them.

Charles Dickens early career was as a journalist and like journalists throughout history, he had to work to a deadline. At a certain time of day the newspaper had to be printed, no matter what or it wouldn’t be out on the streets in time for sale the next day. Everyone had to work to a deadline; the journalists collecting and writing the story, the editors who had to check and agree the stories, the typesetters who got the printing plates ready and the printers who got the presses rolling to produce the daily news.

Children are occasionally given the chance to work to a deadline – you may say ‘I need this story finished by break’ or ‘I want you to do twenty questions in the next hour’. The notion is sometimes a little abstract to some children because they can’t see why it must be done by then but with this activity and the explanation around it, they’ll soon see why deadlines can be important.

Introduction:
Tell the children about Charles Dickens’ life as a reporter and journalist and discuss what his typical day may be like. You may have suggestions such as:

-    He sees something happening like a fire or a robbery
-    He asks other people what they saw and may interview those affected.
-    He’ll go to his office and write the story
-    Someone will check what he has written
-    He’ll find a picture to go with it
-    The story will be printed

Tell the children that they are going to work like they were Charles Dickens and that you will be their ‘editor’ keeping track of time. You can set the children up in groups and give them the name of a newspaper they work for. Set up a news ‘event’ which can either be a trivial one for younger pupils or a more serious issue for older ones. We’ve used a cake left on a teacher’s car; how did it get there, who put it there, who saw anything? etc. If possible, get other members of staff to act as eyewitnesses or a ‘victim’ who can give the children information. You could also report on a school sports fixture, a charity or school event or anything that is appropriate to your school.

Tell the children what you require of them in terms of the writing, the length of the piece and the deadline. Tell them that they can visit the scene of the event they’re reporting on (as long as it’s school based!) and interview eyewitnesses, victims or participants. If you want to really test them you can throw in new information for the older journalists and ask them to update or amend their story.

Activity Two – What’s in a Name?
Year 2 to Year 6

This activity helps pupils to develop characters for their stories
Dickens uses some marvellously creative names for his characters, many of which tell a lot about their looks and character. Use a selection from his books and ask the children to sort them under the headings of good or bad people. Ask then to explain why they put them under the particular headings.
Next you can ask them to draw how they would imagine the characters looked before comparing them to the illustrations of the time. Not all characters were illustrated but many were and plates of the illustration are available on Google Images. Try this list…

Mr M’Choakumchild – Hard Times
The Cheeryble Brothers – Nicholas Nickleby
Anne Chickenstalker – The Chimes
Tiny Tim Cratchit – A Christmas Carol
Creakle – David Copperfield
Canon Crisparkle – The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Mrs Cruncher – A Tale of Two Cities
Captain Cuttle – Dombey and Son
Lady Honoraria Dedlock – Bleak House
Abel Magwitch – Great Expectations

There are plenty more suggestions to be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dickensian_characters
Now give the children brief descriptions of some new characters and ask them to come up with a suitable name for them. Select the best of the children’s ideas and for the next lesson ask them to pair the names up with the description.

Activity 3 – Writing from a Different Age
Year 5 and 6

This activity helps children to understand the different styles of writing that have been used over the centuries and the changing use and meaning of words.
The activity is quite difficult but can be very rewarding. Often, especially in history, children are asked to write as a character from the period but so often their choice of language reflects their existence in the modern age which then detracts from the content of their work. Working on a piece written in contemporary language helps children to understand not only the meaning of different styles of writing but also how language has changed over the centuries.

Use the extract from Oliver Twist and begin by reading it through. Highlight all the unfamiliar words and discuss what they mean in the context of the passage. Ask the children which words we would use these days to replace them.

You can then go on to do a verbal comprehension on the passage or in written form using questions such as:

1.    What aspect of daily life is being described in the text?
2.    Where do you think the piece of writing was set?
3.    How did the children decide who would go up and ask for more?
4.    Why do you think they get one of their number to go up and ask?
5.    What was the reaction from the master?

You’ll need to adjust the complexity of the questions depending on the age and ability of the children but try to draw out of them an understanding of the scenario and how it may differ from a school dining room today.

Activity 4 – Writing for a Different Era
Year 5 and 6

After working on a piece of writing completed in Victorian times, the children should have a good idea of how the language differed and how the author used objects and scenarios common to their era.
This activity is quite difficult as it relies on children focusing completely on a past time. It will help them practise sticking to a theme in a piece of creative writing.

It’s best to start with a piece of descriptive writing:
Ask the children to research information for a street scene from Victorian times. They should consider transport, buildings, people, their dress and occupation. From the information they have collected, ask them to describe a typical street scene. You’ll have to remind them to stick only to what they have researched as the temptation is to add in bits which usually end up as being out of context. Those who performed well on the comprehension exercise looking at an extract of Victorian writing may be able to adapt the style of their writing similarly.

Dave Lewis
Primary Teacher

Primary - Charles Dickens

2012-02-14T12:20:00.000Z

Charles Dickens is one of the most easily recognised English authors, both physically and from the style and content of his work. Born 200 years ago this month, he raised the profile of the appalling conditions that Britain’s poor lived in through his novels and plays.
Whilst the quality and readability of his work can in great part be put down to the genius of the man and his imagination, it was the experience he gained, first-hand, of such conditions that infused his work with credibility and tenacity.

A BBC news website article recently summed up Dickens’ contributions to the world of entertainment and spoke of how character comedy derived from his works and their performance. Most of his novels and plays deal with very serious issues but within each there are many characters who are written as caricatures of themselves and others on one hand are to be despised or pitied but because of the way they are written, the can also be laughed at.

Dickens also gave us what the BBC called ‘meaningful names’ an idea that makes for a great lesson. Consider Mr M’Choakumchild, written as a teacher in Hard Times. One has only to read the name to know what kind of character he is and authors since have used similar devices; consider Dahl’s Miss Honey or Miss Trunchbull in Matilda!

There’s even the notion that the idea of Christmas celebration as we know it today came from Dickens. History records that prior to the period, Christmas passed by barely noticed and that even in those days, a white Christmas was as much of a rarity as it is today.

The whole country will celebrate the bicentennial of his birth on February 7th with a plethora of events including new adaptations of his work, readings, exhibitions and more. It’s only fitting then that schools also join in to mark the contribution he made to British literature and our cultural heritage.
Many schools, ours included, are using Oliver as a summer production, whilst teachers are planning to incorporate a topic on Dickens into their curriculum.

The difficulty arises in finding suitable material to work with, especially for younger children. Abridging Dickens work often means losing a lot of what makes it special. I’ve found that the best way is to use small chunks of the stories, selecting parts that are about the child characters and working with those.
Accompanying this article are several activities you may decide to incorporate in any plans you have already made or you can use the set as a topic pack to cover the week around the anniversary. We’ve tried to include activities for younger children, despite the complexity of the material, and hope that you find the material useful.
Dave Lewis
Primary teacher

Secondary English - Grammar Rocks!

2012-02-13T08:00:00.001Z

‘Mr Morton is the subject of the sentence, and what the predicate says he does.’

So says the catchy Grammar Rock anthem. Never heard of it? Then try typing Mr Morton into Google and see what you get. Yes, he really is that famous!

Of course, you may be questioning the value of a 1993 U.S. elementary school cartoon voiced by a Frank Sinatra sound-alike – especially if you happen to teach secondary school English in a tough UK inner-city comprehensive to bored, pseudo-sophisticated teenagers who are far more street-smart than the hapless Mr Morton could ever hope to be. Well, it’s a starting point – an eye-catching and fun introduction into the murky world of sentence grammar.

But why bother with such a last-century approach, especially when the current curriculum is already jam-packed with hopelessly ambitious aims and objectives? Well, regardless of whatever GCSE English syllabus you are following, students need to be able to write grammatically correct sentences and use a range of sentence structures for effect, especially if they want to achieve the higher grades. So if they don’t have the basics of sentence grammar, how are you going to convey this to them?

You could always fall back on such standard first-draft comments as: ‘You need to vary your sentence openings more’. Or you could go all out for a first-rate fudge with the catch-all: ‘You must use a wider range of sentence structures!’ But this is all rather vague and meaningless to a student who has no idea what a sentence structure actually is. So how much should you tell them? In all honesty, as much as they need to know AND as little as possible – just as much as is required for you to engage in a meaningful dialogue after you have proof-read a rough copy.

At the very least, you might teach them that:

A sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark – but, of course, usually with a full stop!
The most basic of all sentences is a simple sentence which contains one main clause.
A clause is a unit of meaning within a sentence.
A main (independent) clause is a complete unit of meaning.
A subordinate (dependent) clause is not a complete unit of meaning and, therefore, cannot stand on its own as a sentence.
As well as the simple sentence, there are also two other main sentence types: compound and complex.
A compound sentence consists of two main clauses joined by a coordinating connective (FANBOYS: For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So).
A complex sentence consists of one main clause and one or more subordinate clauses.
A very effective default sentence structure is a complex sentence consisting of two or three clauses.
This can then be complemented by a judicious use of dramatic simpler sentences, or richer more sophisticated longer sentences.
A very effective way to vary sentence openings is to alternate between a main clause, a dependent clause, a single word sentence opener and a short phrase sentence opener.
And why not throw in the occasional rhetorical question for effect?
It’s also probably well worth continually emphasising that they should strive to combine all of the above with a precise and powerful vocabulary.

Of course, there is no need to teach all of this in one go; it seems an appropriate theme for a year’s worth of starters!

So what will the end product look like when it’s all been assembled? That is the acid test. Hopefully, you will be thrilled with the result, especially if your students have also learned how to use commas to demarcate clauses where necessary. Assuming that all of the above has been successfully acquired, you should certainly have an extensive array of sentence openings. This newly acquired mastery of sentence grammar might well inspire your students to even dizzier heights and the ensuing sense of personal achievement could ultimately be compounded by dazzling GCSE grades. Finally, if you have also managed to introduce them to the seductive art of the embedded clause, their future output may even look a lot like this!

QUICK QUIZ BASED ON THE SIX SENTENCES IN THE ABOVE PARAGRAPH:
1. Which two sentences begin with a single word sentence opener followed by a comma?
2. Which sentence is a rhetorical question?
3. Which sentence consists of only a main clause?
4. Which sentence contains an embedded clause?
5. Which sentence is a compound sentence?
6. Which sentence begins with a dependent clause?

ANSWERS:
1. Three and six
2. One
3. Two
4. Six
5. Five
6. Four

COMPLEMENTARY RESOURCES
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk-XA5pKkGE The Tale of Mr Morton – original version
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj4H3Ioxs6s The Tale of Mr Morton – rap version by Skee-Lo

Peter Morrisson
English Teacher and author

Secondary Business - News Quiz 09/02/12

2012-02-09T09:43:00.000Z

Here is this week's Business News Quiz! To use this resource with your own A Level classes, print off the Word version (which includes answers and weblinks).

Download the Word file here.

Mining firm Xstrata has formally announced plans to merge with Glencore, the world's biggest commodity trader, how much is the deal worth?
$90bn ( )
$100bn ( )
$80m ( )
$70m ( )
Which TV & broadband company reports £48m profit in fourth quarter of 2011?
Talk Talk ( )
Virgin media ( )
BT ( )
Sky ( )
Which low cost airline has reported a net profit of 14.9m euros ($19.6m; £12.5m) in the last three months of 2011, thanks to higher fares and better weather than the same period a year earlier?
Flybe ( )
Jet 2 ( )
Easyjet ( )
Ryanair ( )
Who with revenues of 480m euros (£401m) topped the Deloitte league table of the world's richest football clubs for the seventh straight year?
Real Madrid ( )
Manchester United ( )
Bayern Munich ( )
Arsenal ( )
Why has aircraft maker Airbus has been ordered to check the wings of all A380 superjumbo planes currently in service?
Cracks in them ( )
Wrong metal used ( )
Adhere to H&S measures ( )
Holes in them ( )
Diageo has reported a rise in half-year profits as demand for its global brands continues to grow in emerging markets, in what industry do they operate?
Tobacco ( )
Drinks ( )
Commodities ( )
Mobile phones ( )
The chief executive of Lovefilm is to become head of childcare at which major retailer?
House of Fraser ( )
Mama’s & Papa’s ( )
kiddicare.com ( )
Mothercare ( )
Daily voucher company Groupon has reported an unexpected loss of how much?
$17.7m ( )
$22.7m ( )
$42.7m ( )
$32.7m ( )
A pay freeze for MPs, voted through in the Commons last year, will be extended until when?
2015/16 ( )
2014/15 ( )
2013/14 ( )
2012/13 ( )
The company behind the Superdry fashion chain has seen its shares fall by how much after it scaled back its profit forecast for the year?
15% ( )
12% ( )
10% ( )
17% ( )

Donna Jestin

Teacher of Business Studies Notre Dame College & Senior Examiner for AQA

Secondary History - Victorian Baby Farms

2012-02-08T08:00:00.000Z

Sometimes something you read can open up a completely different way of looking at things!

Whilst reading Mary Hooper’s new novel ‘Velvet,’ which is mainly about Victorian spiritualism, I came across a reference to Amelia Dyer, who was hanged in 1896 for the murder of a baby. In the novel Velvet goes to a baby farm and steals a baby for her boss, to pretend it is a dead baby brought back to the real world by a spiritualist. Intrigued by Mary Hooper’s notes about baby farms I decided to look up Amelia Dyer’s case on Old Bailey Online [www.oldbaileyonline/org Case Reference Number: t18960518-451]

It turns out that Mrs Dyer had a previous form... a Bristol newspaper advert offering to adopt a child, for £10, provoked a mother to write to a ‘Mrs Harding’ and agree to hand over her illegitimate daughter and pay a one-off fee of £10 for her care. Within 10 days the baby was fished out of the River Thames at Reading, dead. Amelia Dyer had moved from slowly starving and neglecting babies in her care to actually murdering them. It is believed that, between 1879 and 1896 she may have been responsible for the death of over 400 infants! But how could she get away with it? By setting herself up in one place, putting adverts in the papers, moving on when things got a bit difficult, starting again somewhere else under a different name… it was hard for the police to catch up with her.

So what does this tell us about Victorian society? Life was virtually impossible for unmarried mothers, especially poor ones who had to ‘disappear’ to give birth and then find some way to look after the baby and go back to work. Unscrupulous people like Amelia Dyer would advertise and offer to adopt unwanted babies for a one-off fee, paid upfront, sometimes as much as £50 or more, plus baby clothes. Many baby farmers would have 6 or 8 or more young babies in their care, slowly dying of neglect or starvation. Patent medicines like ‘Godfrey’s Cordial,’ largely made up of opiates, were used to sedate babies and keep them quiet and listless. It was easy money if you could get away with it. Unmarried mothers were unlikely to make a fuss when they eventually received a letter announcing an unfortunate accident or death. And Amelia Dyer was not the only woman executed in Victorian Britain for baby farming deaths. What a great case study to create a debate about social conditions in Victorian Britain!

Secondary English - Post-it Power and Pupil Voice!

2012-02-07T08:00:00.002Z

I love a Post It. I’ll admit it. I also get to do the stationery order (oh the joys!) so I order the boring yellow ones but also all the hearts, thumbs up, cars and smiley faces. These are hoarded in my draw and whipped out at any opportunity. Now, give a Y10 boy a Post It and he is immediately going to draw something rude on it and stick it to his head. I don’t know why, but it is a fact. Once you have dealt with this and have clear expectations then the humble Post It can be one of your best learning tools.

The Post It Wall

In my room this is actually the whiteboard. During my lessons pupils are given a Post It to promote a learning dialogue between themselves and me. They are encouraged to write a note about something they learnt or are having difficulty with, encouraging pupil voice. This is stuck on the board and collected in at the end of the lesson; I stick the pile into my planner and have a look later that evening. The Post Its guides my next lesson, I may have a selection of comments that say ‘You are going to fast!’, ‘I am not sure about poetic devices’ or, the very touching ‘I need more help in lessons, I may look clever but I am not’. These notes then change the next lesson’s context and mean I can focus on what the class really needs. Equally, if I get lots of Post Its that say ‘I understand the use of foreshadowing now’ I know I can move on. Pupils may write their names on the Post Its or leave them anonymous, this allows less out going pupils to be heard. If you have especially shy pupils it is worth going around and collecting the Post Its yourself rather than displaying them.

You can also use the Post It Wall for questioning, for example ‘Tell me 2 things I can do to make your lessons better’, ‘What have you found the hardest today?’ ‘What would you like to learn more about next lesson?’

These simple sticky notes have really made a difference to my lessons. I know my pupils feel that their voice is heard and that they help contribute to their lessons, this also makes a difference to their behaviour and the atmosphere in the room becomes one of a team environment rather than ‘them and me’.

Joanna Fliski

Teacher of English, Media and Drama, Lliswerry High School

Secondary Business - BTEC Level 3

2012-02-06T08:00:00.000Z

Which businesses should I use for BTEC Level 3?

When writing an interesting and realistic assignment, it can be difficult to use the right businesses and organisations. Which ones are the best to use? Some may prefer to use businesses that boys ‘like’ and relate to, such as Apple or McDonalds, others may prefer businesses which give a range of resources and information.

I solve this issue by using Wimbledon Tennis Museum and Thorpe Park. They tick nearly all the boxes; fun, interesting, good venue for a trip, cross unit relevance and the boys like them!

Thorpe Park is a superb business to use. As part of the Merlin group, leading the way in theme park entertainment. The trip itself is easy to organise, with the student pack available on their website: (http://www.thorpepark.com/misc/student-pack.aspx).

The students can do some preliminary research before they go, perhaps writing questionnaires to give to staff, or investigating the size and scale of the business. During the day the students can attend pre-booked sessions on HR, Marketing and Promotion, ICT and Thorpe Park as a business. These give the students the exact information they need to complete the tasks in their assignment.

Thorpe Park can be used for a range of units especially:

Unit 1: The Business Environment
Unit 2: Business Resources
Unit 3: Introduction to Marketing
Unit 10: Market research in business
Unit 16: Human Resource Management in Business

Wimbledon Tennis Museum is an excellent contrast to Thorpe Park and offers the students an organisation they may hear and see a lot on television but one which they know relatively little about. A trip to Wimbledon gives the students access to a tour of the grounds (including centre court!) as well as visiting the museum itself. (http://www.wimbledon.com/visiting/education/secondary).

Specific talks from the staff can be booked and the students have enjoyed it each time I have been. The Marketing and Customer Service talks link nicely with Units 1, 2 and 3. Both trips are well priced and easy to access through public transport.

And the best bit? You will enjoy this as much as the students!

Mr A. Dean
Head of Business and Enterprise, The John Fisher School and author of Collins BTEC National Business resources

Simply take … A set of blank cards – A matter of opinion

2012-02-03T15:09:00.002Z

This is an activity that could be used to introduce the ideas of probability compared to likelihood.

The lesson before:

For a homework I asked students to take six cards (size A6 seems to work well) and to write on each of these an event that might or might not happen the following week – some of them will be fairly outlandish but that does not matter. I ask them to include one which they think
• will definitely not happen
• will definitely happen
• has an even chance of happening

The following lesson their cards are all gathered in. I add these cards to those that my other classes have produced before and so build up a stock – The more the merrier.
If I have not primed a few students to do this already for their homework, I include in the pack a few with the common events with a calculable probability such as
• I will throw a six on the first roll of my dice (I know it should be die but you choose)
• I will throw an even number on the first roll of my dice
• I will get a head when I flip a coin
• …

In the lesson:

Students work in small groups (I usually prefer threes as they seem to be more engaged).
I shuffle the, now fairly large, pack of cards and split them all between the groups (It does not matter if they do not have exactly the same number).

