KS3 History - measuring significance of historical events

Why do we remember some events in history and not others? Why are some events regarded as important at the time but not now?

This is what the 2010 Secondary Curriculum has to say about Significance:

• Key concept 1.5 Significance: Considering the significance of events, people and developments in their historical context and in the present day.

Here’s an example that might help us explore this. Everyone remembers the Titanic – the unsinkable ship that hit an iceberg in the Atlantic on its maiden voyage to America in April 1912. At the time this was a devastating event, over 1,500 people died. It was also a big shock to British pride. It is credited with originating the saying ‘women and children first,’ as there were not enough boats for everybody. People still talk about the Titanic today, and not just because of the film!

Yet how many people remember HMS Birkenhead, the troop ship that sank on its way to South Africa in 1852, with the loss of around 450 soldiers?

HMS Birkenhead was carrying about 650 men, women and children to South Africa. Most were new recruits. About 3 miles off shore, at 2 in the morning, the ship hit a rock. It too, like the Titanic, had a series of watertight compartments designed to keep it afloat – in fact it was the first steam ship to do so.  In an attempt to get off the rocks the captain reversed the engines, making the hole much bigger. In 15 minutes the ship sank. The captain gave the order to abandon ship. Only three of the boats could be lowered.

Lieutenant-Colonel Seton, the senior army officer, ordered all ranks to assemble on deck and stand to attention, while the women and children were put in the boats. The men waited as the ship went down. Most died, although some managed to swim the three miles to shore through shark-infested waters. It really was the first example of ‘women and children first!’

Queen Victoria praised the bravery and discipline of the men, and ordered a memorial built at Chelsea Barracks. The King of Prussia paraded his army and in an order of the day demanded his soldiers be as brave as those on the Birkenhead. On the 50th anniversary, Thomas Hemy, a famous Victorian painter, produced a painting of the ship going down, which would have been found on most Victorian classroom walls. About the same time Rudyard Kipling, the ‘poet of Empire,’ wrote ‘Soldier an’ sailor too,’ about the event. So the event obviously had an impact both at the time and at the turn of the century. Yet no-one today remembers the Birkenhead. Why?

There are several sets of criteria for measuring significance – such as those from Ian Dawson, Partington, Christine Counsell – and it is important that students have the chance to ‘measure’ significance against these criteria. Yet it is equally important that they have the opportunity to develop their own criteria for measuring significance. That, after all, is what history is really about.

Alf Wilkinson
National Subject Lead for History, 2010 Secondary Curriculum

Secondary Maths - Simply take ...A set of mini whiteboards

This is an activity that could be used to improve students understanding of evaluating expressions when substituting integers in expressions.

Using a class set of mini whiteboards, ask each student to
•    Write the numbers 1 to 6 in a column on the left hand side
•    Write a different algebraic expression in terms of x next to each of these numbers
•    Evaluate the expressions using the allocated number as the value for x
•    Calculate the total of these six values

Now ask the students to rearrange the number 1 to 6 to get
•    The maximum total
•    The minimum total

This allows differentiation as students can make the expressions as complicated as they wish.

They could write each of their expressions on cards, which you could collect and use in another lessons allocating appropriate expressions to individual students.

Sue Briggs
Previously a Maths Advisor in Somerset

GCSE Science - What's changing in the new specifications

If you're in a world of confusion about the new GCSE specification have a look at our Collins New GCSE Science blog, containing articles on what is really changing in the new spec, how to handle controlled assessment and how you can use Bad Science in the classroom.

Written by Science Advisor Ed Walsh, the articles try and make sense of the changes and offer some suggestions on how you might tackle them.

What do you think of the new specs so far and how are you preparing for teaching in September?  We'd love to hear your thoughts, here or on the Science blog.

Julia
Collins Education Blog

GCSE English - Stand up for Shakespeare

I have to admit that, in the past, I was rather prone to keeping my students sitting down in class. Especially when teaching drama texts. This may be because my attempts at using drama in the classroom usually ended up resembling a scene from ‘Lord of the Flies’; it may be because I am a control freak; or it may be that I just hadn’t been trained in how to teach drama. However, a couple of years ago, I was fortunate enough to receive some training on active approaches to teaching Shakespeare. It was brilliant! It provided me with simple ways to use drama to complement the teaching of English but in the controlled and focussed way I had always failed to do before.

