Secondary English - Halloween Word Origins

Samhain: the seeds of fear
Hallowe'en has been and gone. Afraid? You should be. I'm standing right behind you. Not really (I'm under your bed).

These days (in the UK, at least), the main fear response triggered by Hallowe'en is parental anxiety over excessive snacking contributing to childhood obesity. However, to be fair, Hallowe'en's historical roots were not as a festival of fear, but as a celebration of the end of the year and the beginning of the new. In the Old Celtic calendar the new year began in November, and the end of October was a night of celebration incorporating some traditions to honour the dead. There were good spirits to be wished safe passage to the afterlife, and evil spirits to be dodged, discouraged, or downright confused by disguising oneself as them. If the last point seems like an odd strategy, try to put yourself in the evil spirits' shoes: can you predict how would you react if you went to a party only to find everyone else had come dressed as you?

The Celtic festival most chronologically aligned with Hallowe'en is Samhain (pronounced sow-inn) which means 'summer's end'. Historically, pagan and Christian festivals have often blended, and as November 1st was designated All Saints' Day or All Hallows' Day, so October 31st became All Hallows' Eve, or All-Hallow-Even (hallow is derived from the Old English hālgian, which is related to hālig, meaning holy, and even is a short form of evening). Thus the word Hallowe'en came to exist in the 1800s as a contracted form. Somewhere along the way its apostrophe was lost, and the generally accepted current form is Halloween.

The trick or treat tradition of children demanding sweets (sorry, candy) was popularized in the US in the 1940s, where Hallowe'en is a national institution. Householders may decorate their front porches with carved pumpkin jack-o'-lanterns, but woe betide those who don't stump up with the treats. This practice was originally known as guising in Scotland and Ireland, where it is still popular, and still involves going from door to door in costume asking for candy (sorry, sweets) but without the added threat of retribution as an incentive. Turnips tend to be used rather than pumpkins (as they were in Celtic tradition) and eager participants go dooking rather than bobbing for apples.

The festival of Hallowe'en would be a good deal less colourful without its associated assortment of gruesome creatures of myth, such as ghosts, goblins, and ghouls. The constituent parts of this alliterative triple threat have their etymological origins in a variety of languages. For example, ghost comes from the Old English gāst, which is related to Old Frisian jēst, the Old High German geist meaning 'spirit', and the Sanskrit hēda, meaning 'fury' or 'anger'. Goblin comes from Old French and from the Middle High German kobolt, whereas ghouls (evil demons thought to eat human bodies, either stolen corpses or children) come from the Arabic ghūl (from ghāla, meaning 'he seized'). And the much-maligned word witch is derived from the Old English wicca, which is related to the Middle Low German wicken (meaning 'to conjure') and the Swedish vicka (to move to and fro).

Hope you had a happy Hallowe'en, whether you chose to apostrophize or otherwise. And don’t have nightmares.

Duncan Black - Editor

All A Level - Independent Learning

‘The Sixth Form Catch-22’:

A Logical Paradox at A Level

Pascal’s Wager is a familiar staple of A Level reasoning, but it seems I have entered my own wager with another Catch-22 type situation, not such an ultimate existential problem, granted, but one which is very real in the experience of teaching Sixth Form today!

A Level teaching is certainly what keeps me going week to week, as my subject(s) is my passion, but it isn’t really what I imagined it to be (or certainly what I remember it being back in the day – 12 whole years ago!). My technique has always been ‘do what you’d do with lower school’, as I was advised in my NQT year – thus far this has worked in producing excellent results. However, I question whether, this leads to a GCSE style spoon-feed at times. True, there is a structure to exam answers, required content and buzz words, but surely we need to be bridging the gap between school and higher education? Here, the A Level teacher finds themselves in an unending cycle of reasoning - we need results, need them to ‘know’ how to answer the question with all the key content, yet we want to challenge, stretch and prepare them for the next step - which for many is a degree.

