Co-educational Learning Opportunities with Godstowe
Year 8 hosted Godstowe for an interactive workshop led by both Godstowe’s Head of History, Mr Emm, and our very own Head of History, Mr Fryer. For the second year in a row, this co-educational workshop formed part of our ongoing, and developing, programme of meaningful educational shared occasions with the girls’ schools, which offer additional opportunities for the boys to develop their characters and personalities. Here, Mr Fryer outlines the day enjoyed by all…
The Davenies boys and Godstowe girls worked together in groups of six, collaborating and improving their CE assessment skills on unseen sources and essay writing structure. This came a week after their Year 8 exams and worked as the perfect reflection exercise as part of their ongoing learning and development within the subject.
As such, the groups were presented with a number of sources and a breakdown of each CE question with which they will be presented in their exams. Following this session, all groups then took part in assessing model essay answers focussing on the key skills needed and structure of a historical argument.
The purpose of being presented with unseen evidence means that the groups had no background knowledge of the content to allow the pupils to demonstrate their skills in source analysis, such as comprehension, comparison and assessing utility. As such, there was wonderful discussion between the boys and girls showing critical awareness and a recognition of how subjective the subject can be. The beauty of this being that providing you can support your claims with evidence in a structured and coherent argument, you cannot be wrong!
More so than ever, the ability for this generation to be able to assess the reliability of material they access is of upmost importance with everything that is out there on social media, in order to inform their opinions with factual information.
There was fantastic teamwork on display by all groups and thank you again to Mr Emm and Godstowe for coming along. We very much look forward to venturing back over to Godstowe next year to continue our commitment to meaningful co-educational learning opportunities.
Mr Fryer, Head of History
