Social Sciences - May 25
This year, the faculty has focussed on developing the extended writing skills of year 9 students in order to enable them to be able to express themselves without the need for tight scaffolds. There have been several opportunities this year for year 9 students to use a homework task to develop and plan ideas for a longer piece of written work in the classroom. The feedback given by the teacher and from opportunities to share planning with other students has then enabled our year 9 students to engage with an extended written piece of purple pen to really demonstrate their higher order knowledge and understanding skills in a range of different pieces of work.
The first topic year 9 studied this year was on death and the afterlife and in order to introduce the concept of extended writing, they were asked to do a plan for homework to prepare for an extended piece on a diary or letter to a past or future self. The idea behind this piece was for students to be able to demonstrate their understanding of Hindu views about reincarnation and the links to karma and dharma. Some students would then have the opportunity to apply these beliefs and develop reasons to demonstrate how these beliefs would impact on the life of a Hindu now. #Aspiration
Here are two student examples who were able to synthesise and justify a number of beliefs in their responses.
The second term had a focus on the ethics of war and peace and looked explicitly at the lives of the Jews in the holocaust. In order to develop extended writing, students were asked to prepare a diary entry and were given the option to write as a Jew who had either lost faith in God due to the holocaust, or one who had kept their faith. This was challenging for the students, as they were using new terminology such as mitzvot and kosher and making the cross curricular links with history (e.g. the ghettos and life in the concentration camps). Here is an example of a student who wrote as a Jew who had conflicting beliefs about what was happening to them. Many Jews would have experienced this conflict and this student deals with the matter in a very sensitive and respectful manner. #Respect #Humility
The final term of the year sees the transition for year 9 from Key Stage 3 to Key Stage 4 and the students are looking at different beliefs about religion and faith in the UK today. They have applied examples of religion in public life to gain an awareness of the examples of the Church of England and how it is embedded in our culture. Over the coming weeks, student will then be given the opportunity to gain knowledge on the reasons some people do not engage with faith and may follow a belief system such as humanism. This will lead up to the final extended written piece of the year, where students will have to write a letter to the government to explain why they feel the country should become a secular nation.
This has been a really successful year for the development of extended writing skills for year 9 and has given the students plenty of opportunities to extend their knowledge and understanding, but also to empathise with views that are different from their own. This will be a vital skill needed for success in key stage 4 and beyond.