Citizenship Today Teacher's Guide

citizenship today

Victoria Marston and Jenny Wales

Theme B Democracy at work in the

Theme D Power and influence

Theme C How the law works

Theme E Taking Citizenship action

The Citizenship Today Student’s Book and Teacher’s Guide offer everything you need to teach Edexcel’s GCSE Citizenship course. They follow the five themes of the specification and, together, provide many different strategies to support your teaching and bring Citizenship to life.

Using the Student’s Book

The double-page lessons in the Student’s Book contain the following features to help you and your students explore the topics:

● Getting you thinking gives you a starter activity for every lesson. These sections offer words, images and numbers, which help students to transfer ideas to the world at large and give them an engaging starting point for each topic.

● Contemporary case studies support learning on some pages where there is a need for another context to help students understand a topic.

● Check your understanding offers a range of questions which help teachers to ensure that the whole class has a sound understanding of the subject. They can be used to sum up a lesson, or for a quick homework task.

● Another point of view offers opportunities for students to develop the skills needed for extended writing in the exam. To do well in the examinations, a student must argue a case and put another point of view. These activities can be used to practise extended writing, or as planning tasks in which students offer points to build an argument and make the alternative perspectives very clear.

● Action aims to engage students by exploring the concepts and ideas in their own context. This helps them to understand and apply their knowledge to develop the skills needed for the Citizenship action.

● Key terms provide definitions of essential terminology and act as a useful reference for revision.

Assessment support is provided at the end of every Theme in the Bringing it all together section, with examples of the types of question that students may meet in their examinations. Sample answers that might be offered by a good student are also included, with annotations to explain what the student has done well.

The final Theme in the book offers support for the Citizenship action in step-by-step stages which cover all the steps required for the exam. Sections help students to develop the skills required to carry out the Action.

Using the Teacher’s Guide

The Teacher’s Guide provides lesson-by-lesson support for Edexcel’s GCSE Citizenship Studies course. It matches the Student’s Book from page to page, following the specification, so you can be confident you are covering the course thoroughly.

Each double-page spread in the Student’s Book is supported by a clearly-structured lesson plan, showing you active and imaginative ways of using the resources, as well as worksheets with activities to engage all styles of learner. The teaching strategies used throughout aim to support students of all learning styles in preparing for the exam, as they are developing the knowledge and skills which will lead to success.

Each lesson plan contains the following sections.

● Connect helps you and your students to make links to prior work, so students do not just think about a new topic in isolation.

● Activate aims to engage students with the new topic for the lesson and helps them to understand concepts in practical ways.

● Demonstrate provides activities in which students can show that they have grasped the lesson’s key concepts and ideas.

● Consolidate asks students to apply all their knowledge and understanding to a particular context – as they’re asked to do in the exam.

● Extra challenge offers differentiation for the most able students who need to be stretched.

● Extra support shows ways in which the activities can be scaffolded for students who need more help.

● Homework gives suggestions for activities that students can carry out independently to consolidate their learning.

● Recommended websites suggests sites which will support teaching and learning and help your students to keep up to date with contexts for Citizenship understanding.

Assessment support is provided in the Bringing it all together sections of each Theme to support students in preparing for multiple-choice and short-answer tasks.

Two full practice papers are included at the end of the Teacher’s Guide, with marking guidance. These give your students an opportunity to apply their skills and knowledge. They are not intended as a replacement for the Sample Assessment Materials provided by Edexcel, as they do not exactly mirror the examination formats.

Citizenship Action is supported in Theme E with photocopiable material that will help students to understand and carry out their actions, record what they have done, evaluate their outcomes and connect actions with the concepts they have been learning throughout the course.

We have also included a user-friendly scheme of work that enables you to match areas of the specification to your lesson plans. This gives you the freedom to decide when you teach each topic, to complement whole-school Citizenship activities or to respond to key news events.

Finally, the pack offers PDF and Word versions of all the printed resources, and edit them to meet your students’ needs We suggest, for example, issues relevant to your local community.

We hope you enjoy using the resources.

Jenny Wales and Victoria Marston

so you can print incorporating current affairs

1.1 What is a community? SB

Objectives

LO 1 To appreciate what diversity is.

LO 2 To appreciate the benefits of diversity in the UK today.

Class:Date:Last lesson:

G & T students:SEN students:M:F:

Connect

Students discuss the following questions:

● What does ‘living together in the UK’ mean in practice? What does another student think it means?

● Does your local area have a good sense of community?

Activate

Worksheet 1.1a: Thinking about diversity

● Memory challenge: students work in pairs to memorise as many of the 12 key words as they can in three minutes.

● Extra support: certain pairs only memorise four words.

● Class competition: pairs compete to say/write all 12 words in the shortest time.

● Students write definitions of ‘diversity’ (when lots of different things are part of a whole) and ‘cohesion’ (when people stick together).

Demonstrate

Worksheet 1.1a: Thinking about diversity

● Diversity competition: each student finds two different students for as many of the 15 categories as they can (time limit: 7 minutes). The winner is the student who fills the most boxes.

● Class discussion: using the worksheet as a prompt, students choose another classmate and name one similarity and one difference between themselves and their classmate.

● Students discuss the following questions:

■ What’s the best skill/knowledge you’ve learned from someone who’s different from you?

■ How relevant are online communities to you?

■ What would supermarket choices be like if we were only sold foods produced in the UK?

■ Why is it useful to have teachers who were not born here working in this country?

Consolidate

Worksheet 1.1b: The benefits of diversity

● Students look at ten benefits of diversity and tick any they have experienced personally, giving examples.

● Small-group activity: students share their answers, giving more detail about them.

● Class feedback: a spokesperson from each group summarises the benefits of diversity in the UK.

Extra challenge

Ask more able students: Do communities provide enough activities and services for teenagers? Explain your answer.

Recommended websites

Visit the Stonewall website. Go to the Muslim Youth Network website.

Homework

Make a list of at least six communities which you/ someone you know belongs to. (Examples: athletics club, Wales, school)

Worksheet 1.1a: Thinking about diversity

Memory challenge

1. Work in pairs to memorise as many of the key words below as you can in three minutes. diversity age cohesion sexuality group respect population difference language religion gender similarity

2. Write a definition for each of the terms in the box.

Definitions

Diversity:

Cohesion:

Diversity competition

3. Find two different classmates for each category listed below.

Find someone who…Student 1Student 2 has bought clothes with an American brand. belongs to a club outside of school. texted someone in another town/city yesterday. is part of a blended family. has a relative with a different skin colour from them. has been on holiday to Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. has eaten takeaway curry in the last month. plays computer games with people in foreign countries. follows a gay/bisexual/transgender celebrity online. speaks more than one language fluently. has helped someone with a mental health disorder/issue. gets on with someone more than five times their age. has been to a summer fair/charity event in a mosque, gurdwara, church or other place of worship. knows someone who’s looking for a job. has been cared for by a nurse/doctor from another country.

1.1b: The benefits of diversity