They need to
• draw a long likelihood scale with points for certain, evens and impossible marked clearly.
(In good weather (no rain and no wind) I do this outside in the playground)
• In a fixed amount of time they need to position as many of their cards in an appropriate place along this scale as they can. They hand in to you any that they were not able to position (isolate any with a predictable outcome to discuss at the end)
After the allotted time the groups move round to look at the work of the next group. They now remove any cards for which they disagree with the positioning along the scale, and hand them in to you. Repeat this until the groups have visited all the others.

Now go round and look at the cards that are still on the scale. These will usually be those that
• are impossible (although these are often removed as they come up with outlandish reasons why these things could happen)
• are certain
• events with a predictable outcome

I use the position of these cards as an introduction to probability.

Sue Briggs

Did you know? Notes from the History of Maths

2012-02-03T15:03:00.001Z

To infinity… and beyond

So says Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story and YES! there is something beyond infinity. In fact, there is an infinity of infinities of different sizes. This was the discovery of Georg Cantor (1845-1919). The idea of the size of infinity goes back, at least, to Galileo who puzzled over the paradox that there are fewer perfect squares (1, 4, 9, 16…) than natural numbers (1,2,3,4…) as some numbers are not included (2,3,5,6, 7, 8, 10…) but the set of perfect squares is the same size as the natural numbers as you can match them up (1 to 1, 2 to 4, 3 to 9, 4 to 16…). Galileo resolved this by arguing that, as far as infinite sets go, ‘size doesn’t matter’ and ideas of bigger and smaller don’t work.

Cantor rejected this and called infinite sets, such as the perfect squares, countable sets if they can be matched to natural numbers. He went on to show, by an ingenious proof, that the set of fractions is countable and so is the ‘same size’ as the natural numbers. He also proved that the set of real numbers was not countable and so is a different size. This makes sense of the infinite divisibility of the real number line: between any two real numbers there is an infinity of other numbers, and so the infinity of the real number line feels to be of a different size to the countable infinity of natural numbers. In fact, there are an infinity of infinities – called transfinite numbers.

Cantor was not celebrated in his lifetime. Poincaré wrote of the ‘grave disease infecting mathematics’ from Cantor’s work on set theory. His work was not published and his advancement was blocked. There were those who recognised the significance of his ideas. The German mathematician David Hilbert (1862-1943), in a celebrated lecture in 1900, set out the main mathematical problems for that century. The first was the Cantor Continuum Hypothesis. Cantor thought there was no set with size between that of the natural numbers and that of the real numbers but he didn’t prove this. It wasn’t until 1963 that Paul Cohen proved a surprising result: The continuum hypothesis can’t be proved either true or false – it is undecidable!

Don Hoyle
Mathematics Matters

Never mind the 40% rule - here comes 100%

2012-02-03T14:52:00.000Z

In December Ofqual confirmed that all GCSE science courses would move to all external assessment units being taken at the end of the course; this will take effect for courses being completed in 2014 onwards. (This means that next year’s Year 10 students could use modular assessment for their Year 10 course if it was ‘cashed in’ in June 2013, but terminal assessment for their Year 11 course).

Reactions to this are mixed. On the one hand, jaded subject leaders may be relieved that the logistical nightmare of organising module tests will be a thing of the past. Their reaction will probably be shared by other staff affected by the disruption they bring, in some cases compounded by the addition of re-sits. On the other hand, some schools know that a key driver in improving outcomes has been intervention triggered by module test scores. Watching the external assessment data of students close to a grade threshold constitutes effective tracking.

So what might we make of this in terms of pedagogical principles?

One of the ways in which teaching and learning has improved over the last few years has been the use of 'Assessment for Learning' and a key principle of this has been providing learners with feedback. A module test score of an E given to someone capable of getting a C is pretty powerful. It’s not a ‘mock’; it’s the real thing and for some students it’s both a wake-up call and an opportunity to then show what they can do. Some schools have made very good use of this and some students have benefitted as a result.

However, it can be argued that modular assessment is the enemy of progression. If you take a key idea like energy, it should develop in pupils' understanding throughout their science education. Having ‘done the test’ in that topic runs the risk of the teacher then backing off. One of the higher order skills in science is the ability to draw upon ideas from different aspects of science and apply them to an issue. Well designed synoptic papers could do this better than module tests.

Having said that, it seems likely that the terminal exams, at least in the short term, will simply be the module tests taken hard on the heels of each other. Triple scientists will certainly feel well examined at the end of their course. This is unsurprising, of course, given the short timescale of the change. Furthermore it is likely that quite a few students (and their teachers) will like the specific attribution of certain topics to certain papers. However, this may not be a long lived feature. The review of the National Curriculum may have implications for GCSEs when it takes effect and could precipitate a redrafting of specifications. Awarding organisations may then use this as an opportunity to combine external assessments into fewer larger papers; indeed, having a synoptic element would be a logical corollary of the ending of modular assessment.

However, one thing is clear. The skills that a teacher needs to manage an end assessed course will be at a premium. Periodically revisiting topics during a course, tracking progress using internal assessment and the astute identification of key aspects to revise will become even more important. High quality revision lessons need to bring the whole subject together. The most effective teachers will be not only the ones who can make new ideas exciting and engaging but can bring the whole course together at the end.

Ed Walsh

Chemistry - Soda

2012-02-03T14:45:00.002Z

The properties, uses and manufacture of the various forms of soda (sodium carbonate, sodium hydrogen carbonate, sodium hydroxide) are relevant to KS3 and KS4 topics involving alkalis, the chemical industry, pollution, and the alkali metals and their compounds.

If you ask a cook what “soda” is they will probably point you to baking soda (sodium hydrogen carbonate) which is used to make cakes light and fluffy. It gives off carbon dioxide gas when heated or reacted with acids such as lemon juice or tartaric acid. A quick search of the internet will provide lots more uses for baking soda. Baking soda can be bought from supermarkets. You are less likely today to find packets of washing soda (sodium carbonate). This was used to soften water for washing clothes and prevent soap forming scum. Caustic soda (sodium hydroxide) is present in many oven cleaners – it is a strong alkali that breaks down grease.

The usefulness of soda has been known for centuries. An 1805 document suggested many uses including using a teaspoon of soda to about a litre of water to wash containers used for milk or cream. The main use of soda was as the alkali used to turn fats and oils in to soap. For over two thousand years the source of this alkali was the ashes of plants.

In the Middle East or Arabia, a plant that grew in the salt marshes beside estuaries was used. The ashes were called “al-qili”. You can see how we got the term “alkali”. In the eighteenth century Britain and France competed for supplies of wood ash from Canada. When France lost control of Canada it was short of alkali for its soap industry. A prize was awarded for a new process. The winner was Nicolas Leblanc but in the confusion of the French Revolution he did not receive the prize and had his factories confiscated. An Irishman, James Muspratt, brought Leblanc’s process to the UK and in the 1820s lots of alkali factories sprang up on Merseyside, Teesside and Glasgow.

Merseyside was a very good site as it was a seaport, close to the Lancashire textile mills and had sources of salt, coal and limestone nearby. These three substances, with sulfuric acid, were the raw materials for the Leblanc process. Muspratt had trouble persuading soapmakers that his soda was as good as the alkali made from ashes but the business was soon doing well. The process was extremely wasteful however. Huge chimneys were built to disperse the vast quantities of hydrogen chloride gas given off and heaps of waste called “galligu” (calcium sulfide) piled up around the factories and the workers’ homes. The result was dreadful damage to the environment – no trees could survive within two miles of a factory – and to the health of the workers and their families.

The Alkali Acts of the 1860s improved matters but a new process helped. A Belgian, Ernest Solvay invented the process named after him and it was licensed to John Brunner and Ludwig Mond to produce soda in England. They built their factory in Cheshire and were soon producing soda more cheaply and cleanly than the Leblanc factories. The Solvay process uses salt and limestone as raw materials together with ammonia gas which is recovered and re-used. Soda is still produced on the same site and is now part of Tata Chemicals.

In the 1890s an electrolysis method was developed to manufacture caustic soda (sodium hydroxide). The Castner-Kellner process passes an electric current through sodium chloride solution using a mercury cathode. A factory was built at Runcorn on Merseyside and still runs today. Mercury cathode cells are being replaced by membrane cells to stop the escape of small amounts of poisonous mercury.

Activities
1 Compare the properties of baking soda, washing soda and caustic soda. Test a solution of each with an indicator and with pH paper. Find out the effect of adding an acid (lemon juice or hydrochloric acid) to each of the solutions.
(Use 0.5 mol.dm-3 solutions of each, and wear goggles as the solutions, particularly caustic soda are irritants)

2 Make some alkali by burning plant material (wooden splints will do), mixing the ashes with water and filtering off the solution. Test the solution with indicator and acid (as above).
(Care with burning significant quantities of plant material)

3 Test some of the uses of baking soda listed on websites. Does it work? Is it more or less effective than other products that are for sale?
(Wear goggles. Baking soda is relatively harmless but can irritate eyes.)

4 Investigate the Leblanc and Solvay processes.
• What are the raw materials?
• What reactions takes place?
• What waste materials were formed?
• Why was the Solvay process more economical than the Leblanc process?

5 What are the other products of the electrolysis of sodium chloride solution? Why was the process economical despite the cost of electricity? Why are membrane cells replacing mercury cathode (Castner-Kellner) cells?

6 What other uses are there for sodium carbonate (soda) and sodium hydroxide (caustic soda)?

7 Why was the manufacture of soda important to the industrial revolution in the UK?

8 Find out about the damage caused by Leblanc soda works and what was done about it in the 1860s.

9 Prepare a display on the life and work of the people involved in this story – Nicolas Leblanc, James Muspratt, Ernest Solvay, John Brunner, Ludwig Mond, Hamilton Castner, Karl Kellner.

Peter Ellis

Secondary English - Private Peaceful this weekend!

2012-02-03T11:22:00.000Z

BBC Radio 4's Saturday play this weekend is Simon Reade's stunning adaptation of Private Peaceful, Michael Morpurgo’s elegaic novel of the First World War.

As young Thomas Peaceful looks back over his childhood from the battlefields of the First World War, his memories are full of family life deep in the countryside. But the clock is ticking, and every moment that Tommo spends remembering how things used to be, means another moment closer to something that will change his life forever...

Full details of the Radio 4 play are available here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01bh91t

The BBC website also notes that a podcast of the play will also be available as a download after airing.

Private Peaceful is ideal for use in the classroom and the drama studio, and the play text containing an extensive resource section with many opportunities for drama, discussion, wider reading and writing is available for purchase here.

Private Peaceful
Saturday 4th February, 14:30, BBC Radio 4
.
Kimberley
Collins Education

Secondary Law - Intoxication

2012-02-03T08:00:00.006Z

Intoxication: Jig-Saw Scenarios

Intoxication is the last topic I teach because it requires students to synthesize knowledge from so many other parts of the criminal law. The activity below is designed to allow students to create and solve their own criminal law scenarios and then draw appropriate conclusions from the exercise.

The Target Law

Intoxication is often referred to as a ‘defence’ in criminal law. This is a misnomer. Case law tells us that Intoxication usually makes the defendant’s situation worse. DPP v Beard (1920).
Voluntary Intoxication is evidence of the accused being ‘reckless’. It will supply the evidence of mens rea for basic intent crimes. Majewski (1976).
Involuntarily Intoxication (through ‘spiking’) is no automatic defence. A drunken intent is still an intent. Kingston (1994).

Try this activity with your students – download the scenarios and the Intoxication cards here.

Step One:
Students choose a scenario to consider initially without any evidence of the defendant’s level of intoxication. They identify the actus reus and look for mens rea in the usual way. They decide whether the crime is one of basic or specific intent.

Example: Scenario 3
Walking through town after a night out Alan spots a shoe shop with a broken window. He manages to use his tie as a lasso and pull out a pair of expensive trainers.

Students would correctly identify s.1 theft and s. 9(1)(b) burglary as two possible crimes. They would correctly identify both as Specific Intent crimes.

Step Two:
Now they choose an intoxication card. They then have to decide what impact this has on the scenario above.

Example: Card C
A large orange juice ‘spiked’ with several vodkas.

This time they have to discuss:
Was the intoxication Voluntary or Involuntary?
Involuntary: by ‘spiking’.

Was the crime basic or specific?
Specific: both theft and burglary crimes have a clear ulterior intent.

They may even argue that because it was a high level of intoxication he may be entitled to an acquittal. This would apply if the intoxication was so high as to destroy his intent. Gallagher (1963). But, see below.

Step Three: Synthesising the 2 halves of the scenario.
Stronger students will examine the mens rea and behaviour of the defendant and conclude that his acts of forming a lasso and hooking a pair of trainers were so ‘purposive’ as to be evidence of intent. Drunk yes, but guilty anyway.

Plenary:
The class attempts as many different combinations of scenarios as time will allow. Despite a tendency to jump to an easy conclusion based purely on the intoxication they will realise it is (as always) the mens rea that proves conclusive.

Nigel Briggs
Head of Law, Notre Dame Sixth Form College, Leeds

Secondary Business - Business Quiz 02/02/2012

2012-02-02T14:31:00.001Z

Here is this week's Business News Quiz! You can print off a Word version (with answers and weblinks) and use it with your classes.

Download the Word file

A £963,000 bonus in shares awarded to Stephen Hester from which bank has been strongly criticised?
HSBC ( )
RBS ( )
Natwest ( )
Lloyds TSB ( )
Which coffee chain has posted a 10% rise in profits for the three months to 1 January 2012, benefiting from new stores and new products?
Gusto ( )
Caffé Nero ( )
Costa Coffee ( )
Starbucks ( )
Which social networking site has announced plans for a stock market flotation, raising $5bn?
Twitter ( )
Facebook ( )
MySpace ( )
Bebo ( )
AstraZeneca has announced a further 7,300 job cuts over the next two years as part of a new restructuring programme to save $1.6bn, what industry do they operate in?
Petrol ( )
Clothing ( )
Broadband ( )
Drugs ( )
Which major US Airline says it will shed 13,000 jobs - around 15% of its workforce?
Delta ( )
US Airways ( )
American Airlines ( )
Alaska Airlines ( )
Fred Goodwin was stripped of his knighthood this week, which bank did he used to run?
HSBC ( )
Northern Rock ( )
RBS ( )
Lloyds TSB ( )
Richard Branson stars in his own current Virgin media advert with which other person?
David Beckham ( )
Cheryl Cole ( )
Usain Bolt ( )
David Cameron ( )
English Premier League football clubs spent how much less in the January transfer window than they did last year, according to Deloitte?
30% ( )
50%( )
70% ( )
80% ( )
Tesco has seen its share of the UK grocery market dip to what figure for the first time in nearly seven years?
15.9% ( )
19.9% ( )
20.1% ( )
29.9% ( )
Giant’s Xstrata and Glencore International have announced they are in talks over a possible merger, what do they provide?
Mining & Commodities ( )
Mining & Mobile phones ( )
Comodities & fast food ( )
Mining & Oil ( )

Bonus Question- what is the Unit 4 AQA pre-release based on?

Donna Jestin

Teacher of Business Studies Notre Dame College & Senior Examiner for AQA

Secondary Sociology - 10 favourite Youtube clips

2012-02-02T08:00:00.000Z

Ten Favourite Sociology YouTube Clips

“Can we watch a video miss?” A fairly common request in my lessons that really means “I want to get out of doing any work today”. The students have a point. Sometimes. We all need the occasional break in the lesson, especially they teachers. Short video clips can provide very useful examples for illustrating more abstract sociological concepts.

As you are reading this blog, you have probably been using YouTube in your lessons for years; surely schools will have lifted their blanket ban on YouTube by now? (If not, referring to the views of an e learning “guru”/ expensive consultant might help convince people of the educational benefits).

I have hundreds of YouTube clips saved in my favourites. (What did we do before YouTube? Teach probably.) Sift through the finger biting babies and hippo regurgitating snakes (a must see) and you will find some Sociological gems. There is also a lot of rubbish too, (not the snake, you need to watch it) my students can testify this as they have, on occasion, included a video clip in their presentations that they clearly had not previously watched. They then stand at the front of the class, shame faced, while trying to explain the significance of a clip which is at best irrelevant, or at worst, entirely inappropriate. A YouTube warning there.

What follows is a list of my favourite Sociology clips at the moment in no particular order:

Poor Kids - YouTube – An excellent BBC documentary that opens with the line that the gap between the rich and poor is wider now than at any time since the end of World War Two. The documentary follows the lives of four British children growing up below the poverty line. Very useful for social class inequality and a refreshing anecdote to the “benefit scroungers” rhetoric.
7 Up Series Documentary 1964 Part 1 - YouTube – A classic documentary. The 7 Up series is the longest running documentary still on television. Every seven years Apted and his team revisit the same group of children to see how their lives have changed. The ‘children’ are now in their fifties. Excellent for social class and research methods (Longitudinal research)
WHS - sociology video one, 'Unequal opportunities' - YouTube – This 2011 documentary with John Humphreys shows how wide the class gap still is in education today. Very useful for recent trends in education and social class.
The Family - 4oD - Channel 4 – A funny and insightful documentary highlighting changes between the first and second generation South Asian in Britain. Useful for family and cultural diversity.
Going For An English - YouTube – Goodness Gracious Me was a brilliant comedy sketch show which parodied stereotypes about British Asians. Excellent for teaching Ethnicity.
Who gets the best jobs part 1 - YouTube – An interesting documentary which illustrates the lack of social mobility our generation of students are potentially facing. Excellent for an education module, but also wider inequalities.
Enoch Powell: British Hero Part 1 - YouTube – A fascinating analysis of one of the most controversial speeches in recent British history: Rivers of Blood. Very useful for ethnicity. (I would recommend discussing the questionable source of this YouTube video with your students).
Race and Intelligence: Science's Last Taboo - Part 6 - YouTube – An excellent Channel 4 documentary which busts myths about race and intelligence. Useful for an education module.
David Starkey On Newsnight - YouTube – An interesting and very controversial debate about last summer’s riots. Useful for crime and deviance, racism and youth culture.
Dove evolution - YouTube – Reveals the realities of Photoshop. Useful for social constructions of beauty within the topic of gender and the media.

Emily Painter

Sociology Teacher, Cadbury Sixth Form College

Secondary Citizenship - Who picks the cotton?

2012-02-01T08:00:00.000Z

Every student in a Citizenship class will be wearing some cotton but do they know who picks the cotton from the bushes in the fields of Gujarat or processes it in local factories? It’s unlikely because the high street shops selling the t-shirts and socks don’t know. Most high street retailers now try to ensure that the factories which make their products are monitored because pressure groups watch them with an eagle eye. Reputation is hard to earn and easy to lose so businesses try to protect themselves by keeping a close eye on their suppliers. Perhaps they are not looking far enough - as few know where the raw cotton comes from.

These BBC video clips and articles looks a step further back and shows children, far from home, working in the fields and factories where cotton is picked and processed.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16642808

Photo from www.bbc.co.uk

The children have been sent by their parents to pick and process the cotton. Conditions are appalling. They work long hours, are scratched to bits by the plants and breath in the fibres from the cotton which fill the air in the factory.

The children’s paltry pay is sent back to their parents – although the children have little idea where they are.

The UNICEF document here will help students to work out what’s wrong with these practices.
http://www.unicef.org/southafrica/SAF_resources_crcchildfriendly.pdf

The BBC’s video clip also shows how things have improved in the manufacture of clothes. Organisations like the Clean Clothes Campaign - http://www.cleanclothes.org/ - have put pressure on many businesses to help this change take place.

Should ethical sourcing of cotton just be the responsibility of businesses and pressure groups or do consumers have a responsibility too? Do students think about how their clothes are produced? Should they?

