Secondary History - How to argue at A Level

Can you negotiate your hostage’s path to freedom?

‘But it’s really hard, it’s a big step up Miss’.

This was the slightly hysterical cry of one of my not-quite-so-new Year 12 students last week. Indeed when they come back after the enviably long post-GCSE summer break, students often enter into a very different learning environment (complete with very different uniform!) from whence they left. Whilst I will never lower the expectations I have of what my students can achieve, I sometimes wonder if I need to pay a little more attention to this transitional phase. Not only is there a big step up in the level of historical detail we expect them to master at the beginning of AS, but the pressure to get the course started, mould anywhere between 10 and 20 disparate individuals into a cohesive ‘class’and just get them to talk to each other, all seems to conspire against the relaxed and gentle entry into AS for which the majority of them are begging by the end of week one.

One month in, and still I am faced with a wall of foot-shuffling silence when I try and lead my class of ever-so-slightly more cohesive students towards a discussion. So this year I decided to take definitive discourse-inducing action. Inspired by an episode of The Philosopher’s Arms on Radio 4, I thought about the skills required by a hostage negotiator and how they could be deployed by the argumentative historian.

What we are asking students to do at AS level is to build an analytical argument, sustain it, support it with evidence, and draw it to a close in a substantiated conclusion. The hostage negotiator at the Philosopher’s Arms spoke of how she needed to create and support her argument, and the importance of being able to defend it against attack. Whilst there are many obvious differences between the negotiator and the historian, this focus on presentation of opinion, use of supportive evidence and negotiation towards a successful conclusion gave me an idea…

The Year 12 class were working on an argument in answer to the question:
‘The revolutions of the 1820s and 1830s failed primarily due to Austrian intervention.’ How far do you agree with this statement?

Students had already decided on four key factors, including the titled statement, which they felt explained the failure of the revolutions. The consequent negotiating activity worked as follows:

1. Divide the class into teams of 3 (or 5 in a larger class – just as long as they are an uneven number)
2. Each group then decides which of the agreed factors they consider to be the most significant (e.g. their pro-argument) and begin to gather evidence to support their statement.
3. They also gather evidence to support the remaining three factors (the counter argument).
4. At the end of preparation time (I allowed 14 minutes – I never work in multiples of 5!) you pitch two teams against each other. If you have an uneven number of teams you could go for a triad formation.
5. One team in the pair opts/is chosen to go first, and to select one member of their opposing team to take hostage. Often I found students made a hostage of the one they considered to be the most able negotiator. I both commended their sneakiness and was pleased that shyer or less forward students would therefore be induced to argue.
6. It is now the role of the hostage’s remaining team-mates to secure his/her release by arguing against the hostage-takers. The hostage’s team are therefore able to state the argument they’ve built around their chosen most significant factor (see step 2) whilst the hostage-taking team are forced to use their arguments for the remaining three factors.
7. (The hostage is free to be as irritating as they like, bearing in mind their captors could metaphorically silence them at any point…)
8. At the end of an agreed period of negotiation (I chose 6 minutes but a shorter time span might be appropriate for younger students) the hostage takers must make a decision: if they consider the argument put forward by the hostage’s team to be adequate, they are duty bound to release the hostage. If they consider it inadequate, the hostage forms part of their team (reluctantly or otherwise!).
9. The next round then begins with teams smaller, larger or unchanged. Should a team that began as 3 fail to negotiate the successful release of their second hostage they cease to exist. Depending on the size of your class, the depth of argument to be made or the number of factors available you can run this either until you have one enormous team left, are simply hearing the same argument on loop, or the bell rings.

My negotiation situations were based on the failure of the 1820s and 1830s revolutions in pre-unification Italy, but since then I have applied them to the February Revolution of 1917, the downfall of the Weimar Republic, and the contribution of President Gorbachev to the end of the Cold War. I've also discovered Year 10 can create arguments to rival Year 12!

My year 12 students all said they really enjoyed this activity. The quality of argument I heard listening in to various negotiating teams was far more advanced than I have seen at this stage in the year before, and the consequent essay plans they turned in showed the interlinking of factors and maintained a clear focus on the question. Most importantly for me, every single student made a contribution and showed they could both create and defend an historical argument. And all hostages were eventually safely returned to their teams!

Charlotte Grove
History Teacher, Dame Alice Owen's School

Secondary Maths - IGCSE Maths qualifications

Until 2010 IGCSE could not be taught in state schools in England and Wales. That restriction was lifted in June 2010 and some maths teachers are wondering if the exam might be a good option for them. To help them decide, here is a brief guide to Mathematics IGCSE.

