After an eight week period of physical distance, Year 12 students were able to enjoy their first face-to-face lesson with their humanities and social sciences teachers last week.  Although students have been continuing to study hard during lockdown, completing a variety of virtual lessons set by their teachers, it was fantastic to resume live lessons with the whole class again.

Mr Monks, teacher of politics, says, “It was great to restart Government and Politics with face to face lessons last  Thursday. We discussed how devolution of the UK has led to the confusing and varied approaches to easing lockdown, with different policies in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Then we started a new topic ideologies looking at Liberalism and its view of human nature, the state, society and the economy. One student commented “It is interesting to see how political ideas influence policies.”

In law, students studied how judges are able to make law, revisiting key cases suck as Dudley where sailor ate the cabin boy to survive!

Ms Dunsby, leader of geography, says, “I thoroughly enjoyed teaching again after nearly 3 months of not seeing students! I think both myself and the students were grateful for face to face contact to go through work completed during lockdown.”  Mr Mitchell, teacher of geography, praised his A level geographers who benefitted from being able to peer assess each other’s work, whilst still social distancing, using chromebooks.

In Mr Newbold’s history lesson, he was able to check the student’s understanding of the virtual learning topic, ‘Early Stuarts’ and make a start on American Civil Rights 1865-1992.  The class really benefited from being able to relate present events to the past through classroom discussion.  Mr Newbold’s source-based essay mnemonic, ‘Very enthusiastic kangaroos usurp jackdaws’ would not have had the same impact virtually!

Lessons across the faculty, took place all week for year 12, and provided a splendid ‘warm up’ for year 10 lessons beginning Monday 22nd June.