There are businesses which will only sell clothes from ethical sources. Rapanui, a company based in the Isle of Wight, is one that takes this approach. It was set up three years ago by Rob and Martin Drake-Knight who are now aged 24 and 25, with savings of just £200. They have since won a long list of awards. Their business takes sustainability very seriously as their website shows.
http://www.rapanuiclothing.com/about.html

The cotton used in their clothing lines is all traceable. They know exactly where every fibre comes from and how it has been grown and processed.
http://www.rapanuiclothing.com/ethical-fashion/traceability-clothing.html

You can see the difference that this sort of approach makes from the case study of Khima on the Fairtrade organisation’s website.
http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/producers/cotton/agrocel_pure_and_fair_cotton_growers.aspx

Perhaps the high street stores need to go a step further?

Jenny Wales is Chair of Examiners for Edexcel Citizenship Studies and author of Citizenship Today for GCSE, published by Collins.

Health and Social Care - Benefits of Active Participation

2012-01-31T08:30:00.005Z

This blog is for candidates studying Levels 2 and 3 of the Health and Social Care Diploma, BTEC Health and Social Care, Dementia Care units and other courses relevant to the field of health and social care

What is active participation?

Active participation is defined by Edexcel (2010), the body that sets the specifications for the Levels 2 and 3 Health and Social Care Diplomas, as recognising an individual’s right to participate in the activities and relationships of everyday life as independently as possible; the individual is an active partner in their own care or support rather than a passive recipient. This definition accentuates two key principles underpinning care: the rights of the individual and the independence or autonomy of the individual.

Many people who experience health and social care, especially individuals with significant needs, are marginalised, excluded and disenfranchised. They are not given the same opportunity to have a say in how they live their lives as most other people in the general community; their choices in what they do are severely limited.

What are the benefits of active participation for the individual?

Active participation is an approach that enables individuals to be included in their care and have a greater say in how they live their life in ways that matter to them.

The benefits of active participation can be divided into primary benefits and secondary benefits.

Primary benefits include:

Physical benefits including greater activity levels.
Increased independence and autonomy in what people do.
An opportunity for individuals in health and social care settings to have a say in matters of direct concern to their lives.
Increased opportunities for social contact and interpersonal relationships.
Encouraging involvement and self-awareness. Individuals become more involved in the community and more aware of opportunities and what they can hope for themselves.
Increased opportunities for learning and development of important skills, knowledge, education and employment.
Enhanced well-being, with increases in self-confidence, self-esteem and self-belief.

The benefits of active participation include the above primary benefits where the individual gains from its application in the real world of health and social care practice, but there are also some secondary benefits.

The secondary benefits can be described as benefits that occur as a result of active participation, but are not a direct aim of active participation. These include:

Decreasing the likelihood of abuse. As the individual engages positively by actively participating is area of their life, such as in personal care, the scope for abuse by others is reduced.
Decreasing vulnerability. As individuals gain in their self-confidence and self-esteem they are less prone to exploitation and harm from others

Conclusion
Active participation is an approach that empowers individuals in the activities and relationships of everyday life leading to them living as independently as possible. The importance to the individual as an active partner in their own care or support is that it brings physical, psychological, relational and over all wellbeing benefits.

John Rowe works for the Open University and has a wealth of practice experience in health and social care settings.

Secondary Business and Economics - Evaluation in A Level Essay Writing

2012-01-30T08:45:00.002Z

The skill of writing decent evaluations often evades students within their essay writing. It is a skill that can easily be taught, but it is their ability to discuss the validity of an issue well that takes time. As we know it cannot just be an opinion, but an argument that is fully supported by a stimulus, be that Economics or Business.

I tell my students early at AS Level that you cannot simply memorise judgements, but must use the stimulus material or understanding of the key issue to form a judgement that is both focused, logical and doesn’t simply sit on the fence. They must take a stance. If the argument is well supported then the student will do well.

One way that I have always found effective is to deliver a case study with an essay question that requires evaluative higher order thinking skills in the following way:

Prior to the lesson prepare a Pecha Kucha presentation. These will represent 20 images directly or indirectly related to the case delivered in 20 seconds for each slide. This is something I have only just started experimenting with, but you would be surprised how well it works. See here: http://www.pecha-kucha.org/what. The idea is to quickly focus their attention on the stimulus and discuss the theory once again at a quick pace. Remember no longer than 20 seconds for each slide.
Provide the students with the stimulus/case study after the presentation.
On their own they are given a short period of time to read the material. I will then ask for the following:

a) Command word/Definition to introduce essay. (2 minutes)

b) 10 points that they think are worth considering in simple note format. (5 minutes)

c) Then in pairs they are to compare these points and decide on only those issues that they feel most relate to the stimulus/question. (5 minutes)

d) They then return to working on their own to flesh out these points into four paragraphs that highlight understanding of the point, illustrated with examples, use of graphs, applied well to the case.

e) Next, I will ask students to exchange their paragraphs with their partner one more time. Their partner must then explore their arguments critically, making notes around their work in terms of cause and effect. Allow students to then feedback with each other. This allows for wider implications and evaluation that may possibly have passed them by. Allow for a period of discussion.

f) Finally, they themselves decide what they would like to include in a concise and focused essay.

g) I will normally end by having a discussion with the whole class as to how they might like to conclude their essay. Refer back, express judgement, express argument and make a decision.

In Economics I have always liked the WEE STEPS. Pushing evaluation within their writing through the consideration of Wider context, Efficiency, Equality, Scope, Time, Effectiveness, Prioritisation and Scale. These can be seen within an excellent resource provided by tutor2u.com, using inflation as a perspective:
http://www.tutor2u.net/economics/presentations/workshops2010/A25/player.html

Daniel Baker
Business and Economics Department, Trinity Catholic High School

Secondary Geography - Group Work

2012-01-27T08:00:00.001Z

I often observe lessons where group work is used. Whilst the teaching is often outstanding, the learning is often lagging behind because not all students take an active role in the group work. As a result I have been working with my faculty in strategies to ensure all students are participating in group activities.

The first area is to engineer group dimensions and structure. Groups of 3-4 seem to work better than larger groups, in which it is easy for some students to take a ‘back seat’. Whether the teacher or students chooses the groups is a personal preference. I operate a ‘home and away’ set-up, where my home groups are decided by me. These groups are engineered on ability so I use assessment data to divide the class into 4 bands. Each group then has a student from each band. I also consider friendships and behaviour. The students are now used to working in these groups and are able to support one another. If I want different groups e.g. friendship or ability then they work in ‘away’ groups and are able to organise themselves quickly. Having strategies such as this avoids time-wasting setting up groups at the start of the lesson.

Sometimes I begin lessons with 'home groups' but then they break off into 'away groups' depending on the activity. For example in a recent lesson on Earthquake Preparedness, each group had to develop a plan for Japan to cope with Earthquakes. Each group had to produce a design for an Earthquake Proof House, an emergency box, a plan for an Earthquake drill and a leaflet to explain what to do in the event of an Earthquake. They discussed their ideas in their home groups and then assigned one task to each member of the group. This has the advantage of ensuring that all students are involved as they are all responsible for one task. They then worked in ‘away’ groups depending on their tasks – in other words all members of the 'away' groups were doing the same task. This is successful as they can then share ideas and it also means that they have to complete the task for their home group and can’t hand it over to a fast worker within the group who has finished their own task. They also get support from students completing the same activity.

I think in any group activity it is important that the activity has a structure so that students can take responsibility for a portion of it. De Bono’s thinking hats are useful in allocating each student in the group with a different coloured hat and asking them to come up with ideas for each hat. It is possible with this strategy to have larger groups of 5-6. I have done this successfully in a GCSE lesson looking at impacts of tourism on Antarctica. Each student took one hat e.g. the ‘white hat’ found out facts and figures about tourism in Antarctica, the ‘red hat’ looked at the positives of tourism and so on. They then held a group discussion using each of the hats and finally compiled a report together.

Another idea to ensure full participation is to have a log sheet for students to complete to show who has done each task in a group activity. This means they have to think about sharing the work out. However you need to watch that it is completed honestly as often students will just write down all names for an easy life! This tends to be more of problem when they are working in friendship groups.

If you are doing group work where students are required to complete a mind map, ask them to add the initials of who contributed to each idea. I explain that I want each student to have their names down at least once. You can then ask the individual students to explain their idea to you or the rest of the class.

All of the above both allow all students to make progress and you demonstrate clear differentiation as it makes learning accessible for all!

Tania Grigg

Head of Humanities at Clyst Vale Community College and Senior Examiner for AQA (GCSE and A level)

Secondary Business - News Quiz 26/1/12

2012-01-26T09:35:00.000Z

As the first half of the year comes to an end with the January exams we now start looking towards June and the final exams of the year! For any A2 student a good understanding of the external business environment is vital, and researching the news each week is a great starting point! This week we have seen UK economic activity shrinking to 0.2%, does this mean a double dip recession will be happening? Also a week after Tesco's market share has declined, we se the growth of Android getting closer to the dominance of Apple in the computer tablet market!

Download the Word version (with answers and weblinks) to print off and use with your classes here!

How many iPhone’s did Apple sell in the last quarter of 2011, this was twice the amount of the same period in 2010?
45 million ( )
37 million ( )
35 million ( )
47 million ( )
Which fast-food chain said it would create 2 500 jobs in the UK in 2012?
McDonalds ( )
KFC ( )
Burger King ( )
Pizza Hut ( )
In 1979 some 13.5 million workers in the UK were members of a union; today that figure is what?
9.5 million ( )
10.5 million ( )
6.5 million ( )
7.5 million ( )
Which mobile company has apologised for a technical problem which caused users' phone numbers to be disclosed when using its mobile data?
T Mobile ( )
02 ( )
Vodafone ( )
Orange ( )
UK economic activity shrank by how much in the last three months of last year according to official figures?
0.4% ( )
0.8% ( )
0.5% ( )
0.2% ( )
Which company that went into administration has said that items bought within the last 28 days in a UK Peacocks store could be exchanged with a valid receipt? However, refunds could not be offered or vouchers accepted!
Black’s leisure ( )
Jane Norman ( )
Peacock’s ( )
HMV ( )
Which business' share of the tablet computer market has risen to 39%, from 29% the year earlier?
Apple ( )
Blackberry ( )
Android ( )
Microsoft ( )
Which low-cost airline saw revenues rise 16.7% in the last three months of 2011 as passenger numbers rose 8.1%.?
Jet 2 ( )
Ryanair ( )
Monarch ( )
Easyjet ( )
Government debt has risen to a record figure of what from £883bn a year ago?
£1 trillion ( )
£1.5 trillion ( )
£2 trillion ( )
£2.5 trillion ( )
Which sandwich chain will open 600 new branches in the UK and Irish Republic and create 6,000 jobs over the next three years, and has also said it would display calorie information on all its menu boards?
Earl of Sandwich ( )
EAT ( )
Subway ( )
Pret-a-manger ( )

Donna Jestin

Teacher of Business Studies Notre Dame College & Senior Examiner for AQA

Secondary RE, PSHE and Citizenship - True Tube

2012-01-26T08:00:00.020Z

How long have we accumulatively spent searching through the reams of videos that have been uploaded to You Tube in the hopes of finding a video clip to help our students to explore big social or global issues such as war or the environment and how useful would it be if we could find those rare clips that show different opinions and beliefs?!

www.truetube.co.uk

Welcome to True Tube. This website has been a god-send in assisting me with short and relevant video clips, to bring not just the issues but different beliefs and opinions into the classroom in a way that engages students. I have found this website particularly useful for my GCSE religious studies classes as a means of introducing a controversial topic or moral issue and sparking a discussion or debate, as well as allowing me to introduce different opinions and views, especially those from a faith perspective. There are also some very good resources for KS3 RE as well, such a ‘Holy Cribs’ which are tours of various places of worship by young people and clips explaining the 5 K’s of Sikhism and Muslim prayer.

www.truetube.co.uk

The website is well laid out and provides a really good range of free resources. Video clips are primarily sorted into 9 categories (Body and Health, Crime, Culture, the Earth, Ethics and Religion, Global, Jobs and Money, Relationships and Society) that you can click on and browse through, however each video clip has a number of key words linked to it, so if there is something specific that you are looking for, you can simply type in ‘Drugs’ and ‘Buddhism’ and it will list any clips that may be useful or relevant to you. The video clips provide a fresh and young approach to social and moral issues, which students can relate to. There is also a ‘staff room’ on the website which provides some thought provoking and interactive assembly plans and lesson plans which can give some ideas on how to further develop the information from the video clips within your lesson.

Teresa Langler
Head of Beliefs and Values
Clyst Vale Community College

Secondary English - Using song lyrics to teach poetry

2012-01-25T09:36:00.001Z

The aisles are full of noises, sounds, and sweet airs …

bringing pop lyrics into the classroom!

As the trendy ‘out there’ teacher has always known, song lyrics can be a rich source of inspiration for the introduction and revision of such crucial poetic elements as rhyme, rhythm, symbolism, imagery and emotive vocabulary. You can even use them to reinforce more traditional English language concepts such as parts of speech and punctuation.

Of course, there is a clear distinction between song lyrics and their more traditional English-teaching counterpart, poetry. Song lyrics often make little discernible sense, especially when the composer appears to have focused more on the integrity of the music rather than that of the lyric. After all, what on Earth is a ‘Wonderwall’?

This is not so much the case with poetry - published poetry, I mean - not the tortured angst of the painfully introspective internet balladeer. However, there is a very rich vein of quality song lyrics out there just waiting to be explored. Examples of much respected lyricists which spring to mind include John Lennon, Bob Dylan and Paul Simon. Now, I’m not suggesting that every lyric written by such musical greats would bear intensive literary scrutiny… but some obviously would, e.g. the overtly political ‘Power to the People’, the sensuously surrealistic ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ and the transcendent ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ which is so musically and lyrically sublime that it breathes new life into what would otherwise have been a mere repetition of a rather tired cliché. Of course, if you are really ‘hip’ (which I’m obviously not, having used such an archetypal 60s word) you could even delve into the lyrics of artists who are currently in vogue… if you find them to be sufficiently meaningful, that is. And, even if you don’t, their obvious lack of depth might be a wryly amusing learning curve in itself!

I certainly intend to make much use of two classic songs from the last century: ‘Vincent’ – Don McLean’s moving eulogy to tragic artist Vincent van Gogh - and the sublime, ‘The Windmills of Your Mind’, the Oscar winning musical theme to the 1968 box office hit, the Thomas Crown Affair. With regard to the latter, the metaphor which forms the song’s title makes no literal sense whatsoever; however, on a subliminal level, it implies much. The windmill comparison suggests relentless motion and so has connotations of uncontrollable, racing thoughts. The grinding action of such a large machine further implies a psyche in crisis. In this respect, the metaphor works on a similar level to Macbeth’s agonised cry: ‘O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!’

Of course, you could also experiment with the holy grail of cross-curricular links and record your own deeply symbolic anthem with the aid of a willing collaborator in the music department. It’ll look good on your CV, and it’ll put you ‘out there’as well – just as we ask our students to put their own credibility on the line when they perform something for us.

But if musical self-glorification isn’t your thing – a teacher’s creativity should be seen and not heard! – then leave your comfort zone severely intact and go with the greats. If nothing else, you will have introduced your students to a classic song… and given yourself a well-deserved quality three minutes in the classroom!

* The following downloads illustrate how song lyrics might be used as a teaching aid and, if you wish, can be used as ready-made 30 minute lesson plan with extension activities.

Watch the music video of the song Jealousy with your classes.
Then download the lesson plan and activities to accompany this here.

Peter Morrisson
English Teacher and author

Secondary ICT - Michael Gove at BETT 2012

2012-01-24T08:40:00.000Z

Well, Moses has descended and we have listened; the problem is what does he mean? We have the commandments, “Thou shall honour thy computing”, “Thou shall not worship false idols such as IT or even ICT”. We might like these commandments, but how do we make a religion from them?

Michael Gove’s speech to BETT is the most direction changing speech I can recall in educational policy for over 30 years, but making the changes he sees as necessary is akin to avoiding the nasty consequences of an economic collapse in the eurozone: in both cases complex structures need to be broken up and new systems put in place, but all of the intermediates between the old system and the new need to function all of the time. Added to that problem, we have in both cases, it seems to me, a major disincentive to making changes happen in the form of human selfishness.

We must have recognised the problem years ago; how was it possible to timetable a double qualification in the same slot as a single science GCSE? The two were not compatible in intellectual demand. The problem was even more obvious at A level; Computing required much greater mental processing and as a consequence delivered lower attainment results than ICT. Gove’s view seems at the very least encouraging; he must have prepared himself for the smack of poorer results following a move away from cosy word processing with a touch of design and the disapplying of the ICT program is heroic. It’s not often that politicians show courage in adherence to ideals which are intended to benefit those with little political clout and in the same process risk disruption and numerically less flattering exam results.

Freedom at last to make choices?

What are we to make of the ideas of freedom? How can we make use of this opportunity to design courses which suit the needs and abilities of the youngsters in our classes? This seems to me to be a remarkable opportunity, somewhat after the style of “Mode 3 CSE” which offered the scope for teachers to be creative in the delivery of ideas within a framework of curricular axioms. Teaching can be rewarding in the cut and thrust of the classroom, there is no doubt in that, but designing the pathway to knowledge, rather than marching to someone else’s map, is of equal merit.

Seamless change may well require that all parts, curriculum, assessment, perception of the value of awards, need to function all of the time. Let’s hope that change will not be a result of evolution, where we are stuck with inheriting the results of previous design lash-ups and the only hope is waiting for the cull of Natural Selection.

John Giles

John has taught in various secondary schools for over 30 years, including roles as ICT coordinator and Head of ICT. He is also an established author and has worked as an examiner and moderator for a number of exam boards.

Secondary Technology - Revision Games

2012-01-23T10:00:00.000Z

When it comes to exams, I often find that a lot of my pupils struggle to revise for Design & Technology, finding their practical experiences hard to associate it with written exams! In lessons, they enjoy the practical side of the subject but often find sitting down and concentrating without distracting each other a challenge. I have developed several basic revision games to use with my pupils as a "reward" for revising quietly for 10 minutes. These often work as great starters to lessons especially if the pupils are in a particularly "unsettled" mood!

"Confidence". Pupils sit and revise a certain subject (of their choice) in silence for 10 minutes. I often put a countdown clock on the board to stop them asking how long is left! Once the time is up the pupils have to stand in a circle around a desk. The idea of the game is that the pupils have to recite some of the information they have just learnt. I often kick the game off by asking the pupil to my left a question on what they have just been revising, e.g. name a type of hardwood. That pupil then has to decide if they can name a hardwood. If they can they say, for instance, "I can name two types of hardwood". The pupil to their left then has to decide if they can name three types of hardwood and so on. However, if a pupil is not looking very confident about their statement, e.g. "I can name seven types of hardwood" then the next pupil can "call" them on their statement and the pupil who has been called has to recite the seven types of hardwood. If they correctly recite what they have been "called" on they get a prize if not the person who "called" gets to recite the correct answer.

Admittedly from my description the game does sound quite complicated but it's not and the pupils get the hang of it quite quickly after a few goes. The game involves all the pupils as they never know when they are going to be "called" so it ensures that they are all thinking of the answer to the question rather than just sitting in their seats and nodding off when you just fire questions out to pupils in the class!
Technology Word Association game. This game improves pupils' subject knowledge and is a useful game when it comes to revising. Pupils are given 5 minutes to revise a certain subject. Again I then get them to stand in a circle around a desk. I usually then fire off a word to one of the pupils about what they have just been revising. E.g. hardwood. The pupil I point at then has to say a related word. e.g. oak and at the same time point to another pupil in the circle. That pupil then needs to say a related word and point to someone else. If one of the pupils can't think of a word or hesitates, then they are "out" and have to sit down. The winner is the pupil left standing at the end of the game. If you have a large group it might be an idea to hand out a prize as you go rather than getting the loser to sit down. This game also works well as a lesson plenary and could be based on the lesson's key words.
Picture, word and description matching exercise game. This game is simple. Pupils have to revise a certain topic for 10 minutes then they are given a set of cards (you'll have had to make these in advance!). You can make these quite basic - you'll need a set of pictures associated to the topic that the pupils are revising (i.e an LED), a set of words (to match the pictures) and a set of matching descriptions, which should all be shuffled up. The pupils then need to match up the set of cards again! I find this game works best if the pupils work in teams of 2 or 3, with the prize going to the team that gets all the answers right first (though if they submit an incorrect set of answers they are disqualified from the prize to stop students just guessing!) This activity works really well to encourage peer assessment and also group discussion.