The first point to clarify is that because of restrictions in the use of the term GCSE in England and Wales (it has to conform to certain subject and qualification criteria) the qualification is referred to as a Level 1 or Level 2 Certificate. It is identical to the qualification the rest of the world is happy to call an IGCSE.
Edexcel and Cambridge both offer a version of IGCSE Mathematics accredited for use in schools in England and Wales. Here are some features that have in common.

• Both have two terminal examination papers. There is no modular option.
• Calculators are allowed in all papers. There is no non-calculator paper.
• The specification (Edexcel) or syllabus (Cambridge) contains topics that are not in the normal GCSE.
• Both will be recorded in school performance tables and will count towards the English Baccalaureate.

Here are more details of each one separately
• The Edexcel Certificate (IGCSE specification A) is a two-tier exam (Foundation: C-G grades and Higher: A*-E grades available). Each tier is examined by two two-hour papers, each carrying equal marks. Each paper covers all aspects of the specification. The Higher tier includes calculus.
• The Cambridge syllabus has two tiers called Core curriculum (C-G) and Extended curriculum (A*-E). In both tiers paper 1 is shorter than paper 2, consists of short-answer questions and has a weighting of 35%. Paper 2 has structure questions and a weighting of 65%. The Extended curriculum includes matrices (Note: there is also a version of this syllabus with coursework but that is not accredited).

One final point: AQA has an accredited Level 2/IGCSE specification for Additional Mathematics. It is not an alternative to Mathematics; it is intended as an extra qualification for students who will gain at least a level B in Mathematics. The specification includes topics that would normally be found on an A level course. It might be a useful option for students making early GCSE entry.

Chris Pearce

Secondary Science - How can we improve the UK's PISA score in Science

In Hong Kong for the English Speaking Federation schools Science Conference; talking about Bad Science and sharing the materials.  There’s a lot of interest, not least from teachers running the IB programme as it’s a good way of exploring the nature of science.  Also sharing ideas about literacy and students writing extended written responses; watch this site for more details on practical strategies.

Hong Kong outperforms the UK in the PISA scores in Science and it’s interesting to consider why.  These are based on competence in scientific literacy and an understanding of the wider applications and implications of science.  Certainly the PISA team are keen to identify the characteristics of high performing systems.
Let’s put the comparative scores in context. The UK doesn’t do badly; the scores are significantly above the median, in line with countries such as Germany, Switzerland and Poland and better than the US.  What seems to count for a lot is the extent to which schools and teachers have the ability to customise provision for students.  The school designs its curriculum; the classroom teacher decides the most effective approach to take.

Now, this is both an opportunity and a challenge.  When I’m reviewing a science department I always try to do a student voice activity and discuss with students the quality of the provision.  It has never yet failed to be fascinating, insightful and positive; students are often disarmingly honest about their abilities and clear about what works for them in terms of lesson design and delivery.  I usually steer the conversation around to getting them to imagine that I was going to be teaching them science in the near future, was planning the lessons and they had the opportunity to influence what I was going to do.  What should I do, I ask them?

The answers vary, but not by much.  Yes, there should be some practical work if possible, and some writing as well, though it should be functional and based on students’ own understanding.  I’d be expected to explain ideas in an engaging way and not labour things.  Oh, and I’d be expected to think of a different way of approaching something if the first way didn’t work. 

What the PISA analysis also shows though is that high performing education systems work for all students and avoid being divisive.  They respond to different expectations and needs.
Now, if these changes indicate the future for the UK system this is fine and will probably be widely welcomed; we can do this, but a few things need to be clear.  Firstly, we will need to be creative and responsive about effective classroom practice, willing to change our practice and develop new approaches if the feedback indicates that that’s what’s needed.  One of the workshops at the Hong Kong event was on the development of “reverse lesson planning”, in which the introduction of new concepts was done as homework and lesson time used for questions, instead of the other way around.

Secondly, the accountability agenda is not going to go away.  Students want good grades and parents and carers want their children to do well.  Freedom for the teacher is the freedom to find ways of doing this.  Finally, we need some joined up thinking about an effective and appropriate curriculum for students for whom the English Baccalaureate is not an appropriate pathway.  Over half of the current Year 10 students in England are now on such a route but it’s not a universal solution.  An effective system works for everyone.
Ed Walsh
Science Advisor for Cornwall Learning

Primary Literacy - Fresh Ideas for English

APP encourages us to set up creative situations for children to be able to demonstrate their learning through innovation. This can often be difficult within the confines of the curriculum but by making use of changing technologies and fresh opportunities the English curriculum can be delivered in a very creative way.

In my class, English used to be met with groans, especially from the boys who saw it as a chore, but with a little research and thought, my school managed to get those same boys champing at the bit for their English lessons.

One of the real bugbears used to be comprehension - a piece of text, ten or more questions, sit there, read it, then answer in full sentences. It was over simple for all but the ones who struggled. The answers for the questions were sequential in the text so the child didn’t need an understanding of the whole text to be able to answer. They might have provided the answers but they were little more than cut and paste exercises, especially when we tell the children that the words and spellings they need are in the questions and the text. There’s then the huge leap when we expect them to answer questions where the information is inferred.

