Critical Thinking - GCSE
Teaching GCSE English to learners who have previously missed out on grade 4's or those who have been out of education can be a challenge. Often they are frightened to write, scared of judgements and the idea of failure again and again.
Stick a topic under chairs for them to think about when they first enter the classroom, have it on the whiteboard as soon as they come in, split the class into agree/disagree teams. Get them working together thinking deeper, using their voices and getting their viewpoints heard. We can worry about language techniques later.
This is just one area that I have started to include within my practise and there are many others that I am now embedding or considering. I believe that due to this new resit culture, we need to make changes to our delivery of GCSE within FE if we want to improve success rates.
Teaching GCSE English to learners who have previously missed out on grade 4's or those who have been out of education can be a challenge. Often they are frightened to write, scared of judgements and the idea of failure again and again.
This year I have been reflecting on my own practise of delivering GCSE. 70% of students in the UK are failing it. There is a serious problem here and there hasn't been enough research or time to understand why this is happening.
So let's get rid of pens (for now), writing about pictures, analysing texts and learning those language techniques. Why don't we encourage our students to think deeper about issues and life? They are thinkers and they have opinions about a variety of topics. Let's get them thinking critically.
Critical thinking and discussions are now a huge part of my sessions. I use them as a starter or as part of my session's main focus. While the learners are discussing, justifying and expanding, they don't realise that they are in fact developing their skills for both GCSE papers:
Paper 1 Q.4 (evaluating a text)
Paper 2 Q.5 (transactional writing and sharing viewpoints)
Paper 2 Q.4 (comparing viewpoints and perspectives)
Debating issues that young people are facing really engages students as it is relevant to them. Life, relationships, stereotypes, crime and materialism are some examples of perfect topics to debate. Allowing them to express their viewpoints and encouraging them to explain why and give reasons is so valuable to them in so many areas. Throw in a debate subject that could be controversial; it's different and informs them that English isn't the same as it usually is. It's, for once, interesting.
Stick a topic under chairs for them to think about when they first enter the classroom, have it on the whiteboard as soon as they come in, split the class into agree/disagree teams. Get them working together thinking deeper, using their voices and getting their viewpoints heard. We can worry about language techniques later.
This is just one area that I have started to include within my practise and there are many others that I am now embedding or considering. I believe that due to this new resit culture, we need to make changes to our delivery of GCSE within FE if we want to improve success rates.
This post first appeared on Free Quality Functional English Resources & Teachi, please read the originial post: here