James Randall
Technology Teacher, Barking Abbey High School

Inspirational Starters

2012-01-23T09:29:00.000Z

Having recently visited two high achieving schools in Somerset and Dorset, I have reaffirmed my belief that inspirational starters are a key cornerstone to achieving excellent exam results. It has also reminded me of the saying that you never get a second chance to make a first impression - very powerful words for our lives and for the lessons we teach.

Freeing up team meeting time to share learning and teaching ideas has been very fruitful for aspiring teams across the country. There are some fantastic resources for starter activities for mathematics lessons and having a ‘Starter of the Day’ folder, easily accessed by colleagues, can lead to even higher quality mathematics lessons for our students. A request to the maths team to ‘bring a starter that has worked for you’ to the next meeting can lead to the sharing of very imaginative and innovative ideas.

Heads of Departments in a number of schools firmly believe that starters are especially effective if they take a journey through an array of mathematics concepts and not just related to the bespoke lesson objectives of the day. I am piloting a ‘Quick Seven’ questions of the day using notepads or mini-whiteboards which are proving to be popular with both students and teachers – for example: (1) 4/5 as a decimal, (2) which is a better deal – 30% discount or a third off? (3) 0.7 times 0.8 (4) how many vertices does a tetrahedron have? (5) One half plus one third is not two fifths – what is it? (6) a circle has a radius of 10 m – find its area in terms of pi (7) divide £120 in the ratio 3:2.

One particularly successful starter with my top set year 11 group at Frome Community College was just a little more zappy because a post-it note was stuck on the back of each whiteboard on the students desk. There was an on-entry starter involving conditional probability and students raced to the front of the whiteboard when they had worked out a solution on the mini-whiteboard and shared their correct solutions – the challenge to get the correct the solution and then race to the front with a post-it note, ahead of other students, sets the scene for a very productive lesson.

I have just put together my favourite seventy seven starters with solutions from the excellent Transum resources which are definitely worth a look at http://www.transum.org/.   My favourites of these include the starter for January 22nd – A lamp and a bulb together costs £32. The lamp costs £30 more than the bulb. How much does the bulb cost? Feedback on the site from other schools is also very helpful e.g., ‘What a beautiful question’ . The ‘Estimate and Calculate’ starter for September 30th is a gem and I have seen this work very well in a lesson: Estimate and Calculate – then arrange these five statements in order of size: Population of the UK, Number of seconds in a week, A thousand squared, Number of Calendar Days since 1st January 1500 AD, 99 x 99 x 99 x 99. Another favourite is the starter for House Numbers for January 26th – The numbers of 5 houses next to each other add up to 90. What are those five numbers? Feedback on the Transum website included: ‘What a great starter! One of my groups was working on odd and even numbers and another one on algebra (for the same starter). With some hints for learners who are not so far along on their maths journey, this starter works for everyone at all levels’.

You may also like to have a go at this starter before you teach the topic of ‘trial and improve’ in mathematics:   Two whole two digit numbers multiply together to give the emergency telephone number 999. What are these two whole numbers? Calculators are allowed.   (hint - you may like to start with 33 times 33 and increase one number and decrease the other number).

Very best wishes for 2012! What other job involves helping hundreds of people in a week where no two days are the same?

Christopher Curtis
Head of Mathematics
Frome Community College

Primary - Teaching reading in the Early Years

2012-01-20T15:28:00.001Z

I have used many approaches to teaching children to read in the 18 years of my teaching career, some successful, some not so successful.

One of the more unusual approaches I encountered was at University. I was fortunate enough, or should I say unfortunate enough, to find myself in the midst of the real books philosophy. “Give a child a real book and they will learn to read it.” Even as a fresh behind the ears student this appeared bizarre. The children were not in fact learning to read but were simply retelling the book in their own little way adding in a few more details. As a naive student I found myself on a placement with a teacher who was probably tearing her hair out at my lack of knowledge of reading and how to teach it.

As a newly qualified teacher I began to grasp the idea that children need a bank of key words to help them read and it was here I came upon the endless flashcards that were sent home, probably boring the child to death before they were ever actually introduced to a book.

Moving to a different school brought new methods again; no more flashcards in fact no more books. Instead a sheet of paper with all of the words from the books typed on it. I had the courage to challenge the deputy head teacher’s notion that “Books never come back to school, not round here” and be rebellious. I gave the children real reading scheme books and much to her annoyance, and my secret joy, the books did come back to school.

It was at this time that I started to appreciate the importance of phonics as a stepping-stone to reading. Through phonics the whole puzzling question of which of these methods was the best way to teach children to read started to unravel – it was in fact all of them!

With this in mind, in a new school and with a new age group, I introduced a successful beginning reading programme. Children need certain foundations to read and the key foundation is letters and sounds. As part of the foundation stage I tried to teach the children without them even realising. I immersed the children in sounds:
•    we sang them
•    printed them
•    made them with our bodies
•    traced them
•    hunted them around the room
•    collected items representing and matching them
•    played skittles knocking down our sounds.

Once the children had a grasp of 20 initial letter sounds I made up a pack of 6 individual sounds (s a t i p n) on laminated card and sent them home with the children to physically move around and make words such as tap pat nip pin etc. This was then reinforced in class with the children being given the opportunity to blend these sounds together in a range of ways:
•    on big dice – role and make a word
•    on an interactive whiteboard – moving sounds
•    find the letters hidden in the sand and water
•    tabards with the sounds on for the children to wear and move around making words
•    treasure hunts outside find the letters and make a word

The next key foundation was for the children to blend these sounds independently. For this I introduced a bingo style game, the children need to read the word and then match it to their bingo board - once again adding a fun element to a key skill. (Making up the boards and cutting and slicing the cards is a lengthy process but once done this was a valuable resource that is still used in that class today)

The next step is for the children to understand the workings of a book and begin to discover the wonderful world of books through:
•    Stories
•    big books
•    interactive books
•    books with cds
•    puppets to re-enact stories
•    shared books to take home
•    an inspiring book area where children would love to sit and relax - I myself would sit in there if I could fit

Another essential foundation for reading is key words (high frequency words). I teach this a little while after the blending as children need know their sounds to be able to look at initial sounds and end sounds in words. Immersing children in these words throughout the room and using various activities really helps to reinforce these key words. We also made up another set of bingo card games this time containing key words for children to share with parents.

Once the children had grasped the blending and could recognise 10 key words I would then give the children a reading book. A real reading book! This was an important part of my reception class, which we celebrated with a certificate, and a badge, which were awarded in assembly. This ceremony would then encourage the more reluctant readers to try a little more as they too wanted a real reading book, certificate, and badge along with a little bit of fuss of course.

As a leading literacy school we have shared this now well established system with students starting on their journey as I did many years ago. Moving to a new school last year I have successfully introduced the lotto bingo system here and we have been able to move children from non-readers to real readers. As for me, I now feel I have at last grasped the question, how do you teach a child to read.

Click HERE to download your free Bingo phonics cards.

Joanne Bruton
Primary teacher

Primary - Reach for the Skype

2012-01-20T15:21:00.001Z

The Problem

For years we wanted to do video conferencing with schools in other countries but were restricted by the cost of setting up the system and the bandwidth required to stream live video both ways simultaneously. Then along came Skype and took most of the problems away.

We were early users of www.epals.com to help us get in contact with other schools around the world to exchange data and become ‘pen friends’ with children from other countries. We had partner schools in Chile, the US, Australia, Japan and Ghana. Each week the children would write to their friends over the internet and wait expectantly for a reply. We used our links for geography lessons and for citizenship and it worked very well. Two things were missing though; spontaneity and face to face contact. All the schools we had contacted and ourselves investigated the possibility of video conferencing as a way to get together but because of the cost and technical knowledge required, the plan fell apart.

The Solution
Someone in school suggested that we try Skype and so we asked all our partner schools to set up Skype accounts. The only requirements were a webcam, a PC with a broadband link, a microphone and some speakers. We were able to send microphones, a webcam and speakers to the school in Ghana who couldn’t afford that level of equipment. At our end we attached the PC to an interactive whiteboard and positioned the camera centrally and twin microphones linked by an adaptor on either side of the room. The speakers were wall mounted by the whiteboard and we were ready to begin.

How we used the system

Understanding the views of children in other cultures

Our first topic concerned attitudes to bullying and how it was dealt with. The children prepared questions that they could ask the partner school and they did the same. We laid down rules for who should speak and clicked ‘Connect’. Moments later we could see them on a 2.4m x 1.6m screen and see who our camera was focused on. The children introduced themselves to each other and we then had a break to allow the children to get the excitement of seeing their new found friends out of the way. That period also allowed the teachers to tweak settings for sound and video quality before we began the question and answer session.

We began by getting the speaker to come closer to the camera but then found it better to move the camera around the class, with the teacher acting as ‘cameraperson’.

As Skype developed, it allowed true ‘conferencing’ and we were able to invite other schools to join in. It began as an observation session for the third school but we soon worked out a way we could harmonise the involvement of each school.

If there has been a major news story in one of our partner school’s countries, we have contacted them by Skype and talked about how they feel about the news. We did this for the Japanese earthquake in March 2011and the outcome was extraordinary after our children could see how events affect ‘real’ people. One of the children in Tokyo had grandparents in the quake zone and hadn’t heard from them since the fateful day. Our class were brilliant in displaying great empathy for him and his teacher emailed later to say how the boy felt better knowing his friends in the UK were concerned for him.

Keeping in touch

One of our pupils left to move abroad because of her father’s job. She asked if she could keep in touch via Skype and we now have occasional lunchtime sessions asking her about her life in Cyprus. Another child in our class was off school for several weeks due to a broken leg and was able to keep up with lessons by having Skype operating, enabling her to still receive the teaching and participate in the lessons.

Master classes

One of our parents had a friend who worked in the film industry and managed to persuade a ‘B’ list actress to join us in a Skype lesson for drama. It was great fun and the children acted for her with the actress giving tips on their performance. We have since written to other personalities and asked if they would be prepared to do a short ‘master class’ session with our children. The response so far has been encouraging with a fire service chief doing a session with the children and a children’s author helping us with our creative writing. All schools should be able to do this quite easily, adding another dimension to lessons.

So how do I get started?

Just go on to www.skype.com and register with a username and password. You’ll need a webcam and microphone plus decent speakers. We used a splitter jack that enabled us to use two microphones to cover the whole classroom and a mini-jack extension cable to get the video camera and microphones around so the children could stay sat at their desks. If you’ve got an interactive whiteboard you’ll be able to have the video of the partner school, full size on full screen. Our broadband connection was 12 Mbps and so video and audio were nearly perfect. Don’t forget that the picture and sound quality you receive and send will also depend on that of the partner school.

Dave Lewis
Primary Teacher

Primary - It's a Blog's Life!

2012-01-20T15:15:00.001Z

What is blogging?

Blogging has been around for years and some people make a lot of money from it; telling people about their lives, giving their views on the news or offering reviews of products and services. It’s a communication method, a little like a diary, where consecutive ‘posts’ are added to a website that can be viewed by the world or just within a private domain. In education, we too can make use of blogs and in many different ways and the good thing about it is that:

•    It’s FREE
•    It’s easy to set up
•    It’s easy to manage

That should hopefully have put the minds of the school’s finance officer and technophobes to rest!

Which provider should I choose?
There are many providers but my favourite is Wordpress. Their interface is user friendly, they’ve got a wealth of free extras and their security settings mean that instead of being published to the world, you can operate the blogs on a closed, private system visible only to those you invite. Wordpress also offers a clear guide to getting set up including templates that mean you can get started straight away. Just visit www.wordpress.org to get started.

How can I use Wordpress to help learning and teaching?

Diaries
In our work on non-fiction writing I asked my class to consider the style and language used in diary writing. We talked about how the text is personal to us and often demarcated by time adjectives. Normally we would have kept a paper based diary for a week or two, or perhaps over the course of a school holiday but on this occasion we decided to set up a blog for each pupil. In an ICT lesson we ‘decorated’ our diaries with a design theme from the software and then got started. Some of the children noted that they could add photographs and yet more commented that it was like Facebook in that they could post what they were doing and attach photographs whilst other users they allowed to view their page could comment on it. Even after the topic was finished, many wanted to continue using their private Facebook and, like a traditional diary, referred back to things they’d done.

News Casting
We were concerned that the children in our school had little idea of what was happening in the news and initially we set homework where, over a weekend, the children would have to watch the news and bring in some information from it to report to the class on Monday. This worked very well until one child compared our diary blogs to the pages of the BBC News website and made their own using Wordpress over a weekend. On the Monday she asked if she could show us her blog as part of the report back and she had reworded the news she’d seen or read about and added pictures from news websites. Many of the rest of the class were impressed and asked if they could do theirs in the same way so we decided to produce our own news websites.

The project extended in our citizenship lessons to the children collecting their own local news from the community and took pictures. They visited a local council run nursing home that was earmarked for closure and interviewed the manager and the residents before conducting an interview with the town’s financial director. See the link for an example of the children’s work http://epecjames.wordpress.com/

Creative writing
Another great use we made of Wordpress was for creative writing. We do a lot of partner editing of stories and the comment section of blogs makes for the perfect place to feedback to writers what we thought of their work and how they can improve it. Wordpress is also a great repository of children’s work, enabling them to look back at automatically dated work and identify progression for themselves. It’s a good tool for teachers as we can join in with the comments and moderate them before the author reads them. Children can write the stories in Word and paste them in or type straight into Wordpress. The benefit of this system is its portability as children can access it easily at home or at school. Pictures can be added, drawn by the child themselves in MSPaint or scanned and uploaded. At a more advances stage, video can be added too.

OK, so how do I start?
First you need to go to www.wordpress.org/download and register. You’ll need an email account but as you’ll be going for a private or private group privacy setting, entering an email address is still secure. Once you’ve completed the basic details, the ‘dashboard’ will appear…

You now need to click on the ‘Privacy’ tab in ‘Settings’ and click the button as shown to keep the blog private.

Now you’re all ready to start. Click on the ‘Dashboard’ tab, then ‘Posts’, then ‘New Post’ and you’ll get this screen…

The title goes in the white box under ‘Add New Post’ and the body of text in the large box. You can upload a picture by clicking the rectangle in a box to the right of ‘Upload/Insert and can then browse for an image before inserting it in your post. You can adjust the position and often the size of the image too.

Those are the very basics of getting started but the Wordpress guide will give you more tips to produce a polished piece of work.

Dave Lewis
Primary teacher

Primary - Use Your Image-ination!

2012-01-20T15:09:00.002Z

We’d all love to do great art but some of us just aren’t designed to be the next Picasso, Mondrian or Monet but there’s a great art form that passes many of us by and it’s good because it can be FREE!

Have you ever looked at the work of Andy Warhol, especially his coloured ‘negative’ images of Marilyn Monroe? You might think it’s very difficult to complete such work but with photo editing tools, it’s easy and quick. Using their own photos or ones downloaded from the web, children can use free tools to produce their own. We’ve had pop art Mickey Mouse, pop art head teachers and pop art pets and all of them look as convincing as Warhol’s original.

What do you suggest then?

The very basic but free www.paint.net is a good starting point, a big step up from MS Paint, you’ll find loads of ways to alter pictures to create new art.

We began by giving the children digital cameras and asking them to take a photograph of a friend, an object and a scene. We used each of these in different ways. We began with the ‘pop art’ image and copied it in different colours into a Word document. Very easy, the children said, but it gave them the first steps into image manipulation. We then moved onto the everyday object picture.

Many had done shoes, pencils, pencil cases or bags and using the software, we distorted the images and stretched and twisted them before pasting them onto a scene. We then went back to the portrait image and using a grid, dissected it into pieces before reconstructing it in the wrong order. Others used this process to produce pieces of a jigsaw for their friends to reconstruct. The possibilities are endless and with a variety of different software packages available for free -
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/photoshop-alternatives-another-14-free-image-manipulation-tools/
- the world of image manipulation is your oyster.

We liked ‘Photo! Editor’, ‘Phantasmagoria’ and ‘Artweaver’ for the ease of use and the number of tools each has. In some ways, the three programs complement each other in offering different techniques but with all of them, it’s really easy for the children to complete some art which is unique to them and of which they can be proud!

Dave Lewis
Primary teacher

Primary - Going Digital!

2012-01-20T15:07:00.001Z

We live in a digital age with one new technological revolution seeming to swiftly follow another. Some survive and almost seem to take over our world whilst others fade as they are rapidly replaced by the newer, faster and better. Do you remember podcasting? Billed as the communication and learning tool of the decade, it faded because it just wasn’t tangible enough to matter.

Within the world of education, savvy teachers keep a watchful eye on technology and dream up ways of using it creatively in the classroom. There are many technological revolutions on our wish lists but as ever, funding issues wither the dreams of video conferencing or tablet PCs for all pupils. Hotspots of innovation, backed by funding, do exist but they are few and far between. Some years back I visited Kingscourt School in Hampshire to see their ‘semi-paperless’ school in action. The head had no office as his work environment was on his tablet PC and each teacher had a tablet with all their lessons, planning and all the important school documentation on it. They would simply enter the classroom, dock their tablets and wirelessly display the work on the interactive white board. It worked for them because all staff were well trained in its use and the system was fully supported.

Introducing technology and digital resources needn’t be costly and in some cases it can be completely free. You’ve just got to look around for what’s out there in cyberspace and identify if, and how, it can help improve learning and teaching. The introduction of new technology, like new books and other resources, can initially create a peak of motivation in pupils and teachers but it’s ensuring that the enthusiasm continues that is important here. Some years ago, a school I worked at introduced an electronic voting system to be used in lessons and the teachers received extensive training on how to use it. On the first few occasions, the teachers and the children were excited by the innovation but after a while, the repetitive nature of the way the technology was used and the time it took to prepare and test the activities soon meant that it now sits, dust covered, in a corner of the staffroom.

Key to the success of technology is making sure you understand exactly what it does and what it can do to help learning and teaching, being confident in its use, avoiding overuse, ensuring that its use can be varied and knowing that the cost of it is commensurate with the projected shelf life, not only of the hardware but also the concept.

I’ve managed to negate the last issue by finding technology that is free to use and which has the potential for a number of different uses so that it rarely looks stale. The other benefit of the technology is that much of it is day to day or simply marries technologies with which we are familiar. Even teachers who are fearful of technology will be confident users in no time and who knows, may even become the technology detectives of the future, tracking down new ways to make learning fun.

Dave Lewis
Primary teacher

Secondary English - Best Reading Buddies

2012-01-20T08:15:00.001Z

I have two big problems with my reading lessons, at present. Firstly I am becoming increasingly frustrated by students saying ‘I don’t like ANY of the books in here!’ as they point vaguely at the library shelves containing hundreds upon hundreds of books. Next on my list is that although Ofsted now officially approve of reading for pleasure ("Schools that take the business of reading for pleasure seriously, where teachers read, talk with enthusiasm and recommend books, and where provision for reading is planned carefully, are more likely to succeed with their pupils' reading." Ofsted, 2011), we still need to prove the impact of reading lessons on our students’ learning. So, what’s a teacher to do? Turn my whinging students into Reading Buddies.