Likewise with story writing. How much of the written material a child encounters is presented in the style we expect them to produce? We ask for paragraphs, speech marks etc, without realising that these are rarely encountered in today’s world unless a child is reading a reasonably challenging book. Even then they are not likely to have taken note of them as they read.

It’s often said that for children to engage in lessons it’s important that they are fun. Poorly informed critics scoff, saying

‘How can a child be learning if all they’re doing is playing games. They might be enjoying it but are they learning?’

I think that the concept of ‘making lessons fun’ is a rather superficial one. What is needed is a closer look at why they’re fun and it’s not too difficult to see that the reason is because they are relevant to the child’s out of school activities they enjoy.
Few children would go home to their parents and tell them they are going to settle down and write a story or do some comprehension. No, if anything they’ll be in front of the TV, playing mock battles, kicking a ball around, playing with their toys or on computer games.

So if we can make their school experiences like their home ones but with the learning still in focus, we will carry them with us more easily.

I’ve put together some of the ideas I’ve used with my class to help them feel more appreciative of English and hope that you find them helpful too.



Dave Lewis, Primary teacher

Primary Literacy - Fresh Ideas for Comprehension

Comprehension used to be dreaded by my class. Make sure you answer the question fully, don’t start with because, use the words from the question and the text to help etc etc. And it would be the same, week after week. So I decided to do something about it that would make the exercise more relevant to what they wanted to do and the following activities are what we tried.

 Activity 1: Comprehension Through Art

I would give the children a copy of the text and ask them to read it carefully, highlighting everything they felt could be represented as an image. From this I asked them to draw and colour or paint a picture that showed me what they had read about in the story. Overall, the results showed a good understanding of what they had read. Whereas I may have asked a younger class how many friends did Peter meet at the park, there in the picture would be Peter with two friends. If the text had described each of them, I would see in their picture, the two friends of the correct size, right hair colour and correct clothing as per the text, so in a much more enjoyable way fro them, they were comprehending the story.

I thought difficulty might arise in the comprehension for the older children but instead what I though would be a road block for them turned out to be an inspiration.

For questions where inference was required; e.g. How did Mary feel, seeing the turtle swim away? I had paintings showing a sad face but also changes in the colouring of the picture itself and the child, in describing their work afterwards, would say, I painted it in greys and blues because Mary is sad the turtle has gone.

I was surprised at how successful it was and have tried it from time to time since. Obviously it can’t be used all the time because the formation and practice of the language of understanding is a vital component but for variety it works very well.

Activity 2: Comprehension as Comic Strips

The difficulty with using pictures for comprehension is that it is impossible to show progression in a story.

I found by using a comic strip format, those texts which question children on a progression such as ‘What do you think Mary will do to help the turtle?’ or ‘What do you think Raj’s parents will say when he gets home?’ are more easily answered.

The children can also practice sequencing by considering how they can show their understanding through the development of the text into a story. It’s fairly easy to guess how many frames will be needed for their answers and I would suggest asking the children to think about where the story will go next. To be able to do this, they will have to have a good understanding of it so far and their finished strip should demonstrate this.

Activity 3: Rewriting the Text

This is a very useful activity as it also practises writing for different audiences.

It can be done in quite a variety of ways depending on the text:

-    A change of person; this often can give a different perspective on the story and help the child to understand more of what might be inferred.

-    A change of setting; this enables the child to take the facts from the given text and transplant it into a different scenario. When assessing it you should see all of the characteristics and action but higher order work will also adapt the actions of the character to the new situation but not completely change them

-    A change of style;  The easiest is to convert the text into a newspaper report format  and it works quite well as detected inferred information often appears in ‘What the eyewitness saw’. Some texts which have a chronology can be tested by changing the format to an instructional one which highlights sequencing of events.

-    The version I like is when you change the subject of the text. We once did this exercise on a piece from ‘Alice in Wonderland but changed Alice to Alex, a boy. The children had to rewrite it but thinking about whether the boy would react in the same way to his encounters. Needless to say, the Cheshire Cat has been rescued by the RSPCA and the Mad Hatter is receiving treatment.


Dave Lewis, Primary teacher

Primary Literacy - Fresh Ideas for Spellings

Over the years we have been furnished with many different ideas for spelling schemes and also for ways to learn spellings. I believe that the problem some children encounter is being encouraged to use only a single method to learn and practise their spelling words. A girl in my class who had been doing really well in her tests began to tail off a bit and when the situation got to the point where I was sure she wasn’t learning them I asked her what the problem was.

