Lesson video

Hello, I'm Mrs. Haynes.

And today we're going to be doing some citizenship together.

Okay, let's just have another look at that initial screen together, okay? Right.

So we're looking in this unit at practising the different things that we have learned.

So in my lesson today, I'm going to be referring to a couple of topics, which I wrote the lessons to originally.

So those two are, as you can see here, the economy and the British constitution, okay? So if you haven't made a note of what it is we going to be doing, it might be a good idea just to pause here for a second and make a note of the two areas that we're going to be focusing on in our lesson today.

Now I will say that if perhaps you've done the economy but you haven't done the British constitution yet, this lesson will still be helpful because what I'll during the lesson is I'll give you examples of both the economy and the British constitution wherever I can, okay? So that whatever comes towards you in this lesson would be helpful if you already did one of them.

If you've done both of them, then it should hopefully be really helpful, okay? What else? The other thing to mention was that I will bring up some different kind of exam questions and I will say verbally, some other examples of exam questions from different exam boards.

So while they might not all be written on the screen for you, again, remember you can pause and jot down anything that I said, if you think, oh, that's good.

That relates to the exam board that I'm doing particularly.

Okay? All right.

And there is also a downloadable worksheet that goes with this lesson that's got some of the slides on, and I'll tell you as I go through the presentation, this slide is on that worksheet.

All right, that was a little bit of information.

Sorry about that.

Okay, let's just move on then with today's lesson.

Right, so it's always a good idea, isn't it? To try and think what do we remember? What do we remember from those two topics, okay? So that's what we're going to do to start with.

And to do an activity which I call expand and collapse.

There's loads of different formats of doing this.

I'm just going to show you one today that you might like, you might not like.

If you do have coloured pens somewhere in the house, then it might be good idea just to press pause for a moment now and go and grab them, okay? 'Cause it's quite nice once you do this diagram to have some different colours.

It also helps brain remember the different things that you're writing if they're in different colours a little bit.

So it's worth a go, isn't it? Okay.

Right then let's move forward.

So these are the topics for the economy section.

So these are all the questions which were answered when I did the original lessons on the economy, okay? I'm just going to read through them.

This is on the worksheet.

What is the difference between a healthy and recessive economy? What are the different types of taxation? Where does local government funding come from and how is money spent to support the needs of the local community? What do the terms private and state-owned public services mean? What kind of economic risk management do governments need to do? Okay.

So all of those were covered in the previous unit on the economy.

All right.

So either you can pause now make a note of some of those or you can have a look at this on the worksheet.

Now these are the five for the British economy.

So British constitution topics.

Okay.

I was going to read these ones out as well.

What is the layout of the House of Commons? What parliamentary procedures are followed in the UK? What are the positives and negatives of the UK bicameral system? Where is power held in our system of government? And what are the benefits of an uncodified constitution? Right let's have a look what we can now do with all of that information.

All of those things that we've looked at in that previous topic.

Okay, this is the expand and collapse activity.

So good thing to do when you've got your knowledge is you need to transform it somehow.

Okay, so the transforming helps embed it into your memory.

Okay, this is an essential part of the process.

And people find their own way of doing this.

I'm suggesting one here that my students quite like sometimes.

So here we have my hand and I simply put it on a piece of paper and drew around it.

Okay.

Nothing fancy.

You can see, you know, I just quickly sketched around my hand, okay? And then what I do is I write the five questions, those five kind of topics for each area.

I write each one of them in one of the digits there in one of the five digits.

So that's why there was five questions and now there are five things written onto that hand, okay? By all means, go and enlarge that a bit if you can.

But each one of those relates to one of those five things I just read through.

And this one I believe was the British constitution I was doing here as my demonstration one, okay? And then I take a digit at a time, okay? And then I go again with the five.

So I had five topics that I was looking at.

And now I'm going to write five things down that I can remember that to relate to this.

So here I've got the layout of the House of Commons.

Okay, I've put H of C, 'cause it's my notes.

Okay, H of C, nobody else has to see this.

I'm reading my shorthand.

And then I've written five things that I know about the House of Commons.

You can see they're like front and back benches, things like that.

Things that I know relate to the kind of layout of the House of Commons.

And then I would just go through one finger after the other adding the extra things on for each one.

The things that I know about that parliamentary procedures.

So next I'm going to write something about the stage opening of parliament, okay? Something about black rod.

Get the idea? You just write down the things that you know about that topic.

Okay.