The first stage of this experiment was to do a reading audit with my year 7 class. The audit asks basic questions about their favourite genre and how much they enjoy reading. (Download the printable audit here). I then used the audits to pair up the students in my class. The theory is that students will be firstly paired according to their favourite genre(s) of books and then by how much they enjoy reading, with more enthusiastic readers paired with a less fervent one. The result is hopefully going to be that students can now advise and enthuse each other about what books to read in a much more effective way than me dragging them round the library and pointing out all the books I feel they should enjoy. In order to encourage this affiliation, all students will need to recommend a book to their buddy, which they will then need to read and write a short review on before the end of the term.

The second stage of this experiment is designed to prove the impact of reading in these lessons. I have put together a reading journal, which asks students general questions on all of the Reading Assessment Focuses. Students have a choice of questions to answer in the second half of the reading lesson and then they will take part in a self and peer assessment activity. This should hopefully aid students in becoming more analytical about their own reading choices with the help of their reading buddies. Download the reading journal to try with your own classes here.

I think this will all work best if the relationship between the reading buddies grows into a positive collaborative partnership. To aid this I am going to intersperse these activities and silent reading, with paired reading; recommendations of the ‘best bits’ from the lesson’s reading; along with some other reading games so that working together becomes less of a duty and more of a joy. Hopefully then my reading lessons will finally become about ‘reading for pleasure’ (in a measurable way, of course).

Naomi Hursthouse
Advance Skills Teacher
Steyning Grammar School

Secondary Business - News Quiz 19/1/12

2012-01-19T15:11:00.000Z

Here is today's ‘Business News Quiz’. Download the Word version (with answers and weblinks) to print off and use with your classes here!

Which business has halted the sale of what from its stores in China, after large crowds disrupted the launch of the product by throwing eggs?
Windows phone 6.5 ( )
iPhone 4s ( )
iPad 2 ( )
Blackberry playbook ( )
Which football club has de-listed its shares from the stock market and gone into private ownership this week?
Arsenal ( )
Manchester UTD ( )
Tottenham Hotspur ( )
Portsmouth( )
Which company has sparked Twitter outrage this week for a blackout of their broadband service?
Sky ( )
02 ( )
Talk Talk ( )
Virgin Media ( )
Which company that has £240m debts, employs more than 400 in Cardiff and over 9,000 others across the UK. Has gone into administration this week?
New Look ( )
Topshop ( )
Peacocks ( )
Primark ( )
Which business has blacked out its English-language site for 24 hours, in protest against the proposed US anti-piracy laws?
encyclopedia.com ( )
Ask Yahoo ( )
Google ( )
Wikipedia ( )
Facebook is adding a series of new applications to let users share such things as photos, travel or fashion, what is their new profile page called?
Profile line ( )
Timeline ( )
Timeshare ( )
Lifeline ( )
UK unemployment rose by 118,000 in the three months to November to 2.69 million, which is 8.4%, this is the highest level since when?
January 1996 ( )
January 1997 ( )
January 1986 ( )
January 2001 ( )
Which internet retail site has seen its profits rise to $789m in the last 3 months of 2011?
ASOS ( )
ebay ( )
Very ( )
Amazon ( )
Inflation fell sharply in December on the back of lower fuel and clothing prices, what level is current UK inflation?
5.4% ( )
5% ( )
4.2% ( )
4.5% ( )
Car production in the UK rose by 5.8% in 2011, industry figures show, what is the reason for this according to the BBC?
Boost in exports ( )
Increase in UK sales ( )
Environmental awareness ( )
More new younger drivers ( )

Donna Jestin

Teacher of Business Studies Notre Dame College & Senior Examiner for AQA

Further Education and Adult Learning - Children and Young People's Workforce: Using Persona Dolls

2012-01-18T08:30:00.026Z

PERSONA DOLLS IN ACTION: EQUALITY AND DISCRIMINATION

In the aftermath of the Stephen Lawrence murder trial, issues around equality and discrimination have once again become a focus for attention in the media.

Children’s service workers have a duty to help children and young people develop inclusive attitudes and this is a very important component of both the Level 2 Certificate and Level 3 Diploma for the Children and Young People’s Workforce.

Specifically:

L2: Unit TDA 2.7 Maintain and Support Relationships with Children and Young People

Unit SHC 23 Introduction to Equality and Inclusion in Health, Social Care or Children’s and Young People’s Settings

L3: Unit CYP 3.7 Understand how to Support Positive Outcomes for Children and Young People

Unit SHC 33 Promote Equality and Inclusion in Health, Social Care or Children’s and Young People’s Settings

A good starting point is to help your students understand their own perspectives and to think about how they view others. As we all know, this is potentially a very sensitive issue, but an important one to address if students are to fully understand the nature of inclusive practice. The wordsearch attached can be a useful opening prompt for discussion. (Answers available separately here).

Practical classroom sessions are a fun and valuable way of helping your students both to develop their understanding and demonstrate their competence in the real work environment. Persona dolls have been used for many years as a playful tool to help young children learn about diversity and individual differences and they can be equally valuable for students in helping them to prepare evidence for assessment.

The Persona doll website (http://www.persona-doll-training.org/ukhome.html), has some very useful information, including example scripts for stories to use with the dolls and a wide range of links to other sites relating to anti-discrimination and inclusive practice.

Dolls from www.persona-doll-training/org

Your students could work in groups to develop their own Persona doll story dealing with a particular aspect of discrimination (eg. race, gender, or even bullying). An example story is given on the attached information sheet or use examples from the Persona doll website.

Students could then share their stories and discuss how they might be used with children in the real work environment. Some students may have already encountered Persona dolls in their placement or work setting and could be encouraged to share their experiences with others in the group. Some of the stories might be developed and the students could practice telling their stories in a simulated “circle time” using a puppet or large soft toy in place of a Persona doll if necessary.

Encourage your students to think about questions they might ask the children, for example “how do you think teddy feels now?” or “how could we help teddy to feel better?” . Students should also be prepared to respond to some of the children’s comments, for example “my dad says you should always hit people back” or “boys who cry are sissies”.

At different levels, students could use the evidence generated here to support their assessment for:

L2: Unit SCH 23 (AC 2.2 and 2.3); Unit TDA 2.7 (AC 3.2 and 3.3)

L3: Unit SHC 33 (AC 1.1 1.2 and 1.3); Unit CYP 3.7 (AC 4.1)

Janet Stearns
Lecturer in Early Childhood Studies, former Lead Examiner for CACHE

Secondary Psychology - Quizzes!

2012-01-17T08:30:00.000Z

Quick quizzes are brilliant at any part of the lesson and a quick convenient way of measuring progress. The new OFSTED framework emphasises progress over time and within lessons. The quiz format provides an excellent strategy for demonstrating ‘rapid progress’ which can be an awkward thing to demonstrate visibly (i.e. so an inspector can see it in an observation) within an hour of teaching.

Examples

These measure progress at speed. Just how fast is entirely up to you.

1) On the spot quiz

They can also be compiled as quickly as you can think, for example you can say… “Quick quiz!… write 1 to 5 down your margin…Number 1… Name a behaviourist psychologist…”

2) Give me 5!

A snappy lesson starter where you ask 5 questions about the last lesson's content will pull the students thinking into context.

3) Mid lesson quiz

“ Cover your notes…Name 3/5/7 defence mechanisms ( for example)” will work well half way through your lesson and consolidates learning.

4) To finish
As a plenary, a less precise “Write down 3 key facts you’ve learnt today” works well.

To save time planning your plenary you can try asking students to write one “question for the quizmaster” each on a post it note from the lesson to ask the other students. They have to think about their learning, but the real plus is that it requires no planning. You get a variety of questions to ask, and they know they will know the answer to at least one of the quiz questions! Of course this depends on your class size. You’ll struggle if teaching 20+ and may have to be selective with the questions. I sometimes find there’s repetition anyway so not all questions are read out.

Never mark a quiz… you can ask them to mark each others or their own and give a show of hands for their score at the end. Save yourself time, I’m sure you can fill it!

And so to prizes. There’s the healthy budget option, the unhealthy budget option or the sweet stuff…

Healthy budgets can be spent on psychology related goods… just search for ‘psychology stuff’ on the internet and you’ll find brain sweets, Freud lollipops, badges etc.
Unhealthy budgets can be tricky but in our department there is an assortment of cheap prizes… car boot sale/ charity shop goods ( e.g. a copy of Free Willy for a debates quiz), budget half price crackers (though these may now have disappeared from the shops), Happy Meal toys and even a 2 day extension for the homework have all proved popular in the past.
You can always resort to the sweet brown goodies. After all who doesn’t like chocolate?!

Eleanor Hills

Subject Leader Psychology and Sociology

Roundhay School

Secondary History - It's Complicated...

2012-01-16T09:00:00.001Z

To help our students make sense of history quite often we generalise, so Hitler’s war becomes Germany’s war, where all Germans are involved in fighting against the Allies. During the Industrial Revolution all factory owners were oppressive, making their workers work very long hours for very low pay and beating them if they didn’t toe the line. I’m sure you can think of lots more examples from your own schemes of work.

But things are not quite so simple. For example, at one stage during World War Two, in the South of France, the head of the Gestapo was a Frenchman, and the leader of the French Resistance was a German! And of course some employers in C19th Britain built model factories [Titus Salt, the Cadbury brothers] and made children go to school for half a day before they were allowed to work [Robert Owen.]

The Church, we teach, was a force for good in people’s lives, encouraging them to live decent lives, not to cheat, or lie, to follow God’s teaching. But what about this example?

Little Jack Horner sat in the corner, eating a Christmas pie:
He put in his thumb, and pulled out a plum,
And said, “What a good boy am I!”

But do you know the real story behind the nursery rhyme?

‘Jack’ Horner was the steward of Richard Whiting, the last Abbot of Glastonbury, in the sixteenth century. His real name was Thomas, but, as in playing cards, a ‘knave’ was always known as ‘Jack!’ At the time of the dissolution of the monasteries, Thomas Horner was sent by the abbot to take a pie to Henry VIII in London. The pie contained a gift of the title deeds of twelve of the richest manors owned by Glastonbury. The Abbot hoped such a gift might persuade Henry to leave his abbey alone. The deeds were ‘baked’ in a pie partly to captivate the King (it being the fashion to have novelty pies at table – remember the ‘four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie?’) and partly as a protection from highwaymen. The story is told that Thomas Horner ‘dipped’ his fingers into the pie and removed the deeds to Mells Manor, the biggest and best estate of the twelve in the pie – hence pulling out the ‘plum.’

True or not, the Horner family moved in to Mells Manor shortly after the dissolution of the monasteries, and a descendent of Thomas was still living there in 1975. This story first appeared in print in 1764.

What a terrific way to bring Henry VIII and the dissolution of the monasteries to life. An abbot – a leader of the Church – resorting to bribery and skulduggery to try to keep his abbey open; a trusted servant of the Church who steals in order to feather his own nest; a king who is obviously after money and susceptible to bribery – why else would the Abbot have tried to bribe him? Doesn’t that humanise the topic in a way that is often missing from our textbooks? Doesn’t it put another perspective on Henry’s struggle with the Church? And you thought it was all about having a son to rule after him. As I said, history is complicated!

Alf Wilkinson
CPD Manager for the Historical Association and previously National Strategist for Key Stage 3 History. Alf has over 30 years history teaching experience and was lead author for Collins Key Stage 3 History resources.

Secondary English - The value of formative assessment

2012-01-13T09:00:00.000Z

Over the past few years, the pressure on teachers and schools to provide accurate assessment of pupil progress has been racked up to a point which, some say, is almost unsustainable. With the advent of the SSEF, schools had to provide paper evidence trails to demonstrate their knowledge of the working practices and efficacy of every aspect of school life: including learning walks, work scrutiny, student voice activities – all this on top of Performance Management and other lesson observations.

Is it any wonder then, that some teachers have begun to view marking as just another means of demonstrating that they are doing their job? At some training that I was involved with recently, I asked the staff to answer honestly who the prime audience was for their marking. Was it the students, really? Or was it to satisfy the person with the tick-box who was going to be assessing their competence.

I’m sure you know what the answer was.

Dylan Wiliam is passionate about the value of formative assessment as a means of securing student progress. He talks with enormous common sense about how marking is one means of giving students what they need, which is honest, valid feedback on where they are and what they need to do to improve. Metacognition is fundamental to this process – involving students in the language of their learning and sharing the process with them.

At one school, this has been adopted by all staff with quite remarkable results. Marking has been limited to twice every half term at Key Stage 3 (at Key Stages 4 and 5 more often might be more appropriate). All marking is linked explicitly to the Assessment Focus, and teachers use the acronym P A T (Praise, Attainment/Achievement, Target).

The T for Target has been interpreted by this school to mean: ‘now, you go and do’. The Head of English said he was becoming increasingly frustrated by the fact that he and his team spent hours giving students loads and loads of written feedback on their work, only for the students to just look at their attainment grade, compare it with whomever they felt in competition with, and then close their books. Dylan Wiliam would agree with this wholeheartedly – he has often advocated not giving students grades / levels as part of their feedback at all when in the process of developing a skill. This particular English department have decided to use ‘target’ to mean giving students a task to do to respond to the marking; a paragraph highlighted by the teacher for them to complete again, for example.

This department has recently received an ‘outstanding’ judgement from Ofsted: the level of student autonomy was sited as one of the main reasons for the judgement. Perhaps more significantly, teacher workload is reduced, student performance has made ‘significant improvement’, and parents value and support homework as they can see that it is for a specific purpose, rather than the ‘tick-box’ function it tended to serve in the past.

Sarah Darragh
English Teacher and author of A Bridge to GCSE English

Secondary Business - News Quiz 12/1/12

2012-01-12T10:07:00.000Z

Here is this week's Business news quiz, we have finally seen Tesco's sales slow, and despite huge marketing campaigns their sales were lower than the same Christmas period last year. With both Sainsbury and Waitrose seeing increasing sales for the same period... is this the end of the monopoly of Tesco?

Here is today's ‘Business News Quiz’. Download the Word version (with answers and weblinks) to print off and use with your classes here!

Who has confirmed it has acquired the assets of outdoor clothing retailer Blacks Leisure for £20m?
JD Sports ( )
La Senza( )
JJB Sports ( )
Tesco ( )
Interactive episodes of Sesame Street are being developed by its creators in conjunction with what business?
Apple ( )
Microsoft ( )
Samsung ( )
BBC ( )
The price of what juice on the global markets has hit a record high, after surging 25% over the past few days?
Grape ( )
Cranberry ( )
Apple( )
Orange ( )
Which High Street bakery chain has seen a boost in its sales by 5.1% over the Christmas and New Year period?
Ainsley’s ( )
The Pound Bakery ( )
Greggs ( )
Bakers Oven ( )
One of the UK's largest energy suppliers, EDF Energy, has said it is to cut its gas bills by 5% from 7 February, by how much though did it raise its prices in November 2011?
25% ( )
10% ( )
20% ( )
15% ( )
Which supermarkets shares have dropped 10% after the retailer said it was "disappointed" by its seasonal trading in the UK?
ASDA ( )
Morrison’s ( )
Sainsbury ( )
Tesco ( )
The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has said it is planning to cut jobs how many, with most of them to happen this year?
3, 000 ( )
3, 500( )
4, 000( )
4, 500( )
The cost of car insurance could be cut if the government restricted the huge number of what?
Female drivers ( )
New cars being sold to young males ( )
Teenage drivers ( )
Whiplash injury claims ( )
Company Wonga has removed pages from its website after it was branded "incredibly irresponsible" for targeting students. What do they provide?
Credit cards ( )
Expensive Insurance ( )
Pay Day loans ( )
Bank accounts ( )
Which company will double the speed of its broadband service for more than four million of its customers, the company has said?
Virgin ( )
BT ( )
02 ( )
Sky ( )

Donna Jestin
Teacher of Business Studies Notre Dame College & Senior Examiner for AQA

Secondary Law - Legal Dilemmas in Film

2012-01-12T09:00:00.000Z

Legal Dilemmas in Film (3 of the best!)

The love affair between the courtroom and the silver screen is nothing new. There is a natural, underlying tension in a legal case which is undeniably dramatic. Most law students will eventually be exposed to the classic 12 Angry Men and To Kill a Mocking Bird, not to mention Legally Blonde and Erin Brockovich.

I’d like to offer up three new films for a place in the Pantheon. Each one is an excellent vehicle for promoting wider discussion and ethical debate. They resonate well beyond the law class. Be warned though. They are not ‘feel good’ films to be approached lightly. But with careful pump priming and selection they provide thought-provoking material for 16 year olds and upwards.

1) Pierrepoint (Lionsgate Films)

How does a man justify taking life on behalf of the state?

This film explores the changing mental landscape of the executioner, Albert Pierrepoint as he dispatches over 600 condemned men and women. Amongst his charges; the last woman to hang - Ruth Ellis and the wrongly-executed Timothy Evans (hanged for Christie’s crime of murdering Evans’ wife and child) as well as many of the Nazi war criminals. It is an A-Z of high profile cases of the last century. Timothy Spall’s portrayal of Pierrepoint is simultaneously humane and harrowing.

If you have time show the whole film, but it is graphic and raw in places. The dilemmas here are both legal and moral.

Can a man remain unscathed by such terrible deeds?
What is innocence? And what is guilt?
And ultimately, what is punishment for? How should it be meted out and by whom?

Of one executed murderer he philosophically reflects: “She’s paid the price. She’s innocent now.”

Further research at Amnesty: http://www.protectthehuman.com/tags/death-penalty

2) Touching the Void (Film Four)

What if the only way you could save your own life was by taking the life of another?

On the slopes of a remote Peruvian mountain, Siula Grande, two real, living, breathing mountaineers find themselves enacting a legal dilemma often imagined in legal textbooks. Joe, having fallen, is suspended off the edge of the mountain. Tied to Simon, his body weight is slowly pulling his friend towards the edge of the precipice. If Simon does nothing he will eventually be pulled over the edge. He finds a penknife in his rucksack.....

Show the 15 minute clip leading up to this crisis point. Then pause the film.

Should he cut the rope? Is it morally justifiable?
If he does is it a legally justifiable act? If so on what grounds?
Does he have the mens rea for murder?

Dudley and Stephens (1884) provides many of the legal answers.

3) Ghosts (Tartan)

Does slavery still exist in modern Britain?

Nick Broomfield’s disturbing account of the 2004 Morecambe Bay disaster when 23 Chinese migrant workers lost their lives by drowning is stark, elegiac, and deeply moving.
One of the most tragic cases of manslaughter in recent times, it raises profound questions.

Who is protected under our law?
What is society’s attitude towards illegal immigrants? Does the Rule of Law work for them?

The journey from China to England is both a shocking beginning and a good place to start the discussion.

Nigel Briggs
Head of Law, Notre Dame Sixth Form College, Leeds

The Chemistry behind Soap!

2012-01-11T16:57:00.000Z

Soap occurs in KS3 and GCSE Chemistry courses during the study of alkalis, water quality, carboxylic acids (including fats and oils and emulsifiers) and investigations of industrial chemistry. It would form a good topic for cross-curricular project work.

Soap is one of those “superstuffs” that we use every day and take for granted. Soap is used for washing ourselves, cleaning clothes, pots and pans, floors – just about everything in fact. Yet most of the products we use today actually don’t contain soap at all.

All these different cleaning materials are detergents that act as emulsifiers. They consist of long molecules with a charged group at one end and a long hydrocarbon chain at the other. The charged end is hydrophilic and dissolves in water. The hydrocarbon chain is hydrophobic. It does not dissolve in water but does mix with fats and greases. Mixing a detergent with fats and water breaks up the fat into globules surrounded by the detergent molecules with the hydrophilic end sticking into the water so preventing the globules joining up.
Soap is a good detergent. It is the sodium or potassium salt of long chain fatty acids e.g.
CH3CH2.......CH2COO- Na+. The length and structure of the chain depends on the fat or oil that the soap is derived from. No-one knows when it was discovered that mixing a fat or oil with ashes from a fire produced a soap but the process has been in use for thousands of years. Goat fat and wood ash was a favourite early recipe. Salt was often added to the mixture to separate out the soap.

