Who Were The Greeks?

Who Were The Greeks? is the title of an upcoming BBC programme, which looks like essential viewing for anybody interested in ancient Greece or its influence on our world.

According to the show's website:

Classicist Dr Michael Scott uncovers the strange, alien world of the ancient Greeks, exploring the lives of the people who gave us democracy, architecture, philosophy, language, literature and sport.

Travelling across Greece today, Michael visits ancient cities and battlefields, great ruins and wild countryside, all in his search to uncover how the ancient Greeks thought and lived. What he finds is that ancient Greece was a seething tornado of strange, unsettling and downright outrageous customs and beliefs, inhabited by a people who could be as brutal as they were brilliant.  

Who Were The Greeks? starts on BBC Two tomorrow at 9.00 pm, and will be available on the iPlayer here for UK viewers. You can get a sneak preview here.

The Jesus Compass

The Jesus Compass is a little acrostic I've used with some of my GCSE classes to help them respond to ethical questions from a Christian perspective by thinking about the different ways that individuals could be influenced or inspired to behave. The acrostic stands for:

Jesus - Are any of Jesus’ sayings or actions relevant to the question?     

Church - What are the teachings of different Christian churches / denominations?

Obey Conscience - What might an individual Christian’s conscience tell them to do?    

Ministers & Priests - How might a minister or priest advise a Christian to act?

Prayer - How might praying help a Christian to make moral decisions?    

Agape - What is the most loving thing to do?

Saints - How might the lives of famous Christians inspire others to behave?        

Scripture - What Biblical quotations or teachings are relevant?

Partly it's a revision crib to help students remember some of the religious teachings and individuals they have studied who could be relevant to a particular ethical question, and partly it prompts  students to include the religious perspectives that are needed to access the higher grades.

Some of the "points" of the compass are meatier than others of course, but referring to - say - the conscience or agape might be enough to shift a student from a level 3 to a level 4 in the AQA mark scheme. For more able students, it also encourages them to consider a wide range of possible sources of evidence and select the best from them. It's worked well with the GCSE classes I've used it with, and even with the A2 class I've used it with, so I thought I'd share it here.  

I've posted a generic revision sheet for it, and a worksheet version that students can use to focus on a particular question. You can download these as pdfs here and here, or if you have a TES account, as MS Office documents here.

Ontological Argument Revision Games

I've been a bit busy with work and the nascent Duke of York's Triathlon Club recently, so I've not had a lot of time for blogging. Hopefully as school tails off for summer I'll get to post more regularly.

I've uploaded some key word revision games for the ontological argument, which also include some general vocabulary on philosophical reasoning (as these two are tied together in the AQA A2 course). As usual I've uploaded them as a pdf to Google or as Word document to the TES. You'll need a login for TES to download the Word file, but anyone should be able to access the pdf version.

The Holy Lamb of God Gave You a Dodgy Wheel

If you're in need of a little light relief now that your exams are done (or if you're still revising), have a watch of this clip from the truly awesome 90s TV show In Bed With Medinner.