GCSEPod offers pupils access to over 500 hours of free content during NEU strikes
One of the UK’s leading education software providers, GCSEPod, will offer 525 hours of free content to students on 1 February, and all future strike days, to support teachers and help ensure learning is uninterrupted while members of the NEU union go on strike. The content being made available has been hand-picked to align with the knowledge and confidence gaps highlighted in a recent survey of 80,000 GCSE students answering over 1 million assessment questions. To view all the content available visit: https://www.theaccessgroup.com/en-gb/education/resources/free-curriculum-content/ Described as the ‘Netflix’ of education, GCSEPod is used by 1,659 schools across the UK, both in the classroom and to assist with at-home learning and revision. The free content will be available to all schools and learners, regardless of whether they currently use GCSEPod. With many schools expected to close to the majority of students on the planned strike days, GCSEPod hopes to minimise the pressure on teachers and ensure that learning can continue. Original, English Language, GCSE style exam papers will also be made available to English and Welsh exam boards. These can be easily downloaded and printed off for pupils without access to technology on strike days. Emma Slater, Head of Education at GCSEPod, said: “We appreciate that the decision to strike is by no means an easy one for teachers and understand that the last thing they want to see is pupils falling behind at a crucial point in the academic year. By offering free access to content that aligns with the knowledge and confidence gaps including video content from across the core and options subjects, we believe that pupils and teachers at all schools taking advantage of the offer will benefit. “Studying Shakespeare, revising the topic of energy, stretching yourself with statistics or geographical skills. With over 100 videos being made available online across all areas of the curriculum teachers and SLT can rest assured that we have their learners covered over the coming month.” Rosie Tucker, a science teacher based in Devon, said: “The situation for teachers is becoming almost untenable and forcing many, like myself, to consider leaving the profession altogether. While we’ve had a small pay rise, this hasn’t come from extra government funding, it’s come from the schools themselves – things urgently need to change. “While we are not required to set work on the days of the strikes, many of us will be working extra hours over the next few days to ensure that pupils have work to complete and that learning can continue from home. By offering GCSEPod to students we are confident that pupils will access engaging and useful content that they are familiar with. At the end of the day, no one wants to see pupils losing out.” Covering 30 GCSE/ IGCSE subjects, users of the GCSEPod learning and revision tools are proven to achieve one grade higher, on average, than non-users. The GCSEPod content and assessments are accessible both in the classroom and at home, providing learners more flexibility and freedom when it comes to managing their progress and revision. To find out more visit: GCSEPod curriculum content and assessment
Keeping the love for history alive
Benedict Freeburn, history teacher at St Mary Magdalene CE School, explains the positive impact great CPD can have on teachers’ passion for their subject. After giving explanations of how William the Conqueror won the Battle of Hastings to a multitude of classes, does your passion for teaching shine as brightly as it did the day you first walked into the classroom? The best teachers are highly skilled at ensuring true love for their subject endures, regardless of how many years they have been teaching it. But schools have an important part to play in nurturing this. History beyond the classroom School trips are a great way to spark students’ imaginations and immerse them in the subjects they are learning. Our school is ideally located for this and as a history teacher, I’ve seen the positive impact of taking students on half-termly trips to exciting locations such as the Tower of London and Hampton Court Palace. Giving students the chance to chat about the famous characters from history inside the rooms they inhabited, or see the actual graffiti created by those imprisoned in the Tower for themselves, really helps to bring history to life. But spending time outside of the classroom in these places can be hugely beneficial for teachers too, as I discovered recently when my colleagues and I attended a CPD event at the Tower of London. Always learning Having visited the Tower with our students at least eight times a year as part of the history curriculum, we were amazed at how much a CPD-focussed event enabled us to learn about the subject we love and the different ways of teaching it. One highlight of the event, which was run by Historic Royal Palaces, was being able to chat to a current GCSE examiner about the new numerical grading system. As a relatively new school, St Mary Magdalene is about to start teaching GCSEs for the very first time, so it was great to be able to ask questions and get a clearer understanding of what examiners look for in a grade 9 answer, and how this differs from the previous A* grade. Taking a tour from a teacher’s perspective, rather than that of a student, helped to underline how our trips to the Tower can support teaching at Key Stage 3, as well as our GCSE units. We returned to school invigorated with new lesson ideas and a deeper understanding of the site’s history – it is quite amazing how many questions you have when you’re not monitoring thirty students. The experience has changed our approach to teaching Key Stage 3 history. The Tower now plays a central role in developing students’ enquiry skills, featuring heavily in our Normans and Tudor schemes of work. The CPD event has also provided a strong introduction to the Elizabethans for Key Stage 4 too. Inspiring students School trips are designed to an experience that motivates students to make good progress back in school. CPD days away from the classroom are equally important for allowing teachers to delve deeper into their subjects and explore the most effective ways of teaching them. With over 70% of students at St Mary Magdalene studying history GCSE, we believe that the passion our teachers have for history is shared by our students. For more information, visit CPD for schools.
