3 replies to this topic

[Lyn]

I am desperate for some help: I have been 'selected' to teach AS citizenship for my college. This is a brand new subject for us and as such there is nothing in place. No resources at all and I have taught the first 2 lessons literally winging it.
Can anyone help please - anything at all plus any hints/tips and advice - I'm really in the dark here.

i'm teaching units 1 & 2

Lyn

[BarbaraH]

We're teaching it for the first time too, and are coming across an awful lot of issues. We only have 2 lessons a week compared to 5 for a normal AS, which makes it difficult to cover the content. Students who do sociology or politics find it much easier as they recognise some of the issues from those subjects - but a lot of the students are weak and didn't do history or similar subjects at GCSE so are floundering a bit. We are taking module 1 in January which means we have about one lesson per bullet point - not enough to cover thoroughly, but looking at past exams there is real content that they need to know, but missing topics out to do others thoroughly is a gamble.
Having said that our NQT came from a school which had one double lesson a weekand she said their results were fine.
We are using the Hodder textbook, which I liked better than the the 'official' one (Heinemann? Nelson Thornes?) a bit more accessible for the kids. Lots of YouTube clips you can use - for stereotyping the bit from Goodness Gracious Me about going for an 'English' for example. Or extracts from Evan Davies' 'When the immigrants left'. Google a bit and you'll find all sorts of news clips etc.
But not able to be much more help than that I'm afraid.

[Lyn]

We're teaching it for the first time too, and are coming across an awful lot of issues. We only have 2 lessons a week compared to 5 for a normal AS, which makes it difficult to cover the content. Students who do sociology or politics find it much easier as they recognise some of the issues from those subjects - but a lot of the students are weak and didn't do history or similar subjects at GCSE so are floundering a bit. We are taking module 1 in January which means we have about one lesson per bullet point - not enough to cover thoroughly, but looking at past exams there is real content that they need to know, but missing topics out to do others thoroughly is a gamble.
Having said that our NQT came from a school which had one double lesson a weekand she said their results were fine.
We are using the Hodder textbook, which I liked better than the the 'official' one (Heinemann? Nelson Thornes?) a bit more accessible for the kids. Lots of YouTube clips you can use - for stereotyping the bit from Goodness Gracious Me about going for an 'English' for example. Or extracts from Evan Davies' 'When the immigrants left'. Google a bit and you'll find all sorts of news clips etc.
But not able to be much more help than that I'm afraid.

Thanks Barbara,
We're in the same boat with the time issue as well. Thanks for the tips - I'll definitely look at the Hodder book - the 'official' one is really uninspiring - why is it all black & white??
I did find a useful site on google - there seems to be some resources on here that could prove ok:

http://www.peterjeps...citizenship.htm

Lyn

[Ruth Lowe]

In February this year, Hazel White, who is co-author of our Hodder AS Citizenship Studies for AQA, was our expert blogger on our Citizenship & PSHE nest.

She selected articles from national newspapers to see how they reflected the AS/A2 Citizenship topics that students study: http://www.hodderedu...ruary-2011.aspx

If you are teaching AS/AS AQA Citizenship, you will hopefully find her blog posts interesting and useful for your students.