Christian Ethics: AQA "A" Spec Revision Workbook and Checklist

I've come across a workbook I put together for the AQA A Specification  GCSE unit on Christian Ethics. I no longer teach the A spec (and to be honest I completely forgot that I'd made the workbook), but somebody out there might it useful.

Looking through the workbook, it's mostly made up of candidate sample answers for peer assessment, plus some past paper questions and a set of key facts to learn.

There also a revision checklist for four of the six topics in the GCSE (I might have put it together for mocks rather than the final exams), which might also be of some use.

You can download the checklist here and the workbook here via google docs.

I am, of course, still hunting for the Year 12 revision booklet I was actually looking for when I found them...

Young Catholic Minute

I've been trying to put together some resources for the AQA Religion and Contemporary Society course I'm teaching for the first time next term, and I remembered the Young Catholic Minute website, which I though I'd share here.

The site is run is run by and for young people, and has a number of short videos giving Catholic views on issues of ethics, politics, and relationships. When I've used them in class students have found them pretty amusing (perhaps not always intentionally) - click the video below to get an idea.

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.

Christian Ethics Quotations - Revision Postcards

Well the exam season is under way, and my Year 12 Religious Studies class have already taken their AS exam. They seemed pretty happy with the questions that came up, no evil AQA surprises as far as I could tell. Good luck to everybody out there, whether you're taking exams or sweating on your students' results!

I've put together a set of revision postcards illustrating some of the key Christian quotations that GCSE RS students should incorporate into their exams to support their views and access the higher grades.

You can download them on the TES here or via Google Docs here. You will need an account with the TES or Google to view them.