Her reply was that she was bored of learning them in the same way week after week and so had given up. Mindful of her comments I looked at the available ways of learning and practising them and implemented a few changes following these activities:

Activity 1: Using Spellcheckers

In Microsoft Word, a red line appears under any incorrectly spelt word (as long as the dictionary language is set correctly)

The children in my class knew this meant they had spelt the word incorrectly but apart from asking me how to correct it, could go no further. We then looked at how, if you right click on the word, a list of possible spellings comes up. I asked them to look through this and see if they can recognise the correct spelling. I’ve found that in over 80% of cases, if the spelling is close enough, the child will be presented with the correct spelling and they are able to select it from amongst the other words that don’t match.

I extended this to producing a list of commonly miss-spelt words using the common problem seen in each one and again presented this to the children. Again, almost all could correct them by recognising the spelling from the right click supplied list.

Activity 2: Paired Spellings

In this activity I pair up children of roughly similar spelling ability and give the whole class a differentiated spelling test. Instead of having to remember the spellings by themselves, they are free to discuss the spelling with their partner and how it needs to be changed if seen as incorrect. This idea helps children’s confidence in spelling tests and once the confidence is there you can split pairs or rematch them.

Activity 3: Guess the Word

Hangman is always a great game for practising spellings and it shows if children are getting the correct rule if the first letters they suggest are the ones from it.

Another version of this is to start off with the first two letters of a word, not necessarily from a list given recently to learn and ask the class to suggest what words could begin with those letters. From this you can practise many words, e.g. if I gave them A and B as the first two letters I could expect above, able or aboard and I would give extra points for if they could continue the spelling correctly. If they got a letter wrong, I would then use the letters we had so far and ask another child to continue.

Activity 4: Words From Words

I used to love this activity as a child. It was often given as a filler and I sometimes use it for that reason. The child is given a word and asked to find, five, ten, fifteen or twenty words from it, depending on ability. This can help with looking at how words are formed form others e.g. the word another being an-other.

Activity 5: Spelling Bees

In the USA, spelling bee competitions are very popular. They have fallen out of favour here because of the public competitiveness of the idea. I like to use the idea occasionally but rather than make all the class do it, I ask the children to challenge each other. In this way they are opting to be in the spotlight and will usually only do it if they feel confident. To encourage the less confident to participate I say that they can take part in pairs.

Activity 6: Teacher Error

I began doing this activity to check if the children were paying attention to what I was saying but it soon got to be a way I could test their spellings. If the opportunity arose to use a word out of their spelling lists in any I was writing on the whiteboard I might spell the word incorrectly and wait to see if there was a reaction. To begin with I had to say that’s what I was going to do but now I can just do it and my eagle-eyed class are watching all the time. It gets embarrassing if I make an unintentional error though!!

Dave Lewis, Primary teacher

Primary Literacy - Fresh Ideas for Speaking and Listening

In the past I considered this to be all about drama but since the introduction of thinking skills and philosophy into the curriculum, I’ve realised that there are a lot more ways it can be practised and developed.

Activity 1: The Voice of the School   

Schools are all about children but we often try to keep them at arm’s length from visitors.

In our school, we recognise that children can naturally be shy around adults they don’t know but try to help them feel more at ease in these situations by allowing them to be the face or voice of the school. This can range from showing parents and visitors around the school, answering the telephone, visiting the elderly in the community and helping out at school events. Don’t worry, we don’t just throw them into the situation, the head teacher organises role plays for them to think about and practise what they may say and what they might hear from the adults. Whilst it seems a little scary to some, they will need these skills soon in life so we help them to develop them.

We often underestimate the ability of children when placed in unfamiliar situations and we found that whilst initially reticent about taking on such roles, soon many were volunteering, gaining greater confidence along the way.

Activity 2: Who Am I?

OK, so this is more drama but I like to think of it as a combination of a bit of research, a bit of drama and practise for speaking.

Tell the children they are going to be famous people giving a speech. Aim for only thirty seconds – that will still seem like an eternity to them!

They need to research what that person may talk about and how they might do it.

You can let them choose but to begin with it’s often better to get them to select from a list you’ve chosen so you don’t get an obscure one. I chose the US President, an actress, a footballer, a pop star and person from history. They then had to research their person to find out what they spoke like and what they talked about and then practise 30 seconds of something similar.

When we came to performing this it was huge fun. Some had decided to dress up as their speaker so the ‘guess the celeb’ aspect was completely lost but they really tried their best and in the fun of the experience forgot that they were being assessed for speaking skills and were naturals.

This is very useful as a introduction to taking on a character role in drama. We follow this activity in drama by asking the children to investigate their character, build up an idea of their personality and use what they find out to make their performance more realistic. It’s a skill often not practised until secondary school but we had some success with it, especially amongst those who are keen on their acting.

Dave Lewis, Primary teacher