In an effort to expand my repertoire and skills somewhat, I’m starting to work a little more on screencasts. This contribution is aimed at helping students with their essay writing by working through ONE way of approaching a Children’s Rights essay.

I’m at pains to emphasize that this is not a ‘sample essay’ to be learned off by heart and reproduced in the exam (that’d be too ‘Banking Concept’ for me…!). Rather, it aims to show students how they might structure their work and highlight lots of different sources of data that students can investigate for themselves and which they can then include in their essays to strengthen their ‘Evidence’ mark. It also hopes to press home the need for ‘Alternative and Comparative Perspectives‘ (which accounts for 15% of essay marks) by conspicuously attempting to bring in different counter-arguments and different ways of looking at any given essay title.

You can watch the video here, pausing at the appropriate time to complete the tasks on the Screencast 2 Listen Along Guide. While the actual video is just under 20 minutes, you should allot 60-90 minutes in total (with access to an internet browser) to complete all the different elements of the tasks

You should also download the Children’s Referendum Case Study that has three different sections, including ‘Background and Outcome’, ‘Arguments in Favour and Against’ the Referendum, and a ‘Brief Outline of the articles in the UNCRC that are needed for Pol Soc students’. Any and all of this is relevant to how you might approach the essay and this topic more generally.

I hope you are all remaining sane during the Shutdown. From this process I’ve learned that I MUCH PREFER teaching in an actual classroom compared to this digital environment, but we don’t seem to have much choice in the matter…!

Keep sane and wash your hands.

JD