How schools are tackling the impact of GCSEs on mental health
With students approaching a new academic year and this year’s GCSE and A-level results just out, discussions have once again been turned to the level of stress that exams, particularly GCSEs, bring on young minds. With the exam intensity increasing each year, levels of stress are also on the rise. The question is whether this stress is a natural motivator, or whether it pushes youngsters too hard – to the point where there is a possibility of developing mental health issues. Childline delivered 2,795 counselling sessions for exam stress between 2018 and 2019. One third of these sessions took place during the exam season months. The most common age for students to seek this help was between 15 and 16, with girls five times more likely to ask for help with mental health than boys. Within this article, we explore the difference in healthy stress and unhealthy stress and highlight that our current exam system may well be aggravating stress levels, as well as the line between stress and mental health conditions and how the two relate to each other. Identifying mental health issues The fact is that healthy stress, toxic stress and mental health are different to one another, although the terms ‘stress’ and ‘anxiety’ are often used interchangeably. We go through stress to help deal with present threats. Whether this is pressure at work, home, or school, this current pressure causes adrenaline to be released and cause a feeling of stress. This is a natural reaction in a short-term scenario. However, if we experience too much stress or if the chemical adrenaline lingers in our bloodstreams for too long, then we can experience anxiety. Anxiety brings a whole host of symptoms with it, including sickness, panic attacks, and dizziness. Anxiety continues to pressure a person long after the pressure-causing event has gone. This can be caused by an internal chemical imbalance, hence the prolonged effects even without a current, identifiable event causing the feelings. This in and of itself can prove upsetting for an individual with anxiety, as they feel there’s no observable reason for them to feel like this. In a nutshell, stress is something we experience when we come across immediate, present threats or pressure. Anxiety is usually longer lasting, and often deals with concerns of the future; it is a response to hypothetical, potential pressures to come. Where stress is a response to a currently occurring issue, anxiety has been considered as an intolerance for uncertainty. When stress is embraced Healthy stress is quite beneficial, but the downside is that its temporary. It is born out of our fight-or-flight instinct, where present threats or pressures took the form of predators more than academic performance! Experiencing stress before an exam is normal. The adrenaline is all part of the body and brain getting ready to perform. It is important that students are aware that a little stress is nothing to fear. It’s normal, and it’s helpful. With a healthy, manageable level of stress, people often perform well. Of course, the key element here is ‘manageable’. When this healthy burst of stress builds and spirals out of control, affecting areas of life outside of the exam hall, then it most certainly isn’t helpful, nor is it healthy. If a student finds themselves feeling stressed outside the exam hall, and that that stress is impacting home life or classroom behaviour, it’s time to look at the issue from the viewpoint of anxiety. Combatting stress Anxiety’s damage comes in, lingers and gets tangled with everything. Often, people suffering from anxiety note that little to nothing seems enjoyable anymore, as there’s something in everything they do that makes them worry more or their feelings of anxiety are so overwhelming that they cannot focus on anything else. Simply ‘taking their mind off it’ isn’t possible. Experiencing jittery feelings and nerves before exams is one thing. But when that worry lingers long after you’ve left the exam hall and starts to extend out into future ‘what if’ scenarios, that’s when anxiety could be developing. Often, anxiety is characterised as a feeling of ‘doom’ in these future worries. The worst-case scenario is, in the throes of anxiety, suddenly a fact rather than a hypothetical. With this in mind, how can schools provide for students in order to ensure stress remains at healthy, short bursts and not a