Regents Review Winter 2019

The Regents Review Winter 2019

DEPARTMENTAL NEWS

Sociology As you may have read in the Year 9 section of this Regents Review, I have taken over the role as Head of Year 9. Due to this and a slight change in my timetable, I am very pleased to announce that Mrs K Anibaba has joined the Sociology teaching team. With our current Year 9s being the fourth cohort to be offered GCSE Sociology, we have taken this opportunity to review and restructure our curriculum. This will shortly be available to view on the Regents Park Community College website. With this in mind, the two new Year 9 classes have begun their GCSE option with an introduction to Sociology and a first look at the basic principles of the Numeracy Ninjas This is an initiative to help improve student’s basic skills. Each year the GCSE examiners highlight the impact of poor basic skills in leading to errors and we feel that the work we are doing, coupled with student’s own independent work to improve their times tables, multiplication and division, will be key in enabling students to make good progress in mathematics and consequently, enable them to

face the challenges of the new GCSE with increased confidence. Students in Year 7 and 8 have a weekly Numeracy Ninjas lesson within their tutor time. Students are given 5 minutes to complete up to 30 numeracy questions. They mark their answer and award themselves a belt. The black belt is the most coveted as this means full marks have been scored. Rowling TP have consistently scored the highest in Year 7 and Branson CSF in Year 8.

Year 7 and 8 students were asked about their views on mathematics. Students very positively agreed that they do well in mathematics, scored good marks and learnt concepts quickly. They also acknowledged that they learned new ideas quickly and easily. A lot of students think that mathematics one of their best subject with only a small number indicating that they did not like mathematics.

‘Social Stratification’ unit. We have explored how different societies around the world are structured, globalisation of big brand companies and looked at how social class systems might be viewed by the 4 main sociological perspectives. We are now moving on to the introductory unit for ‘Families’. Likewise, in Year 10 the students have completed the main section of the ‘Social Stratification’ unit and are now beginning to apply their knowledge to exam based answers and skills in the lead up to the Year 10 January exams. Wishing them the best of luck for their revision over the Christmas break.

Well done to Year 11 who have recently sat their November mock exams. From these exams, we have been able to identify our strengths and weakness as a class and will be using these to form our revision sessions in the run up to their final exams. These seem to be creeping up on us far too quickly! Lastly, I would like to wish you all a brilliant Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Miss Grassie Head of Sociology

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