I've put together a rough draft of a scheme of work for the AQA A2 synoptic unit on Life, Death, and Beyond, which I'm teaching for the first time this year. It's something of a hybrid, using the AQA Spec, a WJEC textbook, and a template scheme I nabbed from OCR!
If you teach the synoptic unit, then like me you might find the lack of resources and schemes of work a bit of a headache. Any suggestions on how to improve the SOW (or extra resources to include) would be much appreciated! You can download the scheme of work from here.
Edit: If you found this resource useful, you might also be interested in this not quite complete PowerPoint on Life, Death, and Beyond.
Hi This is really helpful. Thank you. I am about to teach this for the first time and I am at a loss where to start. Have you any other resources you have found useful that you could point me in the right direction of. Thanks
ReplyDeleteHi,
DeleteGlad you found it useful. Karl Lawson's book Life, Death, and Life After Death is for the WJEC equivalent synoptic unit, but is a pretty useful starting point if you're teaching AQA.
Dawkin's Sex, Death and the Meaning of Life (available on 4oD) is useful for looking at secular perspectives on life and death.
With my class, I found reading, making notes, and talking our way through the unit worked pretty well. I copied chunks from McGrath's "Christian Theology", Drane's "Introducing the New Testament", and Peter Harvey's "An Introduction to Buddhism". For the section on apocalyptic and eschatology, I set aside a week's lesson and we read Greer's "Apocalypse: A History of the End of Time", again making notes and discussing each chapter.
Not the most Ofsted friendly way of doing, but I found it really enjoyable to teach! The last thing I'd suggest (because it worked quite well for me) is to work out about how the topic links to things to your own interests/expertise bring in your own material related to that.
Hope that helps. If you need any more specific suggestions, please let me know!