And then I collapse it again.

So I've expanded my knowledge, expanded it a bit further and now I'm going to collapse it.

So for that first digit, which was all about the layout of the House of Commons, I've put one kind of big final point where I've collapsed it down and just put the kind of key thing that I want to remember, the kind of overarching point.

And for here I've written rows opposite each other, each with a dispatch box in between them with a dispatch box in between them that's what the prime minister stands up at to talk.

Or whoever's talking at the time with prime minister.

So that was just kind of like something I wanted that I haven't mentioned already I wanted to just bring back to our memory as the overarching point.

Right, it's your turn now.

So what I'd like you to do is to go and have a go at that.

So if you've done both the economy and the British constitution do one for each, do a hand for each, okay? If you've only done one of them then just do one of them.

And see what you can remember from those different headings.

All right, have fun with that.

I'm sure you'll know loads.

Okay, and then come back to me as soon as you're done.

Okay, pause the video now.

Right, great.

So well done.

You've got your hand diagrams done now in as much detail as you can think of.

Hopefully, you'll be really impressed with yourself as to think actually I knew quite a bit to write about that.

And then if there are any digits on the areas where you've thought, hmm, I'm not sure I was a good on that.

You now know which units, which particular topics to perhaps have a look at either on your own book or a textbook or indeed to have a look at old the lessons which I've written before, okay? So identify if your knowledge might have gaps.

Right, so let's move on a little bit now.

I'm just going to have a look here at how and where those different topics occur within the different exam boards for you, okay? Again these are on the worksheet.

So let's take the economy first here and we've got AQA and this is a theme three topic which is examined on paper one.

And then you can see I've got the bullet points for what's included there.

So they highlight taxation, risk management funding of provision for public services.

Edexcel in the middle, theme B democracy work in the UK.

Now this is examined on paper one mainly but there are sort of an extended question that happens on paper two.

And that could be on anything.

So this could occur there.

So you need to be aware that the economy could be there.

And then again, topics that they want you to be aware of similar to AQA, taxation, managing public money and budgeting and managing risk.

And then OCR it's in the, so the economy is in section two which is democracy and government section.

It's examined through paper one and two.

We have three papers, OCR.

And again they highlight the term they want you to know all about the taxation, government spending and funding of public services.

Okay.

Lots of information there, that's purely a sort of a fact sheet and only one of those sections would probably refer to you.

Right, let's have a look at the next one which is the British constitution.

So same format, three exam boards.

AQA on the left, same thing on the three.

Examined on paper one, legislature, second chamber, role of the monarch, power of government and the uncodified constitution.

So all the things you've probably already just written on your hand diagrams and that's great.

Edexcel, same theme as before with the economy.

Democracy at work in the UK again examined mainly on paper one, but could be there for that long extended question, paper two.

And it wants you to know about the institutions of the British constitution separation of powers, uncodified constitution, all of which are covered by the topics that I did in the Oak topic on that.

Okay on the British constitution.

OCR wants you to look at, it's in section two, democracy and government is examined through paper one and two again, and they want you to show about ceremonies, separation of powers and organisation of the government.

Okay.

British constitution for OCR wants you to know things like the role of the civil service.

And that was on one of the Mr. Henson's lessons.

So that's not in my British constitution section but it's in one of Mr. Henson's lessons.

So you'll be able to find that, okay? Right, let's move on.

Again that's on the worksheet that one.

Okay, just sort of pausing for breath here.

And you just going to have a think about this.

All of the exam boards are assessing the same sort of thing.

Okay, that's these three things across the top here.

They want you to know your stuff.

No surprise there, you know that don't you? They want you to know your stuff.

Then they want to see that you can apply it to different questions to different scenarios.

And then they also want to see that you can analyse and evaluate a range of evidence, okay? Let's just go back to that first one, again, that knowledge and understanding.

And I've put like a little example underneath and I've used the economy for this one, all three exam boards require us to look at this.

So I've said that knowledge understanding.

So our piece of knowledge might be income taxes.

One of the main ways that government gains funds that's our piece of knowledge.

Then we had to think about how we might apply that on the paper.

So if citizens are asked to pay more income tax they may not choose to vote for the party in government again.

So that's just easy.

That's just kind of making a connection.

That's thinking well, I know that fact, how could that fact be relevant to perhaps political participation? It's that applying your knowledge to a different setting which there's a lot of with our course.

And I'm sure you guys are really good at that.

