If you have read 'The Week' magazine, you will know that they read the newspapers for you and report the main stories with summaries of how the main newspapers coverered the story. If you haven't read it before, you can see what we mean here.

This week the issue of how to deal with party political funding has been covered heavily in the press as the Committee for Standards in Public life published their recommendations. We think it's a great idea to collect together a series of articles and commentaries and get your students to present them in the style of 'The Week'. This works on their reading skills, their ability to synthesise longer pieces of writing and, if they work in a group to produce this - can also improve their ability to work with others and, why not throw in for good measure, use of ICT?

Party Funding is covered in Unit 1 of the AS levels of most of the major exam boards and this would be a great opportunity to revise and revisit that issue while it is current. A collection of reports, commentaries and blogs that you could use can be found on our facebook page.

APPLY IT ACROSS THE CURRICULUM

Of course, this does not just need to apply to the stories in Government and Politics. This could apply to any big news story in Geography, Science, Maths, you name it.....Using the news in your subject is a great way to keep your subject current, relevant and engaging.

Ask students to send in their essay responses to you via email. Make them anonymous and then display them on a collaborative platform such as your VLE or blog. Provide them with a copy of the mark scheme and ask students to mark a sample of three of them (varying grades). You can then debate the grade boundaries that the essays would fall within and why. You can form a collective opinion of which anonymous essay would be given which mark. Ask students to identify how the essay could move up a grade. Following this exercise, you can then invite students to mark and review their own work and set their own targets for that essay.

With all new topics, if you can introduce your key terms as early as possible and get the students to create posters and displays with these on, they can be fun to make but can then also be displayed throughout the year for reference and revision. Students can collect relevant images, create illustrations and good graphic layouts. This can be done in a low or high tech way, e.g. using Glogster – see www.politicsteacher.co.uk Web 2.0 ideas. You can do the same with key institutions such as House of Commons, House of Lords, European Institutions etc. They will get looked at more often than notes in a folder!

You could encourage your students to form their own political groups within school. We are not suggesting that you try and turn you students into radical political activists. However, there are lots of opportunities for them to get involved in groups which mean that they become part of something wider, outside of school life. This can provide great cross-curricular learning opportunities.

For example, Amnesty International have a youth movement and provide resources to support it (see their website). This provides students with the opportunity to partcipate in the political system, exposes them to political regimes that differ greatly to ours, different cultures and economies. It introduces them to the power of letter-writing, campaigning and being persuasive in a way that is real and active. It also provides leadership and organisational opportunities for students involved in running a group like this.

Of course, Amnesty is not the only group who provide resources and ideas for students to be active citizens - google a few pressure groups and charities and you'll find a wealth of resources out there - such as Friends of the Earth, the RSPCA, Oxfam, the British Youth Parliament and the Electoral Reform Society to name but a few. They all provide resources for teachers - and great opportunities for cross-curricular, project-based learning.

Spot the deliberate mistakes. Display a piece of text with which the students should be familiar. Make some mistakes. Ask the students to spot the mistakes. Could not be simpler!

This activity can be carried out on Interactive Whiteboard using the deconstruct text technique. See our ‘Spot the mistakes’ video on www.politicsteacher.co.uk – How to videos.

It is helpful to emphasise to students just how interested the media are in politics. You could ask them to make a TV/radio guide to all the programmes on TV that week relating to the study of politics. You could then ask them to produce a review of the weeks political TV and radio. (This could be a regular project that could be a class-maintained blog.) See www.politicsteacher.co.uk Web 2.0 page for ideas as to which sites to use.

Alternatively, you could ask students to record questions they have from programmes that they have watched. Asking questions and developing questions from questions can help with critical thinking skills.

If you can enthuse your students with the idea that a lot of their learning can come from TV, radio, podcasts and online sources and encourage this habit from the outset of the course, all the better.

WHY?

It connects learning from the classroom to the 'real world' outside, it encourages debate, interest and an awareness of learning methods. TV just doesn't feel like 'work' but it does great things for learning.

WHAT ELSE CAN YOU DO WITH IT?

You could do this for more or less any subject. You could also invite students to make their own version of a TV or radio show on a topic. Radio phone-ins where students call or text their questions to a panel of student experts can be fun too.

This is a good, simple starter or plenary in which the students spot the deliberate mistakes. Display a piece of text with which students should be familiar. Make some mistakes and ask the students to spot them. Simple, eh?

WHY?

It is active rather than passive; it requires the students to actively engage with a text. This could be a definition of a key term, quotes or a description of events. You can adapt it as you please. You can use it to encourage recall of previous learning or to assess learning during or at the end of a lesson.

WHAT ELSE CAN YOU DO WITH IT?

You can do this on paper individually, in pairs or small groups - depending on the nature of the text and whether discussion might be helpful.

This activity can be carried out on the interactive whiteboard using the deconstruct text technique. See our free 'Spot the mistakes video' on www.politicsteacher.co.uk - 'how to videos'.

You can set up a court system within the class room to put someone on trial

e.g

- can Tony Blair be described as ‘First Among Equals’ in his Cabinet (or was his style Presidential); or

- are the Conservative party actually conservative; or

- are pressure groups democratic

….. or anything you like!

You can then have one team presenting the case for and one the case against with a judgement being made by a judge (and jury if a big class).

WHY?

It encourages students to research a topic and formulate their arguments. It encourages clear communication skills and questioning which develops critical thinking. It is imaginative and engaging. It also provides the opportunity to discuss our adversarial system and whether it is an effective way of discovering the best solution or the ‘truth’.

WHAT ELSE CAN YOU DO WITH IT?

This can be used and adapted for more or less any area of the curriculum. For example it could be used in English or History to try a fictional or historic character. It could be used in science to try competing theories or in geography to dispute most appropriate land uses……it is a very adaptable exercise.

It also provides the opportunity to film it, reflect, discuss, blog about it, ask further questions such as considering an alternative to our current court system or adversarial system in Parliament (to really push your higher level thinkers).

(See a short video on the adversarial system in www.politicsteacher.co.uk Members Resources L18).

I was actually there’ - ask students to consider a relevant, significant political moment. Allocate them a role as one of the parties involved at the time and ask them to imagine how that person may have felt, what they thought - encourage them to talk about what their concerns were, what they hoped to achieve, how they might go about that e.g. as a Labour Party activitist in the 1970s when there was a tension between the hard left and the softer left/reformists.

Other members of the class can interview them about their concerns/tactics/hopes for the party. You can adapt this idea to any number of political ideas/concepts.

WHY?

The performance provides a clear learning outcome and provides a purpose to research, understand, consider and analyse a point in time and the personalities involved. It requires imagination, higher level thinking skills, good communication and...it's fun.

WHAT ELSE COULD YOU DO WITH IT?

This can be adapted across the curriculum to investigate or explore a whole range of areas from an innovative view point e.g. a great scientific discovery, how a poet felt when he had completed his masterpiece, what an explorer first arrived at a new land......endless possibilities.

It almost goes without saying that you can film your interviews on Flip or phones and share the results, reflect, discuss and see what they learned from it.