It seems to me that there will be quite a bit of disruption to classes in the run up to Christmas. Between teachers and student absences due to Covid, it will be hard to have continuity with classroom debates and discussions. Back to students at home working independently might be a struggle for some… If you’re absent yourself, you could even assign this remotely!

So below you’ll find a worksheet I did up on Joe Duffy’s documentary “The Classroom Divide” which you’ll find back up on the RTÉ Player after a period while it wasn’t available…

There are MS Word and PDF versions of a student worksheet to jot down the key data, but with additional activities and space for a mind-map designed to show students how to link the idea of ‘Education’ across the different strands of the course. Adapt that handout (which fits well onto a back-to-back A3 sheet) as you see fit. There’s also a ‘teacher answer sheet’ which has most of the quantitative data answers and many of the relevant quotes just to make your life a little easier. Obviously, the students need to complete some of the larger boxes – presenting the different elements of the arguments – themselves, so I haven’t been prescriptive in how they should do that…

It’s important that students see how to take the data from the documentary and convert it into useable qualitative and quantitative data for their essays, but that’s something every teacher will approach in their own way.

Don’t forget to get them to offer a “Critical Evaluation” of the documentary in the final question on the page, because we always have to keep our “Alternative and Comparative Perspectives” in mind.

I’m hoping to complete a similar worksheet on The Health Divide, but it’ll depend on whether I get the time this week… I’ll pop it up here if I get that sorted.

Joe Duffy Documentary– The Classroom Divide – Student Worksheet PDF

Joe Duffy Documentary– The Classroom Divide – Student Worksheet MS Word

Joe Duffy Documentary– The Classroom Divide – Teacher’s Worksheet with answers PDF

Enjoy the Xmas ‘run-in’…

JD 6/12/2021