And then analysis and evaluation are the one on the right is the one that people tend to find most tricky.

It's not really the wording, the word sound a bit scary.

Don't they? So analysis.

So here we've got analyses say a graph of sources of government funding showing that income tax has raised.

So showing income tax has decreased.

So they say the amount of income tax that has been raised has decreased over the past 20 years.

That's what I was trying to say there.

And then you think to yourself, right so that's what I've analysed from that graph.

But the amount of money that's come into the government from income tax has gone down over the last 20 years.

So you can work that out.

And then you have to think yourself, right? Now and to evaluate that and you think to yourself, well, there are many reasons that could have caused that to happen and by considering them all, you are now evaluating that evidence.

Okay.

So analyses means to fully understand what a source, the evidence is telling you.

So, let's look at some different types.

What opinion perhaps is being expressed in a quote.

What percentage of citizens voted for a political party on a table? Which areas have more devolved power on a map? Which type of protest could be seen on a photo, okay? So you can get all sorts of different types of evidence like that.

Tables, photos, quotes, graphs.

All right.

The evaluation bit is then where you look at what the evidence is showing you and you sort of decide on it's importance.

It's value, it's relevance.

It's waiting, okay? Regarding a specific subject, you know, and what can you take out of your information and then apply it into and see whether that's justified as a certain opinion or not, okay? So it's usually a range of evidence of sources.

And if that's the case then there will be a clear link between those sources.

If there's several sources, there'll be a clear link such as perhaps they all show that the majority of people in Wales do not want Welsh independence from the UK, for example.

Okay.

Or sometimes there's only two sources two pieces of evidence and they may be deliberately showing an opposing fact or point of view.

All right.

So remember to look for what the link is in the sources.

Is it a link that brings them all together or is it a link that shows that they have different views on them? It's part of your analysis process before you then begin to evaluate the worth and the helpfulness of those sources.

Okay, I hope that was useful 'cause I know that those words are the ones quite often people struggle with when they see those in questions.

Talking about questions and how they start let's have a look at this.

Words that start a question on the exam paper are called command words.

They tell you what to do.

And here I've got a whole load of them, okay? Explain, name, give, choose, analyse, evaluate, identify, state.

Okay.

Command words again, this is on the worksheet.

I've given you an example there, of how that command word would then become a question.

So the yellow box is the box top in the middle.

Explain what is meant by the bicameral system in the UK.

All right.

So I've used the command word and I go to question with it that would use that command word that relates to either the British constitution or the economy.

In this case British constitution.

Now I do want to point out here that AQA, sometimes you use the word consider rather than the word explain but they want you to do the same thing with it.

So if they say consider what is meant by the bicameral system in the UK, they mean explain.

Okay? It's just something to bear in mind.

Right your turn again now.

Too much talking for me, your turn again now.

Right, so what we'd like you to do is I want you for each one of those command words to write me a question.

Okay, so you can do all the economy based if you want or all British constitution or you could do a mixture of both.

I'll leave that with you.

And depending on which ones you feel perhaps more competent with, but try and challenge yourself.

If you know both try and do some examples from both, okay? So have a go at that and come back to me when you're done.

Pause the video now.

Hello, you're back.

How did that go? Hopefully it was all right.

These are some examples on the board now that you can see here.

They're not the only ones, you're not expected to have come up with the same ones as me.

I just thought I'd give you some other examples of ones that I thought of, okay? I've done this exact same access exercise with my students in my class.

So we've already talked about the top middle one.

So I'm going to go over to the right at the top.

Name an indirect UK tax, okay? VAT indirect.

Middle row now left-hand side.

Give two examples of UK governmental risk management in the past decade rather.

So, for my lesson I think we looked at the Florence Nightingale hospitals that have been set up and you could also do sort of like flood management something like that is how the governments had to pay for things to check that things don't get worse.

All right.

Middle box.

Choose one of the following reasons why MPs may be asked to attend the House of Lords.

And then in that example presumably there'd be some suggestions underneath and you'd have to choose one.

Okay.

So state opening of the parliament.

On the right, in the middle.

Analyse the following table of UK government spending in 2019.

So it's just asking you to have a look at their sources and look for those trends and those connections.

Okay.

It could equally be something like analyse this photo of the House of Commons, okay? Right, bottom row on the left.

Evaluate the following statement.

The UK should have a codified constitution.

All right.

Instead of the word evaluate, I will mention that sometimes, particularly Edexcel.

Sometimes we'll use this kind of question but they'll say it in a slightly different way.