This year I want to get my GCSE students standing up for Shakespeare.  They will be studying the theme of Love For the ‘Shakespeare and Literary Heritage Controlled Assessment’, focussing on ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and a selection of poetry.  With the on-going pressures on students from controlled assessments, I want to make this unit as interactive as possible- they have and will have to spend enough time sitting down and writing about it in silence afterwards! Here are two of the techniques I plan to use.

1 - Firstly I have decided to look at ‘Last Words’. This involves each student in the class taking it in turns to read out the last word in a line from a section of the play. Once everyone has had a go, they do it again but add actions. This is a very simple but effective way of focussing the students on language choices and of spotting patterns in imagery, rhyme and rhythm.

2 - The second technique is ‘Walking the punctuation’. Students are given an extract from the play and have to walk around the classroom whilst reading the extract out loud. The trick is that when they reach a full-stop, question mark or exclamation mark they stop and turn 180 degrees before walking again, whereas if they reach a comma, colon or semi-colon they just make a brief turn and carry on walking, without stopping. This is a great way of helping students to consider the pace and rhythm of speeches and dialogues, which they can then develop by linking to the content and the mood of the characters.

Both of these techniques will need to be developed by more traditional text marking and annotation to help students fully analyse the language. But they are excellent ways in to the text and that is so important. Shakespeare often seems mind-boggling for students but if they can stand up, pull it apart and interact with it, hopefully it will become that bit more accessible before they sit down again and write about it.

Naomi Hursthouse
Advance Skills Teacher
Steyning Grammar School

Primary Literacy - Making Story Writing Fun and Challenging

There are not many pupils that will say they love writing and there are probably fewer teachers that love marking it! I’ve just done an assessed piece of writing with the children and I see the same problems in all of their work. You can get them to plan all you like but when the writing starts, getting them to stick to the plan all the way through to the conclusion is a nightmare.

You can tell the point at which they feel they’ve done enough - I’d be a rich man if I had a pound for every time I’ve read the end of a story where the characters have a cup of cocoa and go to bed or wake up part way through the story to find it’s all been a dream!

So what’s the answer to making writing fun and sustaining their concentration?

I’ve experimented with several ideas over the years and some of the best I’ve found involve either shared writing or writing that is done in a format that the children enjoy.

You can tell the regard in which story writing is held by your class when their initial question is ‘When I finish, can I draw a picture?’ This often means that the work is rushed to get to the enjoyable bit, so why not ask them to draw the picture first then write about it?

Another writing method we use is the shared story.

We began by using an exercise book. The teacher would write the opening lines of a story and the child would continue it, returning the book to the teacher after a paragraph had been completed. This worked well until books got lost and all the work with it. We looked around for an alternative and hit upon the use of blogs.

If you want to follow this route, set up WordPress or other blog provider’s accounts for each child that is participating and give them the log in details.

Begin the story for the child and ask them to continue it.  Alternate regularly completing sections of the story. You should each choose a different colour font to be able to differentiate between the authors and to enable you to monitor how much each author is contributing.

If you set up the spam filter to remove all spam you won’t have any unwanted comments appearing on the blog. This way you can use the comment facility to be able to tell the child how you think the story is progressing. From time to time, discuss the story verbally with the child so that they can discuss ideas.

Other free blogware is available and some allow you to keep the blog private although in all the time we have operated the system we have never had a comment come through the spam filter on WordPress that wasn’t from an accepted source.

By using blogware, we are sure that the story won’t be lost and the story can be continued in school or at home. Parents like this method too as they can log on and see the child’s work and the comments from the teacher.

