I work as a Head of Philosophy, Religion and Ethics in one of the country's highest achieving state schools.
I am passionate about ensuring that my subject is engaging, relevant and academically rigorous.
I devote time imagining, creating, differentiating and tailoring my resources so that the students benefit from quality teaching materials and I hope that they are of real benefit to your own practice.
I work as a Head of Philosophy, Religion and Ethics in one of the country's highest achieving state schools.
I am passionate about ensuring that my subject is engaging, relevant and academically rigorous.
I devote time imagining, creating, differentiating and tailoring my resources so that the students benefit from quality teaching materials and I hope that they are of real benefit to your own practice.
Firstly, I’d like to say a HUGE thank you to the more than 1000 of you who have downloaded this display pack! I hope your classrooms look gorgeous!
This is a complete 200+ page pack of a number of classroom displays that I have developed over the last couple of years to invigorate my department. Two updated booster packs have already been added.
Original Display Pack:
- Philosophers and Religious Figures Timeline (Over 40 thinkers with pictures, dates and outlines of their thinking).
- Famous quote callouts to add along the timeline (one for almost every philosopher). Get students talking!
- Custom-made colourful lettering for timeline eras.
- Over 20 ethical and philosophical questions in colourful speech bubbles to inspire thinkers in your classroom (A great one for open-evenings or tutor time discussions!)
- Steps/Levels display with optional number arrows. Department levels policy documents included.
- ‘How to’ guides for all displays.
Booster Pack 1:
- Philosophical Language Literacy Display with sentence starters for knowledge/explanation and assessment/evaluation.
- Agree --> Disagree continuum signposts to make human bar charts in your classroom!
- Blooms thinking guidance for teachers with question prompts. Great for shrinking and sticking on desks or displaying at the back of the room.
Booster Pack 2:
- A raft of additional thinkers to give greater flexibility to the Philosopher Timeline across exam boards.
- Quotes for every new thinker of course!
I’ve also added another high-quality display pack covering Logical Fallacies and Cognitive Biases. Find it here: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/logical-fallacies-and-cognitive-biases-display-pack-philosophy-psychology-11925635
This is a full 10-page A3 workbook designed to engage and support our students with the key information needed for AQA Religious Studies A Christianity Beliefs and Teachings (Q1 of Paper 1). It is designed to be used in conjunction with the OUP textbooks but can be used without.
The pack consists of full colour landscape pages for the whole unit that really clearly points out key terms, teachings and key beliefs and concepts.
There is a wide range of activity styles to keep students engaged and motivated. Students will be working from memory as well as looking up information. Pages of the textbook are subtly shown to indicate where the information can be found if needed.
A wide range of extension tasks to allow students to delve more deeply into each topic area in the unit. Plenty of ‘tips’ to point out important guidance to students.
At the end is guidance and practice opportunities for the different question styles. Included are model answers. There is also a knowledge audit to allow student to RAG rate their confidence in different areas.
It should be printed double-sided and blown up to A3. There is just too much included on each page for it to scale to A4 comfortably.
I have designed this to be high on impact for students and totally no-fuss for yourself as a teacher. Just print it and go, use in class time or set as independent work. Do sections at a time or give it out as a full pack.
BRAND NEW scheme of work which runs over 9-10 lessons on the topic of human nature, for use with KS3. Addresses questions of human nature, value, purpose and free will. Builds critical thinking, analysis and independent learning. Student-led and with rigorous AfL throughout. All resources of a wide variety for all lessons are included. Games, card sorts, learning grids, reading and much more.
Complete SOW document included with lesson sequence, differentiation, key skills and suggested homework/continuation opportunities. Powerpoint for every lesson. This really is ready to go straight out of the box!
Lessons include:
1. What makes you, you?
Explore ideas of body and soul with your students and introduce them to dualist and materialist views.
2. How much is a person worth?
Ask your students to make some tough decisions and pin down what gives life value. Compare and contrast these with philosophical and religious standpoints.
