We are now right in the middle of the A Level Politics inquiry into Pressure Groups. This week, students have worked through the Construct phase in preparation for the Express stage (debates) in the next lesson. The overwhelming sense we have so far is of genuine, and deep-level, engagement with the inquiry. I believe this can be attributed to two factors;
The first is that I ensured students had a strong foundation of the key terms and definitions in the topic before embarking on the Connect & Wonder stages (although the resource I created to ‘teach’ this introductory element was implicitly Connect- and Wonder-based). This ensured that the Investigate stage was far more accessible.
The second factor affecting such strong motivation is the quality of the FOSIL resources themselves. The scaffolded, intuitive and vibrant direction that the resources provide are well-suited to the needs of all students, whether they are good independent learners already, or not. The standout resource at this stage is the Construct sheet, which not only brings together the content of the Investigation phase, but also begins to frame this newly-found knowledge in an analytical and useful way (both in preparation for the debates and external examinations).