A slice of the action
The Guardian on Friday featured an independent report on the sandwich market served as a “Get up and go” supplement to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the humble sandwich and the start of British Sandwich Week. It would make useful stimulus material for a low-budget research activity for a BUSS1 start-up.
read more...»Making Finance Fun 2012 - CPD Course (London and Manchester)
This new CPD course from the tutor2u team looks at how we can make the teaching and learning of finance fun!, We’re running the course for the first time on 20 June 2012 in central London and the following day in Manchester…
read more...»The Ultimate BUSS4 Takeovers and Mergers Crossword 2012
Looking for something a little different to help support teaching of BUSS4 M&A? Here is a 20 clue crossword that you could set as a homework or team research task. I’ve also provided a matching game activity using the same clues…
read more...»Takeovers and Mergers - tutor2u Mini Briefs
Our takeover and merger mini-brief cards are designed to help students gain a deeper understanding of key M&A transactions. We used this during the recent CPD days on BUSS4 and obtained some great ideas from teachers about how they can be used in the classroom and as a prompt for further student research. The 30 mini-brief cards work particularly well with Ryan Cook’s superb Map of Merger Motives which provides a terrific link between examples of takeovers and mergers and key theories such as Porter’s Five Forces.
We have outlined further below some suggestions as to how the mini-briefs can be used as a classroom resource…
The Mini Briefs and Map of Merger Motives are just two of several teaching resources included in our AQA BUSS4 Section A toolkit which is published on 8 March 2012.
read more...»Takeovers and Mergers - the BUSS4 Card Game
.
We’ve had lots of fun playing the BUSS4 Takeovers and Mergers card game at the BUSS4 CPD courses this week. The card pack is a terrific way to engage students with the concept of M&A and to build their familiarity with a wide range of recent (and some not-so-recent) major takeovers and mergers. As we have tried the cards out on each course, we’ve asked colleagues to suggest ways in which the resource can be used and /or adapted for further use. We’ll be adding these suggestions to this blog entry over the next few days.
The card game is one of several teaching resources included in our AQA BUSS4 Section A toolkit which is published on 8 March 2012.
read more...»Starter Activity: The Budget Basket
A while ago, I blogged about a really good activity for helping to teach budgets. It was called the wedding planner and can be found here. However, this is another similiar activity that can also be used to help teach the concept of budgets.
read more...»Business Cafe - Christmas 2011
The Christmas 2011 edition of Business Cafe - our digital learning resource for all Level 2 and Level 3 business courses, is now available to subscribing schools and colleges. Details of the new articles and case studies in this edition are summarised below.
read more...»On your Marks for X-Factor advert
Marks and Spencer released results today showing a fall in both profits and sales, citing the “challenging economic environment”.
read more...»Developing Exam Skills - BUSS3
One of the key areas of BUSS3 is the final question, one which many, many students struggle to get to grips with. The key to this question is getting students to build logical arguments from the data within the case study. In my opinion, the sooner the students start analysing data and using it to build arguments, the better.
With this in mind, I did this activity with my Year 12’s to develop this skill and it worked really, really well….
read more...»Feedback on TBBLE 2011 (London & Manchester)
Its always nice to look through the feedback that we get on our courses and workshops, and the kind comments that delegates have been making about the first two TBBLE courses are particularly pleasing. I’ve added a few below.
For those of you who missed TBBLE 2011, don’t forget that the course is being run again, with four dates scheduled for the first part of 2012. These are:
Belfast - 16 January 2012
Glasgow - 23 January 2012
Birmingham - 18 June 2012
London - 19 June 2012
Bookings for this course can be made using this form:
https://tutor2u.wufoo.com/forms/tbble-the-best-business-lesson-ever-201112/
read more...»BUSS1 Beat the Teacher - the Thinking Skills Lesson Resource for AQA BUSS1
BUSS1 Beat The Teacher is a great way to help test whether students have picked up a thorough understanding of core topics on their AS course so far.
Beat the Teacher is a thinking skills activity which involves giving students a page of written text and/ or calculations which contain a number of errors. Students then work individually or in pairs to try and ascertain where the mistakes are.
read more...»The Business Studies Treasure Hunt
Who knows how long this Indian Summer weather may last. It’s wonderful, but it does lead to students asking ‘Can we go outside sir?’. In fairness the Freman College Business Suite isn’t fitted with air conditioning so on Friday I relented and we headed out to the sports field. But what did we get up to?
read more...»A sneak peak at TBBLE 2011/12
This is very naughty of me, but i just couldn’t resist looking inside the delegate pack for the first TBBLE of 2011 - at the Guoman Charing Cross, on Tuesday 4 October.
The format of this course is unlike any other CPD course you’ve ever attended. Three presenters (on Tuesday, it’s tutor2u bloggers Michelle Stephenson, Innes Robinson and Lord Sutch) compete for the votes of the delegates. Their aim is simple - to introduce and demonstrate their best ideas for business lesson starters, plenaries and other teaching activities. Teachers attending TBBLE take the whole package of resources, ready to use the very next day!
So what did I find when I opened one of the delegate packs sat here in the office ready to be despatched via tutor2u’s fastest (and strongest) carrier pigeons?
Here’s a sneak preview…(p.s. please don’t tell Michelle, Innes and his Lordship that I’ve done this)
read more...»Zondle Packages for GCSE
At the end of the last school year I really took to Zondle. Its intuitive interface and fun games make it an easy win with students (I am working on the staff side having just uploaded the whole school into the system).
After seeing Geoff’s post on creating a package I thought to myself, “Gareth, if you create a few of those a week in the summer hols, you’ll be in clover come September”. Unfortunately some extreme decorating chez moi got in the way of my plans, but now I am back on the case.
read more...»Whats in a name? A puntastic way to start the new school year
Looking through some of my old blogs, I found this one which is a really belter to use as a starter activity for new Business Studies groups.
