Caroline – has been working in collaboration with Joyce with their Hairdressing classes. They have been devising materials for some portfolio work so that the employability and communication skills of the students are enhanced. This involves writing CVs, letter, presentation pitches etc. Caroline has also been involved in some interesting team assessing with Jo Whelan from MAAV with her TV and Broadcast Production class. This will involve joint oral assessments where the students are involved in a comparative study of television shows from the US and the UK. Work with her Early Education and Childcare classes has involved the students looking at inclusiveness issues when analysing BBC CBeebies programmes where signing for deaf children has been studied.
Madeleine – has been developing lots of interesting materials for her Preparation for Work class. Contemporary issues such as the London Riots, perceptions of imagery and text etc. has been looked at. It is anticipated that the Community Policeman will be able to attend some of these classes to talk about societal issues that affect young people. The importance of budgetary issues has been worked on with these students where they have been mapping out income and expenditure using mind maps. Madeleine has also been inviting students to pick a song from You Tube where they are to critically analyse their choice of tune. She is working on developing their language from ‘I like it because it is a bangin’ choon’ into something a little more sophisticated in analysis!
Deborah – has been working with Caroline on developing a new summative reading assessment for the HN Legal Services students. They are also working collaboratively on the writing outcome assessment too. Mark has provided a working brief to work with as a starting point. They will run that by him as IV for HN Units before anything is finalised. Deborah has organised a trip to the theatre for her Access to Humanities class to see ‘Men Should Weep’ at the Kings Theatre and around two thirds of that class are keen to see the production, some of whom have never been to see a play before. She also outlined her proactive approach to the Literature One class this year. In previous years, students have taken Intro to Literature in semester one (Int 1 level) then Literature One (Higher level) in semester two. Due to a streamlining of that cohort’s Programme of Study, she had adapted her teaching and assessment schedule to accommodate weaker students. She is using the revised unit for Lit. 1 and this has only two outcomes, suitable for work studied within class time. She has also been developing sample answers for formative reading tasks.
Roisin – has been using a documentary called ‘The Buckfast Code’ where BBC Scotland journalist Kenneth MacDonald investigates whether Buckfast Tonic Wine can really be blamed for crime and antisocial behaviour, enlisting top scientists in the search for evidence. This has resulted in a meaningful project for the students addressing this contemporary issue. It was suggested that a follow-up project could be for the students to write to Buckfast directly to ask them their opinions on the connection between their product and alleged crimes. This would enhance their writing skills and any replies could form a mini project too.
Isobel – has been using the wonderful ‘Pixar shorts’ with her Digital Media and ICA classes. These are films lasting between two and three minutes and have been used as short stimuli for development and awareness of analysis, storytelling, structure, writing skills etc. She has also been using a text written by Helena Nielson about her experiences when she was teaching at the time of 9/11. This stimulated an interesting discussion about this subject on the ten year anniversary of that tragedy and she also noted how some incidents that happened to her had ‘sparked’ some ideas for her Writing Skills class.
Stephen – has been doing some fun creative tasks with his Higher English class to try and get them thinking about different mediums and techniques. He asked them to adapt an imagery-heavy poem into a graphic novel form, thinking about what each image was trying to communicate. He also asked them to do a stage adaptation of one dialogue heavy chapter of the novel they are studying to investigate the similarities and differences between prose and drama. He has also been involved in some reworking of the Beauty Therapy assessments with Mark.
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