The value of a good soap was well recognised. For instance, King Charles I of England handed out licences to soap boilers in London and placed a tax on the manufacture of soap at £4 per ton. The tax made soap expensive for working class people and for the woollen industry where soap was used to wash fleeces. The soap tax was not removed until 1853.

A Frenchman, Michel-Eugene Chevreul worked out what was happening in the soap-making process in 1823. Alkali (from the wood ash) splits up the fat molecules into the fatty acids and glycerol. Once soap makers understood the process they could improve the quality of their soap and separate off the glycerol as a useful by-product. An important change was to use vegetable oils such as palm or olive oil instead of animal fats. In the 1880s William Hesketh Lever established a factory at Port Sunlight on the Mersey estuary and made a fortune producing his superior quality soaps. His company, now known as Unilever, still makes a variety of well-known cleaning materials.

While soap is an excellent and versatile detergent it forms a dirty scum in hard water. Hard water contains calcium or magnesium ions that form an insoluble salt with the fatty acids of soap. The scum wastes soap and remains on the clothes or pots being washed.

Today we use detergents that are designed not to form precipitates in hard water. A common detergent is sodium lauryl sulfate. It is made by reacting lauryl alcohol with sulfur trioxide and then forming the sodium salt of the acid. Lauryl alcohol is made by reducing the fatty acids obtained from coconut and palm oil. Sodium lauryl sulfate has a sulfate group instead of the carboxylic acid group at the end of the hydrocarbon chain. The sulfate group forms soluble salts with calcium and magnesium ions so that no scum is formed in hard water. Sodium laureth sulfate is a similar substance with a slightly more complex hydrophilic group.

Need more sums?

2012-01-11T16:45:00.001Z

How do you read a GCSE science specification? I don't mean how you cope with the words, but which parts do you pay most attention to? I ask because one of the appendices in the 2011 specifications is likely to have significant impact on questions, both in the external assessments and in the controlled assessments. This is the set of mathematical skills. Arguably it shouldn't be stuck in an appendix, where it runs the risk of being ignored.

In one sense these skills are nothing new. Specifications have had such lists for years and the one in the new specs isn’t much different to the previous versions. However, its status is different. In previous years the list of skills constituted something that examiners could make use of if they wanted to. If they wanted to set a question that called upon the student to perform mathematical operations, this list indicated what was legitimate. However, the current list is one that has to be assessed. Not all of them in every series (in the same way that not all of the content is assessed in every series) but all of them over a period of time, either in external assessments or in controlled assessments.

There's a bit at the end that is Higher Tier only, but apart from that the list is the same list for any GCSE science course (core, additional or separate science) and the same for all awarding organisations. This means that those mathematical skills will need to be assessed in each of the sciences.

Furthermore, numerical answers (whether from calculation or graph) are now expected to be 'developed', i.e. the candidate is then likely to be asked in a later part of the question to make use of the number. No more setting a calculation for the sake of setting a calculation. It’s now likely that a student will be expected, having arrived at a numerical answer, be asked to apply it in some way or to make a judgment on it.

It is also worthwhile to look at the correlation between mathematical skills and assessment objectives. For example, recalling a unit or selecting the appropriate formula is AO1 (recall, select and communicate knowledge and understanding of science) and therefore likely to be in an external assessment. However, basing a conclusion upon the evidence in a graph is AO3 (analyse and evaluate evidence, make reasoned judgments and draw conclusions based on evidence) and a much more likely candidate for the controlled assessment.

On the one hand this seems reasonable. There is a trend towards all sciences becoming more mathematical and students with weaker numeracy skills are likely to find themselves struggling in most science courses post 16. However it does mean that the development of mathematical skills for students doing any science at GCSE will need to be checked and addressed. Science teams supporting their students most effectively are those in which they know the range of skills, how to address them and have co-ordinated their approach with that of the Maths team.

Ed Walsh
Science Advisor for Cornwall Learning

Secondary ICT - How to deliver ICT projects

2012-01-11T09:00:00.030Z

In the last blog I offered a case for using less control in the classroom. I wasn’t thinking of starry-eyed notions of freedom associated with the educational elites of yore, where students select the subject they need from a pick and mix open timetable. My point was restricted to the “ownership” of ICT projects. The student is often engaged by the ICT project for a number of sessions. Unlike in science, where tipping the solution down the drain rather than the precipitate is an inconvenient climax to a Chemistry lesson, in ICT the “solution” is a resolution of a problem or need and is often the culmination of weeks of work. Students should and do, feel it is their own project. If they have worked “sir’s recipe” to an acceptable end-point, it is likely that have a very good project; how this reflects their independent working, insight, development of transferable skills, the sheer human aspect of creativity, is questionable. Quite rightly, exam boards are increasing astute in figuring out that the “cook-book” has been used.

Fitting it together

OK, I have made my case, how to deliver? A starting point is the project: “Old Banger Motors have a problem in managing accounts for servicing and repairs to customers’ vehicles... blah, blah”. There is a problem to this approach too, in that with limited skills and experience it is unlikely that the student will be able to design a sophisticated solution to the problem, so that while projects are probably the road to travel, the student will need to set off knowing how to use the sat nav and widen his awareness in the souks of the caravanserais of the journey. Initial teacher defined and led sessions followed by intense skill acquisition once the project starts could be the method of choice. These sessions need to be focussed on skills pertinent to the project but distanced by not being part of the scenario of the project. For example, in the above scenario it is likely that spreadsheet functions such as ROUND and COUNTIF are expected to be used. At a suitable point some distance into the project, but before the functions are relevant to the project, the training session could be delivered. The student is free to incorporate these into the original design or not. What won’t work is relying on the “stumble upon” option as means of differentiation; awareness of what is available and some examples of how the functions, logical operators or whatever can be used in a clearly defined exercise is what is needed.

There is more on offer here, not all of it positive: those less able or motivated may not be as well supported, however you may feel that the motivated, determined and able students deserve their day in the sun.

John Giles

Secondary Business - Revision for Unit 3

2012-01-10T09:00:00.000Z

In order for students to do well on the AQA Unit 3 exam, they need to be able to apply their knowledge and theory from the course to the business that they are given in the exam case study. One of the challenges is actually getting them to USE the theory they know for the different cases.

I have asked my students to revise what they have learnt by using the following businesses:
• Apple
• Google

Here they are able to compare and contrast two similar, but in some ways very different, businesses.

Ask students to read the article that follows from ‘BusinessWeek.com’ and to watch the video clips attached.

When they have read this ask them to fill in the tables on the worksheets (available to download here) with as much information as they can, into the relevant boxes.

“On Jan. 5, Google (GOOG) did a very Apple-like thing. In a presentation at the Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif., the 11-year-old search behemoth unveiled Nexus One, a stylish touchscreen smartphone that runs on the company's Android operating system, is sold through a Google-operated retail Web site, and greets the market with an advertising tagline ("Web meets phone") as simple and optimistic as the one Apple used in 2007 to introduce its iPhone ("The Internet in your pocket").

On the same day, Apple did a very Google-like thing. Steve Jobs, the king of splashy product launches and in-house development, announced a strategic acquisition. For $275 million, Apple purchased Quattro Wireless, an upstart advertising company that excels at targeting ads to mobile-phone users based on their behavior.

When companies start to imitate one another, it's usually either an extreme case of flattery—or war. In the case of Google and Apple, it's both.”

(Source: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_04/b4164028483414.htm)

Note: Tim Cook is now the CEO of Apple.

See also:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7290322.stm - Google office, culture & headquarters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAdih-bnjBQ – Steve Jobs on Apple & Leadership

Once they have filled in as much as they can for the different functional areas from the information given, ask them to think about what ‘theory’ from the course they can apply to the businesses.

For example:
• Do the businesses use Ansoff’s Matrix for new product development?
• Do the businesses have a strategy of innovation?
• Did Steve Jobs use a Hard approach to HR? What will the new CEO bring?
• How does this differ with Google, where 20% of the employees time is given back for their own projects?

If you have time you could also allow students to do additonal research online - this would be especially useful for the AQA BUSS4 exam, which some students I know will be sitting in January.

Once they have completed this ask them to consider the following questions (you can think of your own as well!):
• To what extent do the two businesses differ?
• To what extent has differentiation been used by the two businesses?
• To what extent is innovation vital for Apple & Google?
• To what extent is the business' choice of marketing strategy the key to success?

Remember to ask the students to include theory in their answers to support their arguments, this is vital for both the BUSS 3 & 4 exams.

In my experience asking students to talk about businesses they know, use and are familiar with will help them to link the theory much quicker!

Don't forget to download the activity worksheet here.

Donna Jestin

Teacher of Business Studies Notre Dame College & Senior Examiner for AQA

Secondary Sociology - Mnemonics

2012-01-09T09:00:00.029Z

Mnemonics: Useful revision aids

Difficult to pronounce, and even more difficult for your students to spell, mnemonics are a very useful way of remembering a lot of content quickly. They are therefore ideal in the run up to the January exams. Mnemonics are nothing new and by definition include any learning technique that aids memory.

My Sociology students will be sitting an exam which contains a 52 mark question about research methods. I came up with the following mnemonic to help them remember the various issues which they need to cover in their answer. Although I devised this with the OCR G671 examination in mind; hopefully it is general enough to be suitable for other Sociology methods questions too:

Very Responsible Students Revise and Pass Every Time

Which stands for…

Validity

Reliability

Studies - A reminder to make links to other sociological research

Representativeness

Practical issues

Ethics

Theoretical issues – Positivism and Interpretivism

There are online mnemonic generators if you are struggling for inspiration. I think that Spacefem’s random generator is the quickest and easiest to use: http://spacefem.com/mnemonics

However, it is more effective (and funnier) if students devise the mnemonics themselves. A word of caution; keep it simple. If the mnemonic is very abstract it will be difficult to remember, which somewhat defeats the purpose!

Emily Painter

Sociology Teacher, Cadbury Sixth Form College

Secondary History - Hyperinflation

2012-01-06T09:00:00.000Z

‘In August 1923, the dollar reached a million Mark.’

-Hyperinflation through Defying Hitler

‘That extraordinary year is probably what has marked today’s Germans with those characteristics that are so strange and incomprehensible in the eyes of the world...’ So wrote Sebastian Haffner in 1939, a memoir eventually posthumously published by his son as Defying Hitler in 2001. The hyperflation crisis to which Haffner refers, rocked the fragile Weimar Republic between January and December 1923, and yet often leaves my Year 9 students throwing their hands up in despair, not in sympathy for those Weimar citizens forced to spend their earnings as quickly as they could in the face of over-night devaluation, but in consequence of an hour-long grapple with economic terms and price indices.

By year 13, when the topic is re-visited as part of the study of Germany 1900-45, the situation is somewhat better, (especially if I am lucky enough to have some A2 Economists in the class!), yet my trusty price index and anecdotes about men carting their wages home in wheelbarrows doesn’t quite go far enough at showing the impact of hyperinflation on an economy already crippled by Treaty of Versailles reparations, and yoked by the terms of Hugo Preuss’ new constitution to a hopelessly over-ambitious welfare state. So this year I decided to take a new approach; using Defying Hitler, and offering students the use of a selection of plasticine, pipe-cleaners, and a flip-camera.

Following an hour long lesson on the origins and course of the hyperinflation crisis, the next lesson was spent enabling students to really grasp the impact of the year in which ‘an entire nation of Germans had a spiritual organ removed.’ What follows is the course of this second lesson.

Part One (up to 15 minutes)

I chose 15 quotations from Chapter 10 of Defying Hitler (download the quotations here). The first five were selected to illustrate the wider impact of the crisis on the German psyche. Haffner is writing from voluntary exile in England during Nazism and so he has some strong opinions on how the hyperinflation primed German society ‘not specifically for Nazism, but for any fantastic adventure.’
The remaining 10 quotations were chosen to illustrate the immediate impact on ordinary lives, both the disasters, but also the opportunities for the ‘young and quick witted.’
Each student was given a quote upon their arrival to the lesson, asked to read it and make one inference about the impact of the hyperinflation.
Students then grouped themselves into threes, and together made a further inference about the impact of hyperinflation this time based on a broader spread of 3 quotations.
Each group of three then paired up with another group of three, and made a further inference based this time on 6 quotations. By this time students had access to a mixture of the wider impact and specific impact quotations.
This was followed by a brief (7 or 8 minutes – I never deal in multiples of 5!) discussion, drawing on the facts and figures of the previous lesson combined with Haffner’s recollections in order to offer a coherent picture of the impact of hyperinflation.

Part Two (the remaining 45-ish minutes)

My students love plasticine, and they also love film cameras. I use both as way of allowing them to creatively express their own understandings. Neither has ever, in my experience, served to do anything other than deepen and consolidate students’ knowledge. Win win!

Students were offered the choice of modelling the effect of hyperinflation using plasticine to create a stop-animation film, or just going straight in with the camera and starring in the show themselves. The extroverts seem always to pump for the pure film option, the more kinaesthetic make a bee-line for the modelling and the stop-animation.
Students had the best part of 40 minutes to make the model/record the film. The only rules were that it must be historically factually accurate, and it must directly reference Haffner.
Photographing models and downloading films is the last step. We watched the films back at the beginning of the next lesson, and the photographs of the modelling process are up on the wall.
Hyperinflation – grasped!

Charlotte Grove
History Teacher, Dame Alice Owen's School

Secondary English - Giving the Answers

2012-01-05T14:00:00.013Z

My school has recently been focussing on questioning in a bid to try and improve the quality of student answers. This has been a really interesting project, which led to the whole school finding new ways to question our students. When it came to our turn, however, my colleagues and I decided to flip the task around. We gave our students the answers in order to improve their questioning.

What’s the point? Well, in the run up to exams, it is, of course, important to help students to understand the exam questions. Giving the answers and asking them to think of the relevant question makes them do several things: firstly it forces them to read and engage with the answers in a deeper way; secondly it provides a model for good (or bad) answers; thirdly it compels them to consider the types of question, which are set in the exam; and finally, in constructing questions it makes students think about the nature of exam questions and the meaning of command words.

I have been delighted so far with the results. There is a lot of mileage in this activity that extends beyond one lesson but as a first step my year 11 students have been using the Unit 1 English Language Reading answers to reacquaint themselves with the four types of question set in the exam (What do you learn about...?; Presentational Devices; What are the writer’s thoughts and Feelings?; Language Devices). The next step is to then get them to focus on the skills used in the answers and match these with command words in the questions (Explain; Analyse; Compare etc.). These tasks should encourage my students to not only understand the exam questions but to really comprehend what the examiner expects in the answers. As a follow-up to this activity (and to test how much my students have really learnt) I will then ask them to write their own exam paper, test each other and then mark the answers.

So, hopefully, by giving my students the answers I will be enabling them to improve their understanding of the questions, write better answers AND peer assess effectively. Next step, getting them to plan, teach and mark for me too!

Download questions and answers for GCSE Unit 1 Reading to try this technique with your own classes here.

Naomi Hursthouse

Advance Skills Teacher

Steyning Grammar School

Secondary Business - News Quiz 05/01/2012

2012-01-05T09:59:00.000Z

As students are now revising for their January exams, they should also be aware of the current business environment - especially for A2 students. The Eurozone crisis is continuing with fears again for Greece, and sales have been extremely varied amongst industries over the Christmas period. What will 2012 bring?

Here is today's ‘Business News Quiz’. Download the Word version (with answers) to print off and use with your classes here!

UK album sales fell by 13% to 86.2 million discs in 2011 but digital downloads rose but not by enough to prevent an overall decline in album sales, what is said to be the reason for this decline?
Credit Crunch ( )
Piracy and the government for taking too long to tackle the problem ( )
VAT increase ( )
Unemployment increasing and lack of jobs ( )
Which business has seen an "outstanding" rise in sales at its department stores during the Christmas period?
House of Fraser ( )
Debenhams ( )
John Lewis ( )
Selfridges ( )
US web portal Yahoo has named Scott Thompson as its new head - from which firm has he come from?
Google ( )
Ebay( )
Paypal ( )
Amazon ( )
Shares in Eastman Kodak have fallen how much; on speculation the photography firm was preparing to file for bankruptcy protection in the US?
28% ( )
32%( )
42%( )
38%( )
Microsoft has celebrated the imminent demise of what product by baking a cake?
Its shares ( )
Bing ( )
It’s Windows phone ( )
Version 6 of internet explorer ( )
The government has made no savings by raising the public sector pension age to what age; a pension’s consultant has said?
66 ( )
67 ( )
68 ( )
69 ( )
A Canadian man who forgot his passport has said that he managed to cross the border into the US using what?
His birth certificate ( )
His VISA card ( )
An image of his passport scanned onto his iPad ( )
A Skype conversation where his family showed his passport ( )
Nissan Sunderland breaks a UK manufacturing record, by producing how many cars in 2011?
480,485 ( )
2, 481,485 ( )
1, 480,485 ( )
490,485 ( )
Which country is it thought, will default on its debts in March, unless unions agree to further cuts in salaries?
Ireland ( )
Portugal ( )
Greece ( )
Italy ( )
What was the most pirated game of 2011, being downloaded 3.2 million times illegally since its release last March?
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 ( )
Battlefield 3 ( )
FIFA 12 ( )
Crysis 2 ( )

Donna Jestin

Teacher of Business Studies Notre Dame College & Senior Examiner for AQA

Secondary RE - Engaging teens in the 'God' question...?

2011-12-16T09:00:00.000Z

“But Miss, I don’t want to be a priest, so why do I have to learn about God?”

A familiar question I’m sure. I find within my subject there is often a flurry of such statements from students, particularly when they start the course in Year 9. As a department we have trialled various ‘strategies’ to engage them, and to make them see how important RE is!

The first change we implemented when I joined the department in 2005 was a re-brand to ‘Philosophy and Ethics’ as we felt this better matched not only our Year 9 curriculum, but the exam specifications we use for GCSE and A Level. This name change received a very positive response, and helped to avoid the stigma of ‘RE’ without compromising delivery of the subject. However, I wonder whether we have almost become afraid to call our subject RE or RS for fear that the students won’t opt for GCSE, or will have a negative perception before their first lesson. Surely if we strive to truly engage them the name won’t matter?

Despite the new title, most tend to ‘click’ by about October half term that I am in fact delivering RE under a new guise, but by then the majority are on board. The secret I think is to grab them with the BIG questions – ‘Does God Exist’, ‘What happens when we die’, ‘The problem of suffering’ et al - to really show how RE is concerned with the things that matter. An open minded, un-shockable, and somewhat argumentative approach works really well – especially with the Dawkins fans (usually boys!). Of course, we’re never going to convince the entirety to see the value, especially when their parents (and in fact other staff), still view RE as reading parables and memorising the 66 biblical books. There is also growing concern about the E-Bacc, where RE is not one of the ‘Humanities’ (ludicrous!), only promoting a further negative energy.

However, as RE teachers, we can at least get students thinking in a reflective way about human experience and the world around them – which is crucial!

A few ideas to get started:

‘Look into each others eyes’ and ‘Hold hands’ is a fun way of starting the design argument.
Good old Bruce Almighty is always a nice one for challenging stereotypes of what God is like and leads to discussing God’s attributes well (Dogma is an option for a female God character, but it’s harder to find a suitable clip here!).
If death was….a sound, colour, animal place – is a good imagination exercise that gets to the concept of our interpretations of life after death.
Near Death Experience gets them talking – try http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnOcvqMCrhs
If you could ask God one question, what would it be? A good bell work task, followed by some teacher drama….”Because I have connections, God has granted us 5 mins of his time” etc, usually works well in triggering questions about The Problem of Evil!

We know RE gets to the heart of what is important – we just need to convince everyone else! And, in my experience so far, the Big Questions are a cracking way to engage young people from the start!