lingering, damaging, and often harmful condition? What schools can do to help Schools can provide a number of methods to help their students in the run up to their exams: • Encourage achievement but avoid undue pressure. — Particularly for high-achievers, the pressure to perform perfectly in exams can be a lot to handle. These students can feel that they not only need to achieve the grade for themselves, but for their parents and teachers or they will risk letting them down. Many may feel shocked or ashamed if they gain a grade 8 in their exam when they were ‘expected’ to get a grade 9. Assure them that this top-tier grade is still that: a top-tier grade, and more than enough to see them on to future success! • Remind students that exams are important, but they are not the most important thing in life. — We’re not saying tell your students the exams don’t matter; of course they do. But make sure the scale is realistic. You want, and expect, them to do their best. Achieving good results here will build a great foundation for their lives. But remind them that a failed exam will not mark them for the rest of their lives, nor will it be the defining of them: let them have a chuckle at some of Jeremy Clarkson’s tongue-in-cheek tweets each year during exam season, such as: “If you’re a level results are disappointing, don’t worry. I got a C and two Us, and I’m currently on a superyacht in the Med.” • Arrange stress-buster sessions. — Learning how to handle and manage stress is a vital skill. Particularly at
How Mammoth Memory can boost brain power among GCSE students
Mammoth Memory, the GCSE revision aid website, has been launched recently to help boost brain power among teens. Here, illustrator Kate Ulloa-James explains why students are able to remember more effectively when they can picture their subject… What is Mammoth Memory and how does it help GCSE students? Can you give an example? Mammoth Memory is a completely free education website that specialises in helping students memorise key points for their GCSE exams. Our fabulously fun images and mnemonic stimulus help the brain embed information for those visual learners who sometimes stumble when faced with traditional methods of revision. Here is one of our favourite examples: Think of the periodic table. All of those elements and their often seemingly unrelated one or two-letter abbreviations. Can you bring to mind the chemical symbol for tin or iron? Perhaps not yet, but check out our mnemonics and you’ll never forget them again. Every time you see a tin, just think of that slimy snail crawling out and the association between tin and snail (Sn) will be locked in your mind for evermore. Equally, just look at those hairy feet doing the ironing. Creating that memorable link between iron and feet will help solidify that Fe is the chemical symbol for iron! How did the concept come about, where did Mammoth Memory begin? Leading educationalists recommend that “students should be taught how to remember as well as what to remember”. With this in mind, Mammoth Memory was founded two and a half years ago, but the idea had been alive long before! Dean Hammond, our Director, came up with this concept decades ago after having struggled himself as a student when it came to memorising information for exams. He came across some diverse memory techniques that changed his life and ever since, he has made it his Mammoth Mission to pass this methodology onto others! Is Mammoth Memory used in lessons or as a revision tool? The website has been designed so that it can be used for both independent learning as well as in a classroom with a teacher. We have had many teachers excited about using this with their students to help them with some of the trickier content in their curriculum. What subjects does Mammoth Memory cover? Are you planning to add more? We are currently focusing on building our content for Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Maths and English. History and Religious Studies will follow swiftly after, as our small team works hard to build up our content. We see this as an ongoing project that keeps expanding with more subjects in the future so who knows where it may take us! What is the cost to the school and pupils? Do students need to pay to subscribe? There is absolutely no cost. This website is completely free and accessible to anyone and everyone, which is very important to us! See Mammoth Memory’s website here.