Having taught the ‘new’ specifications for RS and Sociology for four years, it is time to re-vamp, re-think and give a new lease of life to my A Level schemes of work. It dawned on me last year that one of the key areas where my students seem to be lacking is independent learning. They seem to have latched on well to Kagan style strategies for collaboration, AfL and so on, but Mike Hughes’ ‘Red to Blue’ ideas of moving towards a student-focussed style of learning (‘Blue’) seems to leave many of them stumped.

Last year I began a small experiment with my Year 12 RS class (mixed ability). If work wasn’t on the PowerPoint they weren’t writing it down, so I began to drop in key hints and phrases every lesson for key points. For example, “great idea Claire, that is REALLY important, excellent idea,” “that would be an IDEAL point for an AO2 essay, REALLY a high level link,” and so on. This got no results, no matter how many times I said the words ‘really’ and ‘important’ together not one pen was put to paper. In the end I asked them, and got the answer I was expecting, “we only write down what’s on the board.” This is disastrous in a subject which lends itself to discussion and bouncing ideas around. Sadly, they still aren’t doing it now in Year 13!

So, what does work? I have trialled a few more, slightly more successful, ideas lately too. Plenty of self assessment seems effective, in some lessons students then took ownership and devised their own piece of homework for the week – I was intrigued as to whether they would complete this work, or if the value would be lost because I hadn’t ‘set it’. Interestingly the majority did complete it, bar the usual suspects. The same suspects also failed my ‘test’ to see if, when given free reign over half the lesson, they would choose to do the set work, use resources and study spaces, or to go home…

In our department I am leading a ‘Tweaking Humanities’ project (based on Hughes' ‘Tweak to Transform’) with a focus on moving from ‘red to blue’ and the 4 part lesson structure. I hope that by increasing ‘blue’ focussed lessons gradually, there may be improvement. It is impossible to create a total culture shift in one lesson, so my strategy now is to do it gradually. By implementing this throughout the year groups, perhaps we will see more progress. I believe this may be the only way; as otherwise we are sending hundreds of students to undergraduate courses who are unprepared, and sadly without the skills to learn.

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

Secondary RE - Introducing Spirituality

Spirituality can be difficult to define and explain, so where can you start when trying to introduce the topic in a meaningful way to a class of 13 year olds?

An approach that has been successful for the students I teach is one that encourages students to reflect upon the evidence of their own experiences, which can then give them the empathy needed to truly understand what spirituality means to other people.

I start by encouraging the students to consider ‘things that make their spirits soar’. I give them my own accounts, (e.g. lying down on the grass on a sunny day with my friends and identifying the shapes in the clouds, or sitting on the cool sand on a cold autumn day snuggled into my hoody with a hot chocolate) and then students make a list of their own examples and experiences. The students always come up with great examples, from the feelings that they have when they wake up on Christmas morning, to the feeling of comfort and happiness hanging out with their best friends, not even having to say anything at all to each other. The more descriptive their examples are the better. The key is to get students to identify the feelings or emotions and to get them to share their ideas with others. There is always one student in the class who writes ‘sleeping’ which I don’t allow them to have, as you are not aware of feelings and emotions when you are sleeping. The example that I am still most impressed with is the response from a Year 8 boy who struggles both behaviourally and academically, who told the class about going ferreting on a cold, snowy day when he can’t feel his fingers or toes anymore and he has had no luck and is getting tired, and then he sees a rabbit dart from its warren, it makes him feel all warm inside to the point that he doesn’t feel cold anymore and his hope has been lifted.

This is what spirituality is about: exploring the feelings, emotions and effects of these simple events. By doing this, my students have come to understand that everybody experiences spirituality in different ways and that the feelings and emotions are a significant part of this. It can be very difficult to put these thoughts and feelings into words, but it allows students to gain an understanding which can help them through the rest of the unit, exploring how religious people express their spirituality through art or music or acts of worship. The teaching of spirituality should be separated from external and objective facts and observations, and instead should start with students' own experiences, then they can have true empathy and understanding when learning about and learning from religions.