Dave Lewis
Portsmouth High School Junior Dept

Secondary Maths - introducing probability

Asking a question ‘What is the probability of rolling two fair dice and obtaining two sixes’ can generate all kinds of misconceptions and incorrect answers;  this question reflects the underlying challenges associated with teaching probability theory effectively.
I first observed the brilliance of ZILCH attending a Masterclass for Gifted and Talented pupils based at Bath University.    A unique feature of the game is the ability to generate interest and enthusiasm across the age and attainment range;  a top set year 7 group can be just as engaged as a foundation year 10 group.  The game is played using packs of six dice and ideally the game is played in pairs.  A scoring system is clearly explained as follows:

Scoring 3 Two’s all in one go  =   200 points
Scoring 3 Three’s all in one go = 300 points
Scoring 3 Four’s all in one go =  400 points
Scoring 3 Five’s all in one go  =  500 points
Scoring 3 Sixes all in one go = 600 points
Scoring 3 One’s all in one go = 1000 points
Scoring  1,2,3,4,5,6  all in one go  =  1500 points  
Scoring 1 One  =  100 points
Scoring 1 Five = 50 points

Each player rolls one dice and the highest score takes the first turn.  All six dice are rolled and the scoring dice are placed to one side.  If there are no scoring opportunities consistent with the above scoreboard the player scores nothing – ZILCH – and it is the turn of the next player.  If some of the dice are scoring dice, the player uses intuition and skill to determine whether to ‘stick’ or to ‘gamble’ to improve their score.   For example, the first roll of the dice might yield: 4, 4, 4, 4, 2, and 6

Three fours together score 400 and the player decides to roll the three non scoring dice again with the hope of improving a score of 400 points.   The 4, 2 and 6 are picked up and rolled again in the hope of scoring three of the same number or at least rolling one five or one 1.  If nothing is scored the gamble has not paid off and the player ‘ZILCHES’ thereby losing their score for that turn.
The first player to score 2000 (or more) points is the winner.  

Following a few games of Zilch, the introduction of a Zilch World Cup has generated great interest and it is intriguing to witness that ‘lady luck’ seems to follow certain individuals around, especially in a World Cup Final.  Introducing the ‘Zilch Dilemma’ further enhances the conceptual understanding of probability;  if you have a good score of say 350 points in your first throw, is it best to ‘gamble’ or to ‘stick’ with two dice remaining?  Representing the possibilities on a 6 by 6 sample space diagram illustrates that the chances of a gamble increasing a score is higher than we may intuitively think – 20/36 or 5/9.   The sample space diagram also makes our initial question crystal clear to students;  the probability of rolling two fair dice and both dice landing on a 6 is 1 chance in 36.   Gifted and Talented groups may wish to find the probability of scoring 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 in one throw or the probability of winning in their first throw with an extraordinary throw of six one’s!

Chris Curtis
Curriculum Team Leader for Mathematics

Secondary English - questioning techniques

I’ve been reading about ways of multiplying the learning in the classroom, i.e.making small changes which can have a significant impact on students. Now ‘small changes’ sounds good to me, as at this point in the year I am running out of time to breath, never mind find time to plan more complex lessons. One of these small changes is strangely called ‘Basketball not ping-pong’. This seems at first glance far too sporty for me but actually it requires very little effort- phew!

The idea behind ‘Basketball not ping-pong’ is that some questioning techniques can help learners to explore and develop their ideas in more depth. One of these techniques is for teachers to stop themselves from intervening in question and answer sessions and instead to ask learners to comment on a peer’s answer, so that each learner can build on the ideas of the previous student, maybe exploring what they found useful in the previous answer or adding a new idea to the one just offered. This is called the ‘basketball’ effect and should stop the ‘ping-pong’ effect of teachers asking questions, receiving an answer, commenting on the answer then asking another question. In the ‘ping-pong’ approach it is felt that teachers are doing more work than students and in the ‘basketball’ approach the class will be more engaged and ‘on the ball’ as they are expecting to be included in the feedback.

I thought it was worth a try. I combined it with a ‘no hands up’ approach and after giving my year 10 class time to look at a magazine article on fast food, I started them off with one question, ‘How do the headline and image contribute to the effectiveness of the text?’ Each student then had to add to the last student’s comments, by either developing the previous point, adding another idea which answered the question or commenting on what was good about the previous point. I have to admit that I was surprised by how well it worked. I was expecting it to peter out after about two students but we managed to get through ten students in the class before the run broke down. And if I can get my year 10s to play ball then this can work with any class!

There is still work to do- ideally I would like to get the whole class involved but I guess that, as with basketball, the more we practise this the better the students will get at commenting on and developing each other’s answers.
The most successful part of this strategy is that it forces the students to really listen to each others’ answers. But best of all is didn’t require any time or effort in planning- that has to be good!

Naomi Hursthouse
Advance Skills Teacher
Steyning Grammar School