How I… attempt to avoid teaching to an exam

Heading in to my second year as HOD, we suddenly had a year 12, AS Religious Studies class. Cue frantic reading, watching, chatting and planning to pull these lessons together. There were lessons for the students, the content was covered, they were interested, but I felt that something was missing.

Out of my eight students, only two have a GCSE in Religious Studies, that’s a lot of missing knowledge. My plan to teach to the exam had gone out of the window. My lessons were fine and allowed for students to gain the understanding needed to achieve in learning (note. Not the exam).

Coming in to 2021, I’ve realised that it’s already February, and it’s time to start planning. I’ve done what I do best, scrapped everything and started again. And this was my process:

1. What are the specification headings? – I still have an exam to prepare them for, so what does the exam board expect them to know. These were the overall headings of ‘Birth Narratives’, there are nine in total for my AS.
2. What can that be broken down to? – e.g., birth narratives – kenosis, demythologising, redaction.
3. What questions can we ask about it? – What are the enquiry questions? How can I get to the bottom of this?
4. What hinterland knowledge do they need? – e.g., before they do the resurrection, I need to recap Holy Week. When teaching the course this year, I launched in to teaching the resurrection and students admitted that they didn’t know about Holy Week. My students had the confidence to tell me, but that isn’t always the case. I need to prepare for a lack of understanding.

In order to do this, I used sticky notes. One colour per topic, another set for concepts, bigger ones for sections and then a fourth type for hinterland. I stuck these on my living room wall (my husband was delighted) and took a step back. I then had a full conversation with myself about how it would flow. The use of sticky notes meant that at each stage I could make changes and shuffle things around.

My saviour with regards to content has been the textbook. It has allowed me to see how a topic should split up. It also summarised the topics well. Someone once said that ‘textbooks are made for students not teachers’ and it is something that has stuck with me, it is very much the basis for the schemes of learning, but it is not the entirety.
The exam board I have chosen, has a huge PDF with supporting links. These range from articles to videos to books. This list helped me expand my knowledge during lockdown one. If I understand it better, then the students will be able to access it too.

Speaking with other RE colleagues on twitter has helped massively. From sharing resources, to discussing books to almost standardising our marking together. This collaboration makes for a very exciting future for RE.

It may not be perfect, but I now have a module that I’m very excited to teach in September.