Teresa Langler
Head of Beliefs and Values

Clyst Vale Community College

Secondary Geography - Geographical Enquiry

Always Asking Questions: Introducing Geographical Enquiry

One of the most useful tools in the teachers’ toolkit is the work of Margaret Roberts and her ‘cycle of geographical enquiry’. The cycle is powered by children’s curiosity. The question ‘Why?’ is asked early, and repeatedly, by children before they even start school. Hopefully that spirit of enquiry is encouraged and nurtured once they start school, so that they don’t get out of the habit of questioning.

The starting point for a lesson sequence should be a series of questions. ‘Why’ can be joined by ‘When’, ‘Where’, ‘What’ and ‘Who’. You may also be able to think of others. Questions could come from negotiation with students, who must also develop strategies for answering them appropriately. Remember that students don’t necessarily “know what they don’t know”, so there is still a need for subject specialists such as yourselves to choose the key questions to ensure that the learning has breadth as well as depth.

In geography there is a whole world of questions to select of course. Questions should create a ‘need to know’ and have what Liz Taylor, author of ‘Representing Geography’ has called ‘pith and rigour’. They might ask what can be seen in an image or consider what might happen in the future. They should be ‘open’, and offer chances for analysis.

Rachel Lofthouse of Newcastle University describes the use of what she calls BGQ’s (Big Geographical Questions) These might include a question like “Why do people live where they do?”, which will still be asked in twenty years time. Alternatively, they might be more intriguing, such as “Where does London end?”

Copyright: Geographical Association

Further questions will then arise from the use of geographical skills that follows. The selection of supportive geo-media such as images to help answer the questions will involve discussions and generate further questions. For example, “How much of Rio de Janeiro is made up of slum housing?”, or “Will the World Cup in 2014 change Rio for the better?”.

For Tom Biebrach, who teaches at Howells School in Wales, these explorations are "the framework that geographers use to understand the complex world”. Enquiry must involve fieldwork where possible, and provide opportunities for pupils to communicate their ideas and findings in creative ways.

Using enquiry enables teachers to ‘tick the PLTS box’, and is at the heart of the Teacher Effectiveness Enhancement Programme (TEEP) which is run by the School’s Network and is being introduced into some schools. Tony Cassidy, who teaches at Kirk Hallam in Derbyshire suggests that questions enable students to ‘travel through the lesson’, and also offer opportunities to validate sources and ultimately participate in practical action. He uses his personal experience of a teacher exchange to Japan to ask “Would we students enjoy schooling Japanese style?”, followed by the creation of questions which are e-mailed to Japanese students for them to answer.

Researchers Morgan and Saxton (1991) reckoned a typical teacher asked between 300 and 400 questions a day. Maybe it is time to ask fewer, smarter questions? Why not ask a student to monitor how many you ask in the first half hour of the lesson? Once those initial questions have been carefully chosen, geographical enquiry, carried out thoroughly, offers a framework for the production of another new narrative in geography’s ongoing aim of ‘writing the Earth’.

References
You might find these two books really helpful:
‘Geography inside the Black Box’ - Paul Weeden & David Lambert (nferNelson, 2006)
‘Learning through Enquiry’ - Margaret Roberts (Geographical Association, 2003)

URL
This resource on the GA website provides more useful background on enquiry and questions...
http://www.geography.org.uk/gtip/thinkpieces/geographicalenquiry

Alan Parkinson
Secondary Curriculum Development Leader of the Geographical Association

Secondary English - Market Place Persuasion

"Roll up, Roll up!" 