3. Are humans special?
Consider what sets us apart from other creatures and address the question of our unique position and status.
4. What is the purpose of human life?
Give your students an opportunity to reflect on their ideas of the good life and what gives life meaning. Compare these with others and consider the implications for us as people. Compare their views with philosophical and religious perspectives.
5. How free are human choices?
Assessing the idea of free will and outline some constraints on freedom.
6. What does the future hold for humanity?
Reflect on the modern world and our technological advancement and consider the ethics of memory manipulation, artificial intelligence and designer babies.
7. Creative assessment which runs over 3-4 lessons with planning and reflection.
And finally, a massive thank you to the more than 150 of you who have purchased the SOW!
A group work lesson with a puzzling task to understand Descartes' substance dualism. Designed for the NEW 2017 OCR Religious Studies A Level it will work with any course including mind body dualism.
Students will understand Descartes' beliefs about mind and body. They will be able to present his arguments in favour of dualism and also evaluate his arguments.
Ready to teach, lesson includes:
Full lesson plan
PowerPoint
Resources
Worksheet
Stop making puzzles and games from scratch! The Most Amazing Puzzle Maker creates them all for you, AUTOMATICALLY. All you need to do is type up the questions and answers, choose a puzzle and hit print!
What can it make right now?
Large 16 triangle tarsia puzzles
Small 9 triangle tarsia puzzles
Tarsia gem puzzles
Square-up puzzles
Vertical dominoes puzzles
Horizontal dominoes puzzles
Question relays
Bingo! cards
Pairing card sorts
Split word card sorts
How does it work?
You simply type in your questions and answers into the template and the linked cells in the puzzles automatically match the information entered. See how your questions appear in the various different formats and choose a puzzle that best suits your needs.
Superbly customisable for differentiation! You can add distractions to many of the puzzles - these are incorrect answers or answerless questions to up the challenge and really test the students' knowledge or problem solving skills.
There are very clear instructions on how to create and print each of the different puzzles.
The file is an Excel file so is compatible with the vast majority of school or home systems. It works with all versions of Office since 1997!
Who is it for?
Absolutely anyone, these tasks can be used in any subject area and across any phase. They are great for consolidation, revision, working with key terms, knowledge acquiring, competitive group work...the list goes on!
Any new puzzles I create for the Most Amazing Puzzle Maker will be included as a free update. See changelog below.
Changelog:
v1.1 (12/11/17)
- New
Added Split Word card sort - great for primary and languages at secondary
Added Dominoes2 horizontal card sort - better for simpler questions
Added Bingo generator - creates unique bingo cards for each student!
- Fixed
Tweaked various cell formatting
Tweaked language in some instructions to improve clarity
Add new instructions to the front page
A new bundle combining the best-selling ‘Complete RE/Philosophy Display Pack’ that’s now sold over 800 copies and my new high-quality ‘Logical Fallacies and Cognitive Biases’ displays to root out any irrationality in your classroom.
Between them there is plenty to cover any classroom’s wallspace:
The awesome Philosophers Timeline with 68 thinkers and pop-out quotes for each
Bloomin’ good questions display
RE skills/levels wall-chart
Blooms questioning chart
Classroom opinion line
Philosophical Language display
21 Common logical fallacies display
18 Cognitive biases we’re all guilty of
Make your classroom a joy to look at!
Markbook Extra is an incredibly powerful yet wonderfully simple automated electronic markbook.
How does it work?
In brief, you enter the student’s raw marks for any assessment and the markbook uses sophisticated analysis to present you with all the data you’d want to see on an individual student or whole classes.
Highlights of v5:
Overhauled from the ground up to improve on almost every aspect of the original ‘markbook ultra’.
Store all of your classes (KS3-5) in one simple Excel workbook.
Suitable for any subject area regardless of how or what you assess. Show or hide up to five different assessment objective columns for each assessment.
Supports GCSE (9-1 or A*-G), A Level and Pre-U. Goodbye to using different workbooks for different types of grades!
Supports Foundation, Intermediate and Higher tier students in the same class and will limit grades accordingly.