Esther Zarifi
Religious Studies, Philosophy & Ethics Teacher
Prudhoe Community High School

Secondary Psychology - How to learn studies

2011-12-15T13:00:00.000Z

“Not another study to learn Miss…”

Many students complain about the number of studies they have to learn for the examination. There are things they can do to ease the process of prioritising and memorising. Here are some activities/ strategies to answer those FAQs…

FAQ Number 1 :Which ones do I need Miss?
Some boards specify which studies students need, some boards don’t. If you are teaching one that leaves it to you, then students find it easier if they have a minimum studies list provided. I do this in the form of a mind map that specifies the name of the study, what it can be used as support for and, if I’m feeling kind, a page reference. I usually set a homework for them to complete the sheet. Testing them on the details in a quick quiz ensures they learn it fully too

FAQ Number 2 : What’s the name of that man that did... again Miss?
Names are another issue for students. They are not vital, but save valuable time in an exam so less detail is needed to identify the study. They can however prove to be a nightmare to recall. I find using dingbats or a visual cue helps. It’s a great revision class activity to get them to come up with cues in pairs.

FAQ Number 3 : What did they do again Miss?
A way to ensure they understand and process the procedure in an experiment or study is to get the students to become cartoonists and draw a cartoon of what happened in the experiment. They may resist initially but when they realise that stick men are sufficient they are happy to give it a go. This method works equally well for any processes such as treatments or therapies (Stress Inoculation therapy, systematic desensitisation etc)

FAQ Number 4 : But what did they find Miss?
Good old repetition works for the findings. Incorporating the figures into the final stage of the cartoon (on the t-shirts of the stick men for example) can also work well. The figures need to be close to the actual figure to be credited so the students are aiming to remember a ‘ball park’ figure. Examiners don’t quibble generally if the percentage varies by one or two percent.

Try these strategies out in class as plenaries or in those pre exam revision sessions. There’s an extra bonus in none of them require marking. Always good news!

Eleanor Hills
Subject Leader Psychology and Sociology
Roundhay School

Secondary Business - News Quiz 15/12/11

2011-12-15T09:42:00.000Z

This week saw a report into the high street, saying town centres should be more like businesses! It will be interesting to see who comes out on top for sales this festive period the high street or the out of town malls? As unemployment grows once again, will this affect consumer spending?

The winner of Lord Alan Sugar's Young Apprentice was also crowned winning a huge £25 000 for their investment ideas, how will the winner fair in the future business world?

Here is today's ‘Business News Quiz’. Download the Word version (with answers and weblinks) to print off and use with your classes here!

Sainsbury have worked with Jamie Oliver for the last 11 years, with him fronting their TV campaigns, who is taking over from him in 2012?
David Beckham ( )
Victoria Beckham ( )
Jamie Rednapp ( )
Harry Rednapp ( )
LMFAO track Party Rock Anthem was the best-selling song on the UK version of iTunes this year, what was in second place?
Maroon 5's Moves Like Jagger ( )
Pitbull’s Give Me Everything. ( )
Adele's Someone Like You ( )
Jessie J’s Price Tag ( )
Complaints to which energy company have risen by 91% in a year, with most of the major suppliers seeing customer gripes increase?
N Power ( )
EDF Energy ( )
Scottish Power ( )
E.on( )
Little Mix won the X Factor this weekend, who is the only X Factor winner to not have got the Christmas Number one spot- due to a Facebook campaign supporting ‘Rage against the machine’?
Shane Ward ( )
Steve Brookstein ( )
Leon Jackson ( )
Joe McElderry ( )
A report into how to revive the High Street by a retail expert recommends getting town centres to run more like businesses, who was the retail expert?
Sir Phillip Green ( )
Sir Richard Branson ( )
Gok Wan ( )
Mary Portas ( )
What is going to be investigated by the Office of Fair trading, it was reported this week?
Marks & Spencer dine in for £10 ( )
Motor insurance costs ( )
ASDA’s New price watch scheme ( )
Tesco’s new venture into a law firm ( )
Thomas Cook has said it will close 200 UK stores over the next two years with the loss of around 661 jobs, what loss did the company report for the year at the end of September ?
£2.98m ( )
£5.48m ( )
£4.58m ( )
£3.98m ( )
Who has won The Young Apprentice this year winning a £25 000 fund for their enterprise ideas?
Haya Al Dlame ( )
Zara Brownless ( )
Lewis Roman ( )
James McCullagh ( )
The rate of Consumer Prices Index (CPI) inflation in the UK fell to what level during November, down from 5% the month before, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS)?
4.8% ( )
4.5% ( )
4.3% ( )
4.1% ( )
UK unemployment rose by 128,000 in the three months to October to, what level, as youth unemployment hits a new record high?
3.12 million ( )
3.25 million ( )
2.64 million ( )
2.86 million ( )

Donna Jestin

Teacher of Business Studies Notre Dame College & Senior Examiner for AQA

All Secondary - Using Twitter and Prezi as Teaching Tools

2011-12-14T11:10:00.000Z

The idea of using microblogging and social networking in the classroom seems strange, but by leveraging Twitter as a tool for teaching Business and Economics (though these tips apply for almost every subject) you can really inspire some fantastic discussions and take advantage of real time economic data.

Collins Education's twitter page @freedomtoteach

I recently set up an account and have used it in a number of different ways. These have included collaborative home study discussions on economic opportunities for the BRICS and the online issue of web links for reference prior to a lesson. Twitter is also an excellent tool for getting students to sum up an article or case study in no more than 140 letters or simply just to put the BBC and Guardian emerging business news at their fingertips. If your school has not banned Twitter from its network, then it is fantastic as a collaboration tool.
Professionally, it’s an excellent sounding board for discussing topics with prominent economists or business professionals. Many of my lesson plan ideas have come from discussions and simple conversations. I have often been able to work these ideas into the scheme of work for the department to make it that little more interesting. Some ideas, thoughts, articles can be found in this PDF.

Another excellent resource that I have been using recently is the Prezi presentation software available at http://prezi.com/. PowerPoint can be incredibly boring for students, but this software really allows you to develop a good looking and intuitive presentation that builds in links and video incredibly easy. Its also another great collaborative tool for students should your school purchase the Enjoy or Pro versions. It’s IWB friendly, non-linear and above all interesting. I have been continually developing one Prezi on the ‘Rise of China’ and have integrated data, images and video that I have actually sourced from Twitter.

Take a look at this completed presentation here by Andrew McCarthy:
http://prezi.com/-b1mqqi3ayqw/introduction-to-development-economics/

In addition a great example of why using Prezi in the classroom can be beneficial through Paul Hills Prezi:
http://prezi.com/rfsnedhqmhqa/thoughts-on-using-prezi-as-a-teaching-tool/

Daniel Baker
Business and Economics Department, Trinity Catholic High School

Secondary Business - News Quiz 12/12/11

2011-12-12T10:30:00.000Z

Any student sitting the AQA Unit 4 exam in January will know the need to understand what is happening in the current business environment; use these quizzes as a revision tool and as discussion points for your students.

For example, the question on South Korean interest rates at 3.25% - you could ask students to compare this rate to that of the UK at 0.5% or even America at 0.25%, this could give a good compare and contrast point. The question will also allow you to discuss what is currently happening with the Eurozone crisis and the wider affect it has on countries around the world.

Another good question to discuss would be, considering the dominance of Apple & Google Android in the download market, Google and its Android system are very quickly catching up with Apple, why is this, what competitive advantage do they have? You could also apply Porter’s % forces here to look at the level of competition in this market.

Here is the latest ‘Business News Quiz’. Download the Word version (with answers) to print off and use with your classes here!

Apple announced in July that 15 billion app’s had been downloaded from their store how many have been downloaded from Google's Android Market?
5 billion ( )
10 billion( )
20 billion ( )
15billion ( )
Tesco said it is seeing the impact on consumers of rising unemployment and rising living costs, by how much have sales at Tesco's UK stores fallen in recent weeks?
1.5%( )
0.5 %( )
1.3%( )
0.9%( )
US banking giant, Citigroup, has said it is to cut how many jobs around the world in an effort to reduce its costs?
1500 ( )
2500 ( )
4500 ( )
3000 ( )
Australia's economy grew more than expected in the third quarter, at 2.5% what is it claimed is the reason for this growth?
Tourism ( )
Increased retail spending( )
Building and mining ( )
The hot weather( )
Central banks in New Zealand and South Korea have kept interest rates on hold, citing fears of the impact of the debt crisis in Europe.New Zealand kept rates unchanged at 2.5%, while South Korea held its cost of borrowing at what level?
1.25% ( )
3.25%( )
0.25%( )
2.5% ( )
A series of private pictures of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg have been posted online by "hackers" to highlight a bug in the social network, how many users does Facebook have?
950 million( )
750 million ( )
650 million ( )
850 million ( )
Food giant Kraft Foods is to cut 200 jobs despite planning to spend £50m on chocolate and biscuit manufacturing, which UK Company did they buy in 2010?
Cadbury ( )
Innocent ( )
Morrison’s ( )
Arla Foods( )
Who is the last girl left in The Young Apprentice final this year?
Haya Al Dlame ( )
Zara Brownless ( )
Hayley Forrester ( )
GbemiOkunlola( )
Economic growth in the UK "remains subdued" and output will not reach 2008 levels until what year? The National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR) has said.
2012 ( )
2013 ( )
2014( )
2015( )
Basic bank account holders at which bank could face more frequent charges of up to £28 a day, if they fail to have sufficient funds in their accounts?
Barclays ( )
HSBC ( )
Natwest ( )
Santander( )

Donna Jestin

Teacher of Business Studies Notre Dame College & Senior Examiner for AQA

Secondary ICT - The Importance of Freedom

2011-12-07T14:49:00.000Z

When setting assessment tasks there are many criteria to consider. Certainly the most important is the relationship between the assessment task and the specification of the course. This, set by the examination board, is central to our thinking, but there are of course many other criteria which we have to bear in mind. Can the task be tackled? Are the students ready for the assessment and are the resources available, notably time being one of these?

Perhaps we need to recognise our differences

I wonder if we sufficiently rate freedom. What I have in mind is both freedom of expression in an aesthetic sense, but also freedom to develop academically, to be able as a student to try to push out from the cosy set of skills and ideas into something new. If we are to value this type of approach then we have to accept the risk that the final “product” may be handicapped by unrealisable dreams. Students are young and, when motivated, often want to produce software solutions well beyond of what they are capable. Ah, the idealism of youth! How risky it is for us, how much safer and assessable it feels to prescribe the tasks and hope that the moderator misses signs that the “cookbook” has been used.

It’s pretty obvious though isn’t it; just consider the moderator’s view for a moment. He or she will have seen not just our school’s offerings, but those of another half dozen or so schools this year and for an experienced moderator many more than this. Won’t it be plain that the scenarios used are the same? No problem with that, but if the solutions to the problems set by the scenario are all very similar, here’s the problem. If the solutions look the same on paper or electronically, then it’s going to be difficult to discriminate between work submitted by the students. Even more difficulty will be found in proving values ascribed to the work.

How do we get round the problem? We could rely on nuances between the students’ work such as better layout, better font size, better design of GUI, but do we feel this really reflects the differences that we know there are between the students over the last two years?

There is another side to this and it relates to the students’ responsibility for their own learning, a respected aim of the National Curriculum no less! Just as a practical issue, this must be worth considering: ministering to every need of everyone in the class is an impossible task and cannot be expected to deliver high quality aid for each of the students. Taking control of an ICT project is not the same as accepting responsibility for one’s own education, but it surely is part of the culture. Whose project is it? If it’s yours teacher, then you can do it; or if I have to, then the brain is elsewhere – it doesn’t come with this package, sorry.

John Giles

Secondary History - Taking a Second Look

2011-12-07T12:01:00.000Z

Sometimes you know a topic really well, you’ve taught it many times, you are familiar with the key ideas and subject knowledge. You know which text book has the best images, the best activities, or which clip of film to show to engage your students. But sometimes, going back to original documents can make you – and your students – see a topic in a different light.
Take for instance, this extract from a monthly report from Leicester, November 1940:

‘We fed 100 men with a hot meal at an hour’s notice one day, and the next day 30 turned up without any warning...

...During the fortnight 17th to 30th [November] we served over 268,800 cups of tea and have used over 6 cwt of tea, (305 kilos) 15 cwt of sugar, (762 kilos) 270 lbs margarine, (122 kilos) 351 x 3lb (1.4 kilos) slabs of cake and [more than] 300 loaves. Buying this has been a very difficult problem, especially tinned milk. We are still very short of tinned milk... The food office have helped us all they could and granted us extra permits for sugar and margarine, and also released three whole cheeses for us. The bakers came to an end of their fruit ration, so we got a case of currants and sultanas and these they made into cakes...’

[Women’s Voluntary Services for Civil Defence Leicester report for the month of November 1940]

We are all familiar with the image of a canteen van after an air raid, serving tea. But how long would it take to make 268,000 cups of tea, or to drink it? In a time of rationing how on earth do you get hold of 6 cwt of tea, or 15 cwt of sugar? Or serve dinner for 100 men at one hour’s notice? What impression does it give you of the Women’s Voluntary Service, and the volunteers providing this service? By going back to original sources like this you do get a different perspective, and a clearer understanding, of the difficulties of ordinary everyday life on the Home Front during World War Two.

You can find lots more original sources about the Home Front during WW2 – and activities to go with them for Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3 – on the website ‘The Army That Hitler Forgot’ at www.wrvs.org.uk/schools

Alf Wilkinson
CPD Manager for the Historical Association and previously National Strategist for Key Stage 3 History. Alf has over 30 years history teaching experience and was lead author for Collins Key Stage 3 History resources.

Secondary Maths - Simply take a set of white cards

2011-12-07T11:03:00.002Z

Simply take … A set of white cards

This is an activity that could be used to improve students understanding of types of number.
Students could work in pairs initially, checking the problems that they write for each other before passing them on to other students to solve.

Using mini whiteboards ask each student to write a number in the centre of their board.
• Around the number write four facts about their number then...ask them to delete the number they have chosen.

To focus on specific types of numbers you could ask them to
- include key words
- use any particular description only once

• Students can then pass their board to their partner and ask them to identify what number
could go in the centre.
• Their partner may well find more than one possible solution.
They could work together to find as many solutions as possible to each of their problems
• The level of challenge could be increased by asking them to find a set of four descriptions so that there is a unique solution to their problem
• Once the students are ready they can exchange boards with other pairs, and solve each other’s problems

GCSE Science - What future for vocational science?

2011-12-07T10:40:00.000Z

Vocational science at KS4 has long had a rocky ride – even its title has been questionable. We went through a period a few years back of openly referring to some qualifications as vocational GCSEs. Then the v-word became seen as negative baggage with connotations of being second rate. More importantly, it wasn’t accurate; courses that focus on the applications of science aren’t necessarily any more vocational. (If you want to see a vocational course look at a high attaining group of A level chemists hell bent on becoming doctors.)

Such courses have had a twilight existence of being loved by some and mistrusted by others. GNVQ Science came and went, as did GCSE double award Applied Science. Its half brother, GCSE Additional Applied Science, last year found itself cold shouldered by the English Baccalaureate.

Yet there has long been a call in many schools for a course that provides a viable alternative to “academic” GCSEs. Some students have said that whilst following a course such as BTEC Extended Certificate or OCR Nationals that “it’s the first time they’ve experienced success in science”.

Now there’s rapid reinvention following the DfE’s acceptance of the Wolf Report. These courses are being modified to comply with the DfE’s seven criteria, including at least 20% of the assessment being external, a degree of synoptic assessment and proven progression to Level 3 courses. The glittering prize is recognition in the 2014 Performance Tables, though even that comes with conditions – no more than two such courses per student will be allowable. We should know by the end of January what has been accepted.

Such developments aren’t necessarily wrong of course. Synoptic assessment discourages a fragmented or atomised view of science and an external exam may well serve to raise the status of the qualification. A tightrope is being walked by the developers – too different to a GCSE questions the rigour and status, too similar questions the function and purpose.

In fact, the impact of the changes may go further than that. Successfully restructured non-GCSE courses may enable schools to offer a meaningful range of alternative curriculum pathways at KS4; these pathways may have a stronger common core of skills including the processes of enquiry, numeracy, literacy and the conducting of practical investigations.

Is this the point where vocational science emerges from the twilight? And does the agenda then become clearer for the skills, processes and concepts that need to be developed in KS3 to act as an effective foundation?

Ed Walsh
Science Advisor for Cornwall Learning

Secondary Science - Salt

2011-12-07T10:39:00.000Z

Some of us like to put a little salt on our food to enhance the flavour. While there is no doubt that many of us have too much salt in our diets there is a lot more to salt. Salt is truly one of the chemical “superstuffs” that makes an appearance in many aspects of the KS3 and KS4 science curriculum. The topics below could be used as projects and research ideas in specific areas of the curriculum, or the questions developed into starter or plenary discussions.

Salt and diet
Salt or to be precise, the sodium in the sodium chloride is an essential element for all living things and is involved in transport across cell membranes and the function of muscle and nerve cells.
• How are sodium (and potassium) ions moved across cell membranes?
• Why do nerves and muscles depend on sodium ions?
• What effect does too little or too much salt have on health?

Salt and food
Salt is used for flavouring and as a preservative. Before canning, refrigeration and vacuum packing became common, salting was an important way of keeping food for long periods.
• What foods have been preserved using salt?
• How does salt preserve food? (investigate osmosis)

Salt and trade
Prehistoric people living away from the sea found it difficult to get enough salt so it became one of the earliest traded commodities reflected in the names of places where salt was found and traded.
• Where is salt found in the UK? (look for place-names with “-wich” in their name)
• Why does the city of Salzburg in Austria have salt in its name?
• What places are named after salt? (look for “sal” and “hal” in names)

Salt in words
Salt was such an important and useful commodity that it has had a big impact on language.
• What words are derived from salt?
• How are words like “salary” and “salad” linked to salt?

Salt and geology
The presence of salt deposits tells us a lot about past climates and earth movements.
• How did the sea become salty?
• How did rock salt deposits come to be buried underground?

Salt and climate
Ocean currents have a big effect on our climate and weather. Some scientists worry that the warming effect of the Gulf Stream could be affected by the melting of arctic ice.
• How does the density of salt water compare to pure water?
• What causes the ocean currents to circulate around the world?

Salt and roads
Every year thousands of tonnes of rock salt are spread on roads to keep them free of ice.
• Where does the rock salt used on icy roads come from?
• How does salt reduce the amount of ice on roads?

Salt and water
Salt is extracted from seawater and rock salt by driving off the water from salt solutions. Other salts in sea water have a bitter taste and must not be mixed with table salt. Table salt has other substances added to keep it dry and free-flowing.
• What happens if pure salt is left in the air?
• How is salt extracted from sea water?
• What substances are added to table salt and why are they added?

Salt and elements
In the Middle Ages salt was thought to be one of the three “principles” or elements (along with sulfur and mercury) from which other substances were derived. Lavoisier suspected that salt contained a metallic element, but it was Davy who isolated sodium.
• Who was Paracelsus and why did he think that salt was a special substance?
• Who was Lavoisier and how did he revolutionise chemistry?
• Why did Lavoisier think that salt contained oxygen?
• How did Davy isolate sodium?

Salt and crystals
The cubic shape of sodium chloride crystals has intrigued people for centuries but it took the discovery of X rays to work out how the sodium and chloride ions were arranged.
• What is the arrangement of sodium and chloride ions in salt crystals and why are they arranged in this pattern?
• How did W.H.Bragg and W.L.Bragg discover the structure of salt?
• How has X ray crystallography proved useful?

Salt and industry
Salt has found many uses apart from in food, for example in making glass and soap. In the nineteenth century the use of salt in manufacturing processes led to the growth of the chemical industry.
• How is salt used to make soap?
• How did the Leblanc process cause the development of the chemical industry? (for example in the north-west of England)
• What are the industrial uses of salt today?