For instance, on one of the sort of sample papers, for Edexcel.

There was a question that said, start with the statement central government is wrong to cut funding to local councils as it forces them to make cuts to necessary and popular services.

How far do you agree with this view? Give reasons for your opinion showing you have considered other points of view.

And that was a 15 mark question.

Okay.

The evaluate one tends to be the longer answer questions.

For OCR they tend to be the 12 mark ones.

Okay, the longer ones.

But you can see there that the word evaluates never used by Edexcel in that question.

But that is asked.

That is what it's asking you to do to look at the different opinions there and relate it back to that statement and then probably include some other sources that might've been with that.

Okay, on that paper.

All right, if that's helpful for you, remember you can pause the video and make a note of that.

If you're a different exam board would want to have written that question down.

Okay, bottom middle.

Identify four items on the photo that local government fund.

So you'd have a picture of the street and it would ask you to pick out four things that their local government money goes towards funding like street lighting, okay? And then at the bottom on the right.

State two activities MPs carry out in the House of Commons.

So voting for the new bills and listening to debates or posing questions.

There's quite a few on there you could put for that.

Okay, hopefully you did all right with that now.

And if you had any gaps, then by all means use my example up here to help you know how those kind of questions come at you.

Right, move on.

Okey-doke.

So here is an example of a four mark question.

It says, explain four ways in which a government could raise funds to pay for the NHS? Four marks.

And here are my answers.

So these are the things I want to say.

Sell some government assets.

Invite private businesses to compete to buy the rights to supply a different service.

Raise National Insurance contributions for everyone.

Change the income boundaries for paying different amounts of National Insurance to increase the payment made by mid-level earners, okay? Right.

Now, there are other things you could have said as your answer.

So if your head automatically went to something like introducing a new tax, that's fine too.

Okay.

Right, lesson one of this unit reminded you, you can do something called bug the question.

So bug the question is you start by putting a box around the command word.

You underline the key words.

And the G is you glance back to the overall question again.

So it's just looking at that bit.

So you would have started my question by putting a box around the command word.

Okay.

So what was the command word in that question? You're shouting at home? No you're not, are you? But you can see it, can you? Okay, so.

Yup, explain.

Explain was our command word.

Well done if you did think that.

So have I? Have I explained the four ways of increasing government funds with my answers there? Have I explained the four ways? No I haven't, have I? I haven't, I've stated them.

I've said you can do this, this, this, this.

Okay, but I haven't explained any of them.

All right.

So state is one of our command words but it's not what was required there.

Happy with that.

So the next task I'm going to ask you to do now is I'd like you to add one or two sentences to each of my stated reasons.

Add in a little more explanation about them, okay? So you might just pause at the moment to copy down both the question and those four points that I have stated.

Okay, then you're going to go on to add another sentence.

And if you can try and format it as a paragraph rather than bullet points, okay? Bullet points sometimes just can get overlooked as someone's notes on an exam paper.

So it's better to try and write it as a paragraph, unless it says, you know answering bullet points, which I've never seen.

But okay so I want to answer the sentence and put it into a paragraph, okay? I'm going to bring that up now on this slide that says that.

Okay.

Write an additional couple of sentences to say something further about each of the four stated ways the government could raise funds for the NHS.

Have a go at that then.

Pause the video now.

Right.

You may have not written exactly the same thing as I have.

Don't worry about it.

Couple of things to state.

I've put in bold wherever I've begun, a new one of those stated answers, okay? Just so that you can see it.

I wouldn't do that if I was writing out normally.

I would just be writing it all straight away.

But it also shows you how I've connected each of those points together.

All right.

So let's just have a little look through and see how I developed that extra sentence on that explanation one.

The government could sell some of its assets.

That was stated, wasn't it earlier? Here we go.

These could be government owned buildings or land that is no longer used.

This would gain a one-off payment but it could be used to support the financial requirement of the NHS in the short term.

Okay.

Happy? You can see how I've done that.

Just expanded it a bit more.

Let's keep going.

The government could also invite private businesses to compete to buy the right to supply a different service.

This is when a public service such as refuse collection or park garden maintenance is privatised which produces an income for the government.

Next one coming.

Alternatively, the government could raise National Insurance contributions for everyone which would increase the tax revenue they gain and therefore support the NHS financially.

Probably the easiest to explain that one.

Finally, linked to that solution would be for the government to change the income boundaries for paying different amounts of National Insurance to increase the payment made by mid-level earners.

