How to improve Active Citizenship Outcomes

This workshop is designed to help teachers improve student outcomes in the Active Citizenship section of the GCSE Citizenship Studies examination, focusing on the crucial connection between the investigation and exam technique.

About this Event

The Active Citizenship Investigation is a unique component of GCSE Citizenship Studies, requiring specialist knowledge and careful preparation to ensure students achieve their full potential. Success in this area depends on bridging the gap between the investigation process and examination performance.

This workshop will:

• Emphasise the importance of students confidently drawing on their Active Citizenship Projects.
• Explore the examination questions most directly tied to the investigation.
• Provide expert guidance from Consultant Teacher Kelly Allchin and ACT Ambassadors, who will share insights across different awarding bodies.

Participants will leave with a clear understanding of how to support their students in preparing for this critical aspect of the GCSE examination, ensuring improved outcomes and enhanced confidence.

Who is it for?

This workshop is ideal for:

• GCSE Citizenship Studies teachers
• Citizenship leads
• Educators responsible for improving student outcomes in Citizenship

Why Attend?

By attending this workshop, you will:

• Gain a greater  understanding of the demands of the Active Citizenship section of the exam.
• Learn effective strategies to link practical investigations to examination questions.
• Develop teaching techniques to enhance exam performance.
• Access practical advice, teaching ideas, and resources to use in your classroom immediately.

Links to the ITTECF

Standard 2:

Students learn that: 

•  Requiring pupils to retrieve information from memory, and spacing practice so that pupils revisit ideas after a gap are also likely to strengthen recall. 
• Worked examples that take pupils through each step of a new process are also likely to support pupils to learn.

Students learn how: 

• Planning regular review and practice of key ideas and concepts over time (e.g. through carefully planned use of structured talk activities)
• Designing practice, generation and retrieval tasks that provide just enough support so that pupils experience a high success rate when attempting challenging work.
• Increasing challenge with practice and retrieval as knowledge becomes more secure (e.g. by removing scaffolding, lengthening spacing or introducing interacting elements).

Standard 3: 

Learn that: 

Ensuring pupils master foundational concepts and knowledge before moving on is likely to build pupils’ confidence and help them succeed

In order for pupils to think critically, they must have a secure understanding of knowledge within the subject area they are being asked to think critically about.

Learn how to: 

Deliver a carefully sequenced and coherent curriculum, by: a) Identifying essential concepts, knowledge, skills and principles of the subject and providing opportunity for all pupils to learn and master these critical components. b) Ensuring pupils’ thinking is focused on key ideas within the subject. c) Working with experienced colleagues to accumulate and refine a collection of powerful analogies, illustrations, examples, explanations and demonstrations

Support pupils to build increasingly complex mental models, by: f) Discussing and analysing with expert colleagues the rationale for curriculum choices, the process for arriving at current curriculum choices and how the school’s curriculum materials inform lesson preparation. g) Balancing exposition, repetition, practice of critical skills and knowledge. h) Revisiting the big ideas of the subject over time and teaching key concepts through a range of examples.  

Help pupils apply knowledge and skills to other contexts, by: l) Ensuring pupils have relevant domain-specific knowledge, especially when being asked to think critically within a subject. m) Interleaving concrete and abstract examples, slowly withdrawing concrete examples and drawing attention to the underlying structure of problems.