Peter Ellis

Secondary Business - Using adverts to teach strategic theory

2011-12-06T09:03:00.000Z

A Level AQA BUSS3 and BUSS4

For both Units 3 & 4 at A2 level, students need to have a good understanding of strategy and the theories surrounding them. They then need to be able to apply & analyse these strategies, to either the case study for Unit 3, or to the essay question for Unit 4 to be able to gain ‘good’ level marks in the exam.

Ansoff’s Matrix & Porter's Generic Strategy are two very important strategies for students to consider when analysing businesses, and instead of teaching the theory first, a good way to get students to be thinking about what business can do, would be to ask them to consider businesses first and to think about how they can stand out, gain a USP, get competitive advantage and to also hopefully improve their financial position.

Activity Part One
An activity that I have used with my students to look at this, is to consider both Virgin & British Airways - the airline industry has been hit hard due to the recession, and British Airways in particular has struggled to make profit. I first split my students into groups of around 4 (depending on your class size) and I then ask them to watch the 2 adverts that are hyperlinked below.
• Official Virgin Atlantic Advert 2011 - HD 'Your airline's either got it or it hasn't' - YouTube
• British Airways - Our advert 2011: To Fly. To Serve. - YouTube
One thing that students should pick up on, are that both of the adverts are focused around customer service, and high level service! Then ask students in their groups to think about the Marketing Mix for both of the businesses - download the activity sheet for this here. From this they should be thinking that both of the businesses are very similar…. Maybe considering Porter's issue of ‘being stuck in the middle’, you can be reinforcing this link to the theory - maybe on the whiteboard.

Activity Part Two
Next ask students in their groups to think about WHAT the 2 businesses could do to (again thinking of Porter) ‘differentiate’ themselves from each other - again see the sheet here.

My students came up with: they could offer new products, they could fly different routes, they could change their prices, or they could go into a completely different market and do something other than flights. All of these ideas can be fitted into Ansoff’s matrix without the students having knowingly studied the theory. Give students the second handout from the activity sheet, and ask them to place their ideas into the matrix, and select the strategy that they think would be the most important for the business. They should in their groups be taking into consideration the level of risk, cost and impact on resources.

Finally, you can input some theory, to reiterate the strategies for both Ansoff’s Matrix & Porter's Generic Strategy, but this tutor led input will be minimal as students have already thought of and decided upon the strategies for the business!

BUSS3 & BUSS4
The activity above, builds on what students have learnt at AS - the Marketing Mix - and gets them to use this to consider theory and strategy for A2. The activity also covers the important skill areas that examiners will assess in both Unit’s this year – Knowledge, Application, Analysis & Evaluation.

Donna Jestin

Teacher of Business Studies Notre Dame College & Senior Examiner for AQA

All Secondary - The Real Meaning of Christmas

2011-12-05T10:58:00.000Z

So, Christmas is fast approaching and all the students want to do is watch a video or make Christmas cards, and frankly, you’re tempted to give in as it you’ve worked ridiculously hard and your thoughts are now turned towards your own lie-ins and recuperation… but what if you could have a Christmas based lesson that kept the students engaged and learning and was still fun? Here is an idea that can be used both in and out of the RE classroom!

Resources: A variety of old Christmas cards (just the fronts)

Step 1: In pairs/ small groups students imagine that they have never encountered or experienced Christmas before, perhaps they are aliens from another planet who have received these cards in the post. Students then identify as many different features about Christmas from the cards (Gifts, snow, robins, trees, stars, perhaps some people on a camel?!)

Step 2: In their groups, students can either try to piece together the meaning of Christmas only from the evidence they have gathered from the cards. They must try to include and explain the reasons for all of the features they have identified into a story about the festival and its meaning (they must not use any prior knowledge).

Step 3: Students feed their stories/ meanings of Christmas back to the class

Step 4: Discuss - What do students believe is the true meaning of Christmas? Did any of their presentations show any of this?

Step 1: As above

Step 2: Students research the meanings of the different features/ symbolisms associated with Christmas from their cards.

Step 3: Create a leaflet to other ‘aliens’ who do not know about Christmas, where the festival originated from, what its symbolisms mean and what Christmas means to both Christians and non-Christians.

To make this a more meaningful RE-focussed lesson, students can compare the similarities and differences between the Christian and non-Christian elements, and explore whether there is a common link between the two (i.e the hope and promise of the new-born baby Jesus for Christians and the hope and promise of the return of light in the depth of winter for Pagans).

Wishing you all a relaxing end of term...!

Teresa Langler

Head of Beliefs and Values

Clyst Vale Community College

Secondary English - Linking Assessment Objectives

2011-12-01T16:32:00.000Z

Regardless of whether we are teaching a combined or single-entry GCSE curriculum, the presence of the Assessment Objectives should, we know, be at the forefront of our minds as teachers when planning our courses and schemes of work.

This can, in some cases, be more tricky at Key Stage 3 than Key Stage 4. After all, at GCSE, the awarding body has done the job for us; it is their role to devise the ways and means, the assessment points and the outcomes. They decide the relative weightings of each assessment objective and put in place a curriculum which we, to all intents and purposes, follow.

However, it can still be tricky to know what these assessment objectives actually mean. For colleagues new to the profession, without the experience of taking examination classes through to the end point, without having seen exemplar materials and been part of moderation and standardisation sessions, it can be hard to get our heads around what these rather nebulous descriptors of achievement look like in practice.

For example, two of the GCSE English Literature objectives are:
AO1: respond to texts critically and imaginatively; select and evaluate relevant textual detail to illustrate and support interpretations

AO2: explain how language, structure and form contribute to writers’ presentation of ideas, themes and settings

In the best responses, these two objectives are linked. Candidates present a response which demonstrates their clear understanding of ideas and themes, with direct reference to how the writer has used language, or structure, or form, to present these ideas and themes.

In Section Three of Of Mice and Men, for example, George and Lennie are left alone in the bunk house. George lays out his solitaire hand using ‘a deliberate, thoughtful, slowness’. Lennie, however, ‘drummed on the table with his fingers’.

Candidates at all levels can say something about this. We all know about Steinbeck’s use of hands as metaphor in the novella as a whole: how he consistently uses this image to demonstrate his theme: the plight of the working man. The use of the punctuation in the description of George’s behaviour, if students commented on it, the extra use of comma which intensifies the ‘deliberate, thoughtful, slowness’, might be a means to accessing higher mark bands. And then this description could be very successfully contrasted with Lennie’s childlike impatience – just like his impatience to ‘get the little place’.

A passage such as this lends itself very effectively to ‘responding to texts critically and imaginatively’, as well as ‘explaining how language / structure / form contribute to writer’s presentation of ideas, themes and settings’.

Sarah Darragh
English Teacher and author of A Bridge to GCSE English

Secondary Business - News Quiz 1/12/11

2011-12-01T10:09:00.000Z

An interesting week in the business news, with the UK strike on November 30th, the biggest action since the 1970's, we will have to wait to see if this has had any affect. Also, a new internet search engine has been launched to rival Google & Yahoo, American Airlines shares fell by 81% and are now worth just 25cents and has China finally been affected by the global downturn?

Below is this weeks Business News Quiz. Click here for a printable version along with the answers and web links so that you can discuss some of the news stories with your classes.

It opened to the public on November 28th 2011, so what is YaCy?
A new designer store in London ( )
A new e-reader tablet ( )
A new internet search engine ( )
A new brand of sportswear from the USA ( )
The USA national debt has just risen above what figure this week?
$10 trillion ( )
$15 trillion ( )
$25 trillion ( )
$20trillion ( )
Hilton, the international hotel chain, is to open more than 20 new hotels in the UK, creating how many jobs?
1500 ( )
2000 ( )
2500 ( )
3000 ( )
Which two car manufacturers are to work together on environmental-friendly motoring technology?
BMW & Toyota ( )
BMW & Ford ( )
Toyota & Ford ( )
Ford & Peugeot ( )
Samsung has won a major battle in its ongoing tussle with Apple, after an Australia court overturned a ban on the sale of its what in the country?
Samsung Tocco Icon ( )
Galaxy Tablet ( )
Galaxy S 11 ( )
Its new 16.1 mega pixel camera ( )
Australian Brewer Foster’s has been taken over by SAB Millar worth how much in Australian Dollars?
$9.9bn ( )
$10.5bn ( )
$11.9bn ( )
$8.9bn ( )
The independent Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) says George Osborne's economic plans will mean a sharp drop in household income, by how much has it been predicted they fall?
7.3% ( )
3.3% ( )
7.4% ( )
10.4%( )
Which Young Apprentice candidate was fired this week after a buying task?
Ben Fowler ( )
Lewis Roman ( )
Hayley Forrester ( )
Gbemi Okunlola( )
China's manufacturing activity fell to a low in November, hurt by a slowdown in the global economy; this was the lowest output in how long?
12 months ( )
32 months ( )
24 months( )
18 months( )
American Airlines' parent company AMR Corporation has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection are what happened to its share this week?
Fell by 81% ( )
Fell by 51% ( )
Fell by 25% ( )
Fell by 31%( )

Donna Jestin

Teacher of Business Studies Notre Dame College & Senior Examiner for AQA

All Secondary - Improving essay feedback in the classroom!

2011-11-28T09:40:00.000Z

Anyone who teaches an essay based subject will know how frustrating it is to spend hours writing comments on students’ work, only for them to look at the grade and then crumple the work up in their bag. There it will often stay along with the model answer which they will eventually lose. Although time is limited to get through the specification, I am trying to spend more time on useful essay feedback in class.

I share assessment objectives with my classes and sometimes get the students to peer assess each other’s work based on the mark schemes. However, for the longer essay questions, I find that the mark schemes are rather too vague for students to do this effectively. Instead I have listed below some very simple, but practical techniques which have worked for my students.

When I give out model answers (either written by myself or a student) I ask the students to use different colour pens to highlight names; concepts and evaluation points. Sometimes I get the students to do this on their own or a classmate’s essay.
While model answers can be very useful, they put too much focus on the teacher doing the work not the student. I will therefore often give out a model answer with an introduction, conclusion or paragraph missing, which the students then have to write themselves.
Sometimes I give out excellent student essays to whole classes. I only do this with the student’s permission. It can give them a confidence boost, but otherwise I feel that they don’t get much in return for their hard work. In classes where there are only a small number of students working on the highest grades, I photocopy their essays and swap them with students on a similar level. This enables those on the top grades to learn from each other.
While marking essays, I note down examples of students who have written good points and ask those students to read the relevant section of the essay out in whole class feedback. This works particularly well when a student has not been happy with their overall essay mark, but has done a very good introduction, conclusion, evaluative comment etc. I try to include a range of different students when doing this.
When I hand back students' essays I ask them to read what they have written again, not just my comments. Often they spot mistakes quickly for themselves and it becomes apparent that they are reading the essay for the first time! I then reinforce the suggestion that they get someone else to read their essay before they hand it in, (preferably somebody who is not studying the subject). They need to hide the question from the reader. If the reader can more or less guess the wording of the question, they can feel confident that they have answered it. If the reader knows only the topic area, the student needs to look at their essay again before submitting it.

Emily Painter
Sociology Teacher, Cadbury Sixth Form College

Secondary English - Why is English spelling so difficult?

2011-11-24T16:19:00.000Z

English has 44 sounds and only 26 letters to represent them. That means that there is no one-to-one matching of sounds and letters and some letters are used for more than one sound.

For instance, the letter G can be used for the hard ‘g’ in rug and the soft ‘j’ in germ.
The letter S can be used for the hissing sound in sit and the buzzing sound in pheasant.

Some sounds can be shown by more than one letter, or letter combination:
The sound ‘ai’ can be shown as eye, aisle, I, guy and might, while the sound ‘f’ can be shown as in feel and photograph.

However, some words that sound the same can be written differently:
their/there/they’re tide/tied hare/hair air/heir

Some letters have become silent over the centuries as the pronunciation of words has become simplified, but the spelling of these words has remained the same:
G is silent in gnome
K is silent in knight
H is silent at the beginning of most words, as in honest

Some letters can be doubled, but there may be no difference in pronunciation: robin rabbit

These oddities in English spelling were demonstrated in the nineteenth century when someone realized that the word ghoti could be pronounced as fish. This made-up word, although it looks nothing like fish, can be given that pronunciation when you break it down into three parts:
gh as in rough
o as in women
ti as in condition
...so ghoti = fish!

Although there is something rather fishy about this spelling it shows rather well some of the strange spelling rules in English that come from using just 26 letters to show 44 sounds.

Secondary Business - News Quiz 24/11/11

2011-11-24T10:00:00.000Z

Again, a busy week in the business world, with the economy and the eurozone again dominating many of the headlines, we also saw the dramatic fall in Thomas Cook shares at the start of the week.

Below is this weeks Business News Quiz, for your students to complete and see if they have really been watching the business news this week! Click here for a printable version along with the answers.

Why have Labour criticised the sale of Northern Rock to Virgin money?
They think it should’ve been sold to Lord Alan Sugar ( )
They claim in was a poor deal for taxpayers( )
They think HSBC should have bought it ( )
They think Virgin Money could now monopolise the banking sector ( )
Shares in Thomas Cook fell by how much at the start of the week, before they began to recover a day later?
75% ( )
80% ( )
85% ( )
90% ( )
Arcadia, the group that is owned by Sir Philip Green, and includes brands such as Topshop, Miss Selfridge & Burton is to close up to how many stores?
150 ( )
200 ( )
260 ( )
320 ( )
China has become the world's largest smartphone market by volume after it overtook who in the 3rd quarter of the year?
America ( )
Australia ( )
Japan ( )
Russia ( )
Which patent row has Apple won this week?
HTC patents ( )
Blackberry tablet patents( )
Sony mobile phone patents( )
Google search engine patents ( )
The struggling telecoms equipment maker Nokia Siemens Networks is cutting how many jobs, which equates to 23% of its total workforce?
10 000 ( )
17 000 ( )
20 000 ( )
27 000 ( )
Who this week has resigned as director of the companies that publish The Times, The Sunday Times, and the Sun.?
Rebekah Brookes ( )
Rupert Murdoch ( )
James Murdoch ( )
Tim Mockridge( )
Which Young Apprentice candidate was fired this week after designing a TV advert for deodorant?
Ben Fowler ( )
Lewis Roman ( )
Hannah Richards ( )
Gbemi Okunlola( )
Who is the new presenter of Channel 4’s countdown programme?
Arthur Levinson ( )
Lord Alan Sugar ( )
Nick Hewer( )
Andrea Jung( )
Dixons, who own Curry’s have seenlosses increase to what level this week?
£91.5m ( )
£52.4m ( )
£66.7m ( )
£25.3m ( )

Donna Jestin

Teacher of Business Studies Notre Dame College & Senior Examiner for AQA

Secondary RE - How to Debate and Evaluate

2011-11-23T09:48:00.000Z

Active Learning Strategies for Debating and Evaluating

I want to encourage my students to consider different opinions and views towards a social or moral issue, but I also want them to start developing evaluation skills too. At KS4, students must demonstrate the ability to evaluate which is more than just saying what different people think. It is much more about comparing views and exploring why some reasons are better than others. The GCSE changes a couple of years ago saw a shift in the weighting of the evaluation questions in the religious studies exams, but how can we help our students to develop this skill in an interactive way?

The following are some active learning strategies that I have found useful, not only in the actual discussing and debating of a topic but in helping young people to evaluate properly.

Conscience Alley
Give the class a moral dilemma, e.g. Imagine that you are a full time parent to your 2 children. You have no money left for the week and your children are screaming and crying because they are hungry. You walk into town and see the supermarket with all of its food. Would you steal some food for your children?

The students in the class have to decide whether they would or wouldn’t, and arrange themselves into 2 lines (one line which would steal, and one line which wouldn’t), facing each other with a gap between them big enough for someone to walk down – this is conscience alley. You will need a couple of students to slowly walk down conscience alley, and listen to the reasons that the other students give to try and persuade the individuals that they should or should not ‘steal’. The students in the lines should try to be as persuasive as possible. When the students have reached the end of conscience alley they will need to make their decisions and relay these to the class, explaining which arguments persuaded them and which reasons they did not think were good enough and why.

“Stay Standing if…”
All students must stand up. The teacher will have a number of statements relating to the topic/ issue being explored that students must either agree or disagree with. These will then be said with the starter “Stay standing if… you think the death penalty should be brought back into UK law”. Students make their decisions and either stay standing or sit down. The teacher circulates the classroom asking students to give their reasons for staying standing or sitting down, and asking students to say why they think that their reason/ opinion is stronger than that of someone with the opposite opinion to them.

Value Lines
This activity can be used in a variety of different ways. I have used this when reflecting upon the impact of the Holocaust on Jewish faith; when considering what age could be considered ‘old’ when looking at ageism; and when exploring class opinions towards a social or moral issue.

Give students a dilemma or statement that they need to make a decision on e.g. If you were Jewish and had survived the Holocaust do you think that you would be a theist, agnostic or atheist? Inform students that one side of the room is one view e.g. ‘atheist’, the other side of the room is the opposite opinion e.g. theist and the centre of the room is the middle decision e.g. agnostic. Students should get themselves into a line depending on what their view is. If your statement is based on an ethical or social dilemma e.g. “Capital punishment should be reintroduced to the UK” then the value line will be ‘agree’ at one end, ‘disagree’ at the other end and undecided in the centre.

Students are encouraged to explain and argue the reasons why they have placed themselves in their position along the value line. If a student explains their reasons and this changes the opinions of others, they are entitled to move, but they must explain why they found these reasons convincing or persuasive. You can also encourage students to explain why they disagree with other’s views and reasons.

All of these activities could be carried out as an introduction to a topic or even before the completion of a practice evaluation question for GCSE religious studies, as a way of encouraging students not just to consider other views, but to actively evaluate them as well.

Teresa Langler
Head of Beliefs and Values
Clyst Vale Community College

Secondary English - Any Questions?

2011-11-22T11:35:00.000Z

I sometimes wonder what my students really think about my lessons. No, let me correct that. I sometimes wonder what my students really understand in my lessons. Unfortunately I think that too often there is a gap between my assumptions of what they ‘get’ and what they don’t. So, last week I, rather bravely, decided to get inside my Year 11 students’ heads.

It was a simple exercise. At the beginning of our lesson, on ‘Romeo and Juliet’, I asked them to write down three sentences on a piece of paper. These could be: an observation about the scene we were studying; a question to test another student’s understanding; a question that they would like to ask me. During the lesson, every student had to contribute one point from their sheet and when any observations were made or questions answered satisfactorily they crossed them off. At the end of the lesson, the students handed in their sheets so that I could look at any questions left unanswered. In the following lesson, I was then able to address these questions and go through any points of confusion in the scene.

This was a fascinating activity. There were an overwhelming number of questions that focussed on ‘What does X word mean?’ that seemed to trouble even the most able students. As much as I think that I have explained the important words or bleat on about getting the ‘gist’ of certain passages, I found that my students wanted to understand it all- they wanted to join the missing links so they could solve the puzzle of Shakespeare’s language. I had not always predicted which words would tie up which students in knots and until we completed this exercise, many of them seemed to view the text as incomprehensible, even if it turned out there were only two words out of twenty that they did not really understand. I found that by unravelling these knots, it enabled many students to then start to unpack the layers of meaning in the language choices in a more meaningful way than before.

This exercise has real possibilities and I am excited about trying it out in other areas. We will be preparing for their Mocks next and I think it could be illuminating to find out what my students really understand about the non-fiction exam. Who knows, now that I have found out that what is inside my students’ heads is not so frightening, I might even dare to ask what they actually think about my lessons!

Naomi Hursthouse
Advance Skills Teacher
Steyning Grammar School