Teaching persuasive writing through role play

Teaching persuasive writing can be tricky. You can show your pupils emotive speeches, give examples of devices and look at leaflets but ultimately you tend to find the odd pupil who just hasn’t got it or uses devices in a tokenistic way. This is understandable; you have to really believe in something to be truly persuasive and engaging and those pupils who tend to ‘bob along’ can miss the mark. After three lessons of feeling like I was force feeding knowledge into a fairly unwilling but polite class who nodded along at the right times, I decided to revamp the scheme of work and start again, cue ‘Market Place Persuasion’.

The pupils' assessment was a leaflet welcoming people to an Island they created. On large pieces of sugar paper I had them write down all the positive elements of their Island and why we would want to visit. They then set their expenses for a week’s holiday and started to practise their ‘hard sell’ - this included terms they came up with, as well as the whiteboard covered in terms that would help them raise a level, (such as ‘rule of 3’, ‘alliteration’ ‘hyperbole’ and ‘metaphor’). To clarify further we did some role play demonstrations for this first, with me being the pushy promoter trying to extract money out of not-so-willing and sceptical volunteers. This took a lesson and was the preparation for our ‘Market Place’ lesson.

Next lesson the pupils poured in full of high spirits and with arms full of props (some had sweets to bribe people, others had buckets and spades, one boy had a baseball cap and shades to help him ‘impress the ladies’). I handed out Monopoly money (if you don’t have this – and have checked with your maths department - make blank cheques) to half of the class, the other half ‘set up their stalls’ by rearranging tables, eye-balling friends and revising their ‘hard sell’ vocabulary. The ‘customers’ had 20 minutes to buy a holiday to the Island of their dreams.

I am not going to lie, it was loud and busy BUT it was fantastic to watch. Not only did I hear the devices we had discussed being used, but also wonderful bartering skills and some suspect sale methods! After 20 minutes I asked the customers to stand next to the Island they chose. I was pleased to see that they hadn’t just stuck with their friends and we had a clear winner judging the wedge of ‘cash’ he was waving around.

After a round of applause the customers sat back down and filled in a Post It with the things they liked about the Island they had picked and a suggestion for one way the Island could be improved. We then repeated the exercise so the customers became vendors. Jamie was the overall winner as he had the best vocabulary, best deals and most exciting ideas… he also bribed pupils with mini Mars bars but the pupils earnestly assured me he would have won anyway.

The following lesson pupils had their Post Its back and used them to improve their ideas and vocabulary, I also noticed that they discussed how to improve with classmates and asked the more successful vendors for advice. 92% of this class had a writing level of 5b, after this task and careful drafting 71% of the class proudly produced work at level 6. I honestly think it was due to this activity and have since used the model when teaching transitional writing and persuasive writing at GCSE. It also works brilliantly in Media lessons if pupils have made products such as CD covers or magazines. It is best to try this after the first draft so pupils have the time to amend their work before the final draft is due. It makes the pupils more passionate about their subject and lifts it from the page into a real life situation and environment.

This task can also be turned into a Speaking and Listening Activity or marked for Speaking and Listening whilst the activity is taking place.

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

All A Level - AS to A2 essays

AS to A2… Making the leap

Around this time of year I am marking the first couple of A2 essays from my Year 13 students who have negotiated the first hurdle of AS level successfully. It is rare to find a student who produces an A2 mark on a par with their AS grade this early on into the year. This can make students demoralised.

To write longer essays in an AS style is insufficient, the evaluation needs to be more developed.

I try to address this issue by using the last 10 minutes of a lesson to do activities I’ve named as ‘The Perfect Paragraph’ and ‘Last Man Talking’

The Perfect Paragraph
All you need to do for this is present a series of paragraph stems and get them choose one from the list to develop further. Making the stems increasingly more difficult gives gifted students a chance to challenge themselves.

An example of a stem in A2 Psychology would be:
‘It can be argued that schizophrenia is at least partly due to genetics because…’

You can then check the paragraphs and choose good examples to read out in class.

