By Lawrence McNally, Teacher of Classics at Impington Village College, Cambridge
Over the winter break I decided to take on the task of creating a student workbook for the Greek Religion module for OCR’s A Level in Classical Civilisation. This should hopefully save a lot of time planning throughout the year as I have updated the scheme of work to follow this new workbook. My students have commented that having random bits of paper stuck in their folders makes it hard to keep track of where we are in the course, so I’m also hoping that having one visually consistent resource will improve students’ knowledge of the course structure, streamline their learning, and make revising the content a lot simpler.
My intention is to have one workbook in which the entirety of the course can be completed. Included inside are prescribed sources, independent activities, further readings and questions for consolidation. There are also accompanying PowerPoints for each topic, and the workbook is designed to be used alongside the OCR textbook for the module. Each prescribed source in the student workbook follows the same format for consistency, but individual topics have a variety of activities which aim to stretch and challenge the most able and provide further support for students who require it. I’ll provide a flavour of the types of activities included: in topic 1.3 Religion and Society, students are tasked with annotating the route of the Panathenaic procession; in 1.2 Personal Experience of the divine, there are comprehension questions based on the Eleusinian Mysteries; and in 1.6 Religion and Philosophy, there are longer essay-style questions. I have also broken down the marking grid to ensure that students become accustomed with how examiners will grade their answers. If teachers decide to print and use this workbook with their students, I would recommend printing single-sided so that there is ample room within each section for extra notes and annotations.
If this idea proves to be successful, I’d like to have a go at doing the same thing for the GCSE Latin papers, in particular for the Literature and Culture course, as there isn’t already an accompanying textbook. I’m also working on a teachers’ edition of the Greek Religion workbook which includes answers to each of the activities.
There are so many great resources out there which are either trapped behind paywalls or hidden away and abandoned on school Onedrives. If we’re serious about making Classics accessible, we should be setting the standard by producing and sharing high quality resources to help other teachers. Everything I have created, including my Greek Religion workbook, is completely free and hosted on my website for students and teachers to use.
My website is www.lawrencemcnally.co.uk.
