How to plan an effective Citizenship Lesson

About this event

This workshop will lead you through the process of planning lessons that develop students’ substantive Citizenship knowledge and provide opportunities for them to demonstrate their understanding. Core elements of pedagogy that are key to successful Citizenship teaching will be explored. The importance of the structure of the lesson and progression through the lesson will be discussed to help unlock some of the important considerations for all Citizenship teachers. One comment from a participant last year about this workshop was “This was so helpful, not just for Citizenship but all the subjects I teach. Thank you.”

This session will be led by our Head of Education and Professional Development, Zoe Baker, and ACT Teaching Ambassador and Chair of the ACT Council, Helen Blachford. Helen has a wealth of experience teaching and leading Citizenship, and in 2022 received the David Blunkett Award for Outstanding Contribution to Citizenship. She holds the post of Lead for Personal Development across her MAT.

Who is it for?

• Experienced teachers who are new to teaching Citizenship
• Early career teachers
• Trainee teachers

Why attend?

By the end of this workshop you will: 

• Gain greater understanding of the pedagogy used in Citizenship lessons.
• Build confidence in planning Citizenship lessons around knowledge and understanding.
• Leave with practical strategies to use in the classroom.

Additional information

This workshop will support the CCF and ECF through discussion and analysis with expert colleagues in the following areas:

• Reducing learning distractions (e.g. keeping the complexity of a task to a minimum, so attention is focused on content).
• Breaking complex material into smaller steps (e.g. using partially completed examples to focus pupils).
• Identifying possible misconceptions and planning how to prevent these forming.
• Linking what pupils already know to what is being taught (e.g. explaining how new content builds on what is already known).
• Designing practice, generation and retrieval tasks that provide enough support for pupils to experience a high success rate when attempting challenging work.
• Balancing exposition, repetition, practice and retrieval of critical knowledge and skills.
• Providing opportunities for all pupils to learn and master essential concepts, knowledge, skills and principles of the subject.
• Planning activities around what you want pupils to think hard about.
• Including a range of types of questions in class discussions to extend and challenge pupils (e.g. by modelling new vocabulary or asking pupils to justify answers).

CPD strand – Leading Citizenship

Leading Citizenship can be complex and often involves non specialist teachers taking on the role. This strand will look at the logistical role of subject leaders to embed Citizenship successfully across the school. It also helps those who lead Citizenship across multiple schools and need to develop their understanding of research-informed practice and how this influences the curriculum.