At the start of each term, I always ask my students to show me their notes. More often than not, I am greeted my line after line of black text on white lined paper.
‘How do you feel when you read that?’ I ask.
‘Bored…’
‘Hard to concentrate…’
‘Can’t spend more than five minutes looking at them.’
These are some of the more common responses. Research suggests that notes that are vibrant, colourful and have pictures or illustrations are 40% more likely to be recalled by students. As a consequence, I put together some quick glance revision notes, usually based around a specific theme for my students to look at as examples. These can be downloaded below, and I hope you find them useful:
Families and Households:
Functionalism and the Family Functionalism and Family
Marxism and the Family Marxism and Family
Feminism and Family Feminism and Family
Post and Late Modernity and Family Post and late modernity and family
Education
Functionalism and Education Functionalism Education on a page
Marxism and Education Marxism Education on a page
Top 5…
Top 5 external reasons for class and achievement
Top 5 internal reasons for girl’s improvements in educational achievement
Top 5 external reasons for girl’s improvements in educational achievement
Top 5 policies serving needs of economy
Methods in Context
On Paper 1 the Methods in Context Question asks students to think like a sociologist conducting a piece of research. On this site I have a few activities for students to try thinking like a sociologist themselves with some blank templates on teachers, students and parents, and to think about different context that may be investigated. The blank copies can be found on Revision Materials
However, if you want to check out my responses or just skip the hard work and peek at the answers – the complete versions are below.
Anti-school subculture context
Global Development
Theory and Methods
Top 5 features of Post Modernity
Top 5 features of Social Action Theories
Sociology not informing social policy
I will continue to update these in the run up to the exams – so please keep checking back and follow me on Twitter: @thesociologyguy for updates