Supports more than just male and female gender identity.
Set your own regularly used grade boundaries in eight quick presets or choose them individually for each assessment.
Powerful ‘at a glance’ and on the go analysis of individual student progress, each assessment or classes as a whole.
One-click export for headline data for all KS4 and KS5 classes for use by colleagues or line managers.
Live analysis of Gender gaps, SEND gap, and PP gap.
One click button to print a summary sheet for any student or the whole class at once. This gives a breakdown of all assessments and their marks. Shows progress against targets. Great for handing out and discussing at parents’ evening.
Filter by assessment type to offer even more powerful analysis of class strengths and areas for improvement.
KS3 markbooks support custom levels/grades or RAG rated strand systems.
Sample class included which is packed with helpful tips on how to use the markbook.
All Macros work on PC and Mac. This is truly universal and made for everyone!
If you have any questions prior to purchase please do get in touch: markbookultra@gmail.com
Custom-made versions of Markbook Extra are available. Have your school branding added and modifications made where necessary. Email me directly for a quotation.
***NOW INCLUDES KS3 CARDS as seen in the complete 'What is a person?' scheme of work.***
For use with teaching moral responsibility, free will, libertarianism and determinism. I have used the game with the AQA and OCR Religious Studies A2 , though it can be useful in a variety of situations.
The game will encourage students to develop responses to the following questions:
- What is free will?
- How free are we?
- What limits our freedoms?
- What is necessary for a free choice?
- How do culture, upbringing or genetics have an influence on our opinions of free will?
This is a tutor time activity we have used across all year groups. Students discussed the questions (choosing slides appropriate to the year group) and created a large collection of tiny torn pieces of red/blue paper.
You can then arrange these into the shape of the union flag to display as a representation of your school's attitude to British values.
This display pack is designed to engage students in reflecting on their thinking and argument. The pack includes two displays:
Logical fallacies covering a range of 21 examples of irrationality including:
Strawman, slippery slope, ad hominum, black or white, appeal to authority, bandwagon, middle ground, begging the question, non-representative sample, moral equivalency, non sequitur, red herring, splitting hairs, non-testable hypothesis, anecdotal support, genetic, post hoc ergo propter hoc, appeal to tradition, appeal to emotion, affirming the consequent and denying the antecedent.
Cognitive biases covering a range of 18 reasons why we all fail to be objective including:
Anchoring, confirmation bias, declinism, framing, fundamental attribution error, the halo effect, backfire effect, reactance, groupthink, belief bias, availability heuristic, clustering illusion, conservatism bias, blind spot bias, the ostrich effect, zero risk, in-group bias and the Dunning-Kruger effect.
All of the displays are styled in a high contrast white on black or black on white (apart from the red herring of course…) They are eye-catching and informative for your students of all ages from Year 7 through to Year 13. Great for an RE, Philosophy or Psychology classroom. Maybe these should be in every classroom - just think about the world we could create!
Instructions: Just cut around the shape leaving a small border of white. You could create a board for each or put both together! I’ve uploaded a model of how they look in my classroom.
In this very relevant and evaluative lesson students learn to explain pacifism and the broad spectrum of beliefs that this covers, as well as understanding the religious context in Christianity and Islam.
They will go further, working in pairs and groups, to assess and form an opinion on the usefulness of pacifism as a means to address conflict through key pacifists and other thinkers.
The lesson was designed for use with the new AQA Religious Studies A - 'Religion, peace and conflict'. It will, however, work with any specification including pacifism. Target grade is 7-9.
Ready to teach this lesson includes:
- Full Lesson Plan
- PowerPoint
- Worksheets
- Homework research sheet
An introduction to compatibilism with a focus on the specific understanding put forward by Locke.
The powerpoint offers key information for students' own note taking and I have included some guidance in the presenter notes for yourself.
The resource includes a differentiated group interpretation sheet where students are tasked with examining quotes from about and from famous compatibilists including Locke, Hume and Hobbes in order to identify key features of compatibilist thought.