Last Man Talking
‘Last Man Talking’ can use the same stems but involves getting the students to work in pairs. I ask them, as a plenary, to take it in turns in developing the stem, so they compile a good in depth evaluation point between them. The point of the activity is for students to be the last person to speak before they finish on that particular point.

Using the previous stem as an example, the conversation might go:

Arthur: ‘ …research by Gottesman showed that identical twins had a higher level of concordance, indicating a genetic influence…’
Betty: ‘…however the rate was not 100% which suggests that environment also plays a part…’
Arthur: ‘…using twin studies to support the argument is seen by some to be a problem as it is thought that identical twins are treated more similarly than non identical, so the difference in concordance rates could be due to treatment rather than genetics.’
Betty: ‘… I give up!’

(Note - I’ve edited all the 'Umm's and 'Ahh's from this, also many students wouldn’t remember Gottesman’s name! Arthur has the memory of an elephant.)
 
You’ll know which activity will work better with your students. It should build their confidence and raise their marks.

Bring on the January exams…

Eleanor Hills
Subject Leader Psychology and Sociology
Roundhay School

Secondary Economics and Business - Steve Jobs 1955-2011

Steve Jobs 1955-2011:
A lesson in entrepreneurship, leadership and culture

"Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me.. Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful... that's what matters to me."
– Steve Jobs, Wall Street Journal (1993)

The concepts of entrepreneurship, leadership and culture are prevalent in most specifications across a variety of exam boards such as AQA and Edexcel and we all know that the use of real examples exemplifies the theory behind these concepts. Most, if not all students are aware of Apple, but possibly not of Steve Jobs to any great degree of depth.

As I write this Apple Inc. are to celebrate the life of their co-founder Steve Jobs at their Cupertino headquarters, California. Upon news of his death Twitter exploded with sentiment and Time magazine stopped their presses, tearing up its scheduled edition to celebrate the life of possibly one of the most influential showmen in any industry.

Using Jobs as a focus for the personal qualities that lead entrepreneurs to succeed really touches on why people set up a business in the first place.  Across the Economics and Business syllabi we see these qualities described over and over again. Jobs had the characteristics of a successful entrepreneur such as resilience, perseverance, and self-actualisation.

Though charismatic on stage, it is well known that Steve Jobs was an incredible example of an autocratic leader. He had a top-down one-way system of communication within the organisation. He was also an incredible micro-manager. I recently read an article where Jobs called Google’s Vic Gundotra on a Sunday to complain that the second 'O' on the Google App for iPhone didn’t have the right yellow gradient. A visionary in his markets, but driven by a dictatorial attitude within his organisation and an eye for extreme detail.
Investor Warren Buffet once said that, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to destroy it”. Apple and its corporate culture are now at a milestone. Steve Jobs was a ‘culture carrier’ at the core of the brand. Will the company be able to continue to foster the same culture of innovation and product orientation that made the company a market leader? Will the fervour that its employees had for its corporate mission die with that of one of its founders, simply becoming one more technology company?

There is an absolute wealth of materials suited to both Key Stages on Jobs that can be used throughout a lesson to highlight and add value to key theory. I have attached a PDF here with some of the most useful resources. I think that using Jobs as the sole backbone for a refresher lesson on enterprise, strategy, management, leadership, culture and empowerment makes for an interesting end of term lesson.

A possible essay question:
‘With reference to the videos, articles seen and your own knowledge, to what extent do you agree that Steve Jobs leadership guaranteed the company’s success prior his death.’ (20)

Key essay hooks:

1. Is there a difference between management and leadership?
2. Key features of authoritarian/autocratic leadership. Compare and contrast with Paternalistic and Democratic forms. (See F.W Taylor Principles of Scientific Management.)
3. What is success? How is a business deemed to be successful?
4. What other internal/external influences might be just as important?

Daniel Baker
Teacher of Business and Economics
Trinity Catholic High School