The income citizens receive determines the amount of tax they pay.

So widening the boundaries could result in more money for the NHS.

So my explain really it's just sort of saying something similar but using different words to support someone's understanding.

It's what we as teachers do all the time.

Okay.

All right.

One thing I mentioned on that is that on the sample paper for Edexcel, there was a question that said, since 1980 there has been a large increase in UK central government spending on pensions.

Explain two reasons for this.

And that was four marks.

So if you think about that they wanted two reasons four marks.

So you had to have two things that you then first of all stated, and then backed it up with these additional sentences to show that you were explaining what you stated, okay? All right, hope that was helpful.

We'll move on.

Now, how to approach a longer questions is actually answered really nicely in the first lesson of this unit six.

But this question, I'm going to show you here with a favourite of my OCR questions I've seen.

Because it relates to British constitution, politics beyond the UK, political participation, human rights, you name it.

Economy.

You can put it all in this one.

And the question was, explain what your perfect democracy would include? I mean, that's great.

That's so open-ended.

It's just a gift of a question, okay? So if you're looking for a longer answer question, think six small paragraphs and I really mean small paragraphs.

Okay, so paragraphs that are probably only, I don't know maybe five lines think kind of six of those with as many different ideas explained and then link back to that question as you can.

And it says there on the top left in that box.

On the right try to include a factor which relates to every relevant area of the course.

So when is this open-ended as this, think through all the topics that you've done.

Oh, I can mention that.

I can mention that, okay? Bottom left.

Exclude, include explicit references to any sources or evidence given.

So if with this question, it had a couple of sources beforehand, and it might say something like, you could refer to these sources.

It means you should, you really should refer to those sources.

So make sure you include any sources or evidence given in your answer.

Conclude by emphasising your overall decision or key point.

I'm going to just put a little bit more meat on each of those bones now, okay? So I'm just going to go back to those small paragraph.

And what I've added in here it says, six different things that you would enshrine in your perfect democracy and explain why you think each one is important, such as having, maybe you could say that you'd like to have two elected chambers, two elected houses.

Or you could express how very important you think to have a codified constitution.

You know, perhaps you'd have one written document with all of the rules and how things are going to be done for your democracy.

Like the American Bill of Rights, rather than an uncodified one.

'Cause with this question you can put whatever you think.

I mentioned in the box on the top, right there.

You can also use examples from different countries that you've studied.

So you could say you'd like to have more devolved power like they do in Switzerland with the cantons, okay? Or the USA states.

So you could use references that you know about other countries that you've learnt about.

Just in a nice and trying to do.

How you include the reference? You have to make it really clear.

So you would use phrases such as, as in figure 5.

1, this shows that this would be a great thing to have in my democracy, okay? So make it really clear which source it is you're referring to.

All right.

Like figure two demonstrates you'd put in your answer.

And then that bottom box, conclude by emphasising your overall decision.

So, think about what's really important.

So when you're ending with this question in your favourite democracy think about what's really important.

What kind of values would underpin your sort of democracy? You've gone through all the detail, voting ages, bicameral system.

you know, who can vote what rights and liberties people would have.

But now when it gets to this last bit just kind of boot that home, kind of make it really clear that what would be important for you in your democracy would be such things such as tolerance perhaps, okay? Freedom of opinion, those kinds of things.

All right.

So just for fun.

Just for fun to end our kind of activities today, why don't you design your own? You don't have to write it up as a full essay.

Just get a big piece of paper, put my perfect democracy in the middle of it and start adding things around the piece of paper Things that you would have in your democracy.

Think everything we've done in the course so far, how would it be? Would you have the legal system connected to your kind of politics like they do in the US or would you have it sort of separate like we have here.

Taxation.

Would you have certain services which were free for people to go and access like the NHS? Would you have that liberal democracy or would you have people have to have insurances and to pay for those insurances on a regular basis and then be able to access medical care.

Think about the different things that you'd have in your democracy.

And I suggest if you do that, you might like to send that to your teacher and they could probably give you a few sort of pointers and some kind of positive feedback for how you might want to improve it or things that perhaps you could have included that you didn't there.

So enjoy that.

I think that's quite a good fun one to do.

What's left? Yes, just the quiz okey-doke.

So before you go, have a go at the exit quiz and I really hope something I've said to you today in my half an hour of waffling on at you I really hope something was useful.

Thanks everyone so much for listening to me.

Bye for now.