Included is a 50 word grid for use with the plenary.
I hope you find it helpful since it has taken me a long while to feel very comfortable teaching this area of the course!
I have provided for free the follow-up reading on David Hume (which can be given as an independent reading task or done in lesson). It can be found by searching 'A2 Compatibilism' on the TES resources or by copying this URL into your address bar:
https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/a2-compatibilism-david-hume-reading-with-questions-11127076
In this research lesson students will use IT facilities along with a highly structured lesson to explore real world examples of Holy War. They will examine teachings from both Christianity and Islam and identify religious justifications for war. They will also explore how Holy War might be a more complex issue when we take into account the non-religious causes of the war.
They will be guided to create an outstanding Q5 answer to Holy War and analyse a model essay to help prepare them for writing their own.
The lesson was designed for use with the new AQA Religious Studies A - 'Religion, Peace and Conflict'. It will, however, work with any specification including Holy War. Target grade is 7-9.
Ready to teach this lesson includes:
- Full Lesson Plan
- PowerPoint
- Worksheets (including teacher answer sheet)
- Model Q5 answer
Spice up your GCSE feedback with these spiffing cover sheets.
I've broken down the mark scheme to make accurate feedback based on the assessment criteria a breeze. Just tick boxes and circle scores.
On the reverse is a reflection task where students set targets. It also includes a swish multi-purpose thermometer for all sorts of miscellaneous measuring.
In this challenging lesson students take on some A Level style discussion about the nature of salvation. Going beyond the GCSE course, students not only learn about sin, its nature and origin, but also discuss the Pelagian controversy and the long-standing debate between salvation through works or through God's grace.
The lesson was designed for use with the new AQA Religious Studies A - 'Beliefs and Teachings'. It will, however, work with any specification including Sin. Target grade is 7-9.
Ready to teach this lesson includes:
- Full Lesson Plan
- PowerPoint
- Worksheets
- Card sort
This lesson features as part of a complete scheme of work entitled 'Human Nature: What is a person?'. The SOW is designed to challenge KS3 students to explore challenging philosophical questions and apply key religious and non-religious perspectives to these questions.
You can purchase the complete SOW at a discounted price here: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/human-nature-what-is-a-person-complete-ks3-sow-and-resources-11068727
In this lesson students will assess the idea of free will and outline some constraints on freedom.
Included:
- PowerPoint
- Resources
- Scheme of Work document containing lesson plan.
This lesson features as part of a complete scheme of work entitled 'Human Nature: What is a person?'. The SOW is designed to challenge KS3 students to explore challenging philosophical questions and apply key religious and non-religious perspectives to these questions.
You can purchase the complete SOW at a discounted price here: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/human-nature-what-is-a-person-complete-ks3-sow-and-resources-11068727
In this lesson students will explore ideas about the dualist and materialist ideas about body and soul.
Included:
- PowerPoint
- Resources
- Scheme of Work document containing lesson plan.
This lesson features as part of a complete scheme of work entitled 'Human Nature: What is a person?'. The SOW is designed to challenge KS3 students to explore challenging philosophical questions and apply key religious and non-religious perspectives to these questions.
You can purchase the complete SOW at a discounted price here: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/human-nature-what-is-a-person-complete-ks3-sow-and-resources-11068727
In this lesson students will reflect on their ideas of the 'good life' and what gives life meaning. They will compare these with others and consider the implications for us as people.
Included:
- PowerPoint
- Resources
- Scheme of Work document containing lesson plan.
This lesson features as part of a complete scheme of work entitled 'Human Nature: What is a person?'. The SOW is designed to challenge KS3 students to explore challenging philosophical questions and apply key religious and non-religious perspectives to these questions.
You can purchase the complete SOW at a discounted price here: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/human-nature-what-is-a-person-complete-ks3-sow-and-resources-11068727
In this lesson students will make some tough decisions and pin down what gives life value.
Included:
- PowerPoint
- Resources
- Scheme of Work document containing lesson plan.