As a starter, I got the the students to come up with business names based around puns. Gave them a few examples I did and then got them to come up with their own in small groups. A good way to get kids engaged early on.
Some of the examples I gave were:
Chain reaction - A bike shop
Sole trader - A shoe shop I discovered in Chester
The cod father - Fish and chip shop
Millionhairs - A dog grooming salon
Excellent for allowing children to be creative.
This year, I will also be telling the students of an off licence that has just opened up in Sunderland. Its name, Amy’s Winehouse! If you don’t believe it, Google it!
Give Me 5 - the BUSS2 Recap
The A2 AQA business students return for their final year. Have they remembered some of the key concepts that form the building blocks for their BUSS3 & BUSS4 studies? Test them out with this edition of Give Me 5. Actually, this can be used for any business studies course - just edit the questions to focus your students on the specification content that you want to remind them about!
Business Students Know the Answer - but What’s the Question?
I’m much taken with Lord Sutch’s blog over on Give It A Go - “What’s The Question”. A simple idea, so rich in delivery opportunities…
read more...»TBBLE (The Best Business Lesson Ever) 2011/12 - New CPD Dates Added!
We’re delighted to add Belfast and Glasgow as two extra venues for TBBLE 2011/12. TBBLE stands for “(probably) The Best Business Lesson Ever” and we’re really excited about the speakers and teaching resources that have already been lined up for the 2011/12 series! Our very own Lord Sutch and Michelle Stephenson are just two of the providing delegates with a fabulous selection of new business teacher resources and activities…
read more...»Catchphrase - Say What You See!
This is one of my favourite starter activities and one which I ‘showcased’ at the recent Business Teachers National Conference in London.
Again, such a simple activity that gets the students thinking.
Based on the popular TV show with Roy Walker (still showing on Challenge TV), the activity involves students trying to work out key words from visual clues that are slowly revealed. Once the students have guessed the word it forms a basis for further discussion. I have taken this activity one step further by challenging my students to come up with a catchphrase for myself and the rest of the group to work out. Let the students do the starter!
I have included 3 of the catchphrases that I used at the BTNC (all of which were designed by my students). The first one is Just-In-Time whilst the last one is Gearing. The second, well, just say what you see!
Enjoy…........
GCSE Zondle Games
I have been meaning to play about with Zondle for a while now. A little bit of spare time today and a chat with my Head of Department prompted me to create a couple of quiz sets ready for our Business and Communication Systems classes next year.
read more...»Business Bellwork - What would you have invented?
I’m a huge believer in bellwork. Some activity for students to do/ think about as soon as they walk into my room. Sends out a signal. Lets get down to business.
On the IWB today I had a simple question. If you could turn back time, what would you have invented?
I had some cracking responses and you could really see the students thinking. No right answer, no wrong answer. Just a nice activity to get them thinking about business, which can’t be bad.
What would you have invented?
Lesson Plenary - The Unbelievable Truth
As a follow on to Alex Heggie’s ‘Would I lie to you?’ blog below, I tried a game of Radio 4’s game ‘The Unbelievable Truth’ as a different revision lesson. It takes rather longer than Alex’s idea - students need time to prepare for it and might need some encouragement to engage in some blatant or creative lying!
The idea is this - each student is given a business topic, which might be something from the syllabus like Business Legislation or Ratio Analysis, or might be the name of a business or high profile business leader (Tescos or Starbucks, Alan Sugar or Steve Jobs) and has to prepare a brief speech about their topic. The speech has to be based on fact, but also has to include five lies.Those lies must be listed on a separate piece of paper which is given to the teacher, who will be the compere for the game.
They are then divided into two teams, and take turns with one member of each team giving their speech. The other team has to try to spot the lies, and ‘buzz in’ to interrupt the speaker each time they suspect them of lying. If the interrupting team is correct, they get a point. If they are wrong, and accuse the speaker of lying when they are really telling the truth, the speaker’s team gets a point (this is why the teacher needs to be given the list of prepared lies in advance). At the end of the speech the speaker’s team also gets a point for every lie which was not spotted by the other team.
It proved to work best when the students had enough time to prepare their speech with some research into their topics, some help with preparing creative ideas to include, and the opportunity to find some unlikely facts to include which might bamboozle the other team into thinking they are lying. They had to think about what they knew about the topics quite carefully, and we found out some interesting facts that otherwise have gone un-noticed - for example, did you know that in 2006 Sir Terry Leahy gained 3rd place in the annual Rear of the Year competition? That piece of research may not have been so useful in preparation for BUSS4 essays, but it definitely earned a point for the speaker’s team in this game!
Lesson Plenary - Would I lie to you?
A nice little plenary to round off any topic…
read more...»Plenary Idea : Facebook Status
Here is a nice plenary activity that I created this year and have been meaning to share for a while. It has the added bonus of giving you a starter for your next lesson with only minimal work.
read more...»Anyone for tennis?
Now if Lord Sutch hasn’t used or blogged this somewhere, I’ll eat my racquet. With Wimbledon in full swing I would like to hold court on an idea my MFL teaching wife served up to help vocab acquisition. With a few embellishments from me, here is an idea for verbal tennis based starter I am going to use with my Economists tomorrow, but should be equally at home anywhere.
read more...»More 20-20 Revision - GCSE Edexcel Unit 3/Year11
I previously shared a version of Michelle Stephenson’s excellent 20-20 cricket game, relevant to Unit 1 GCSE Edexcel Business Studies.
read more...»Ready Steady Cook! Developing Exam Skills
I have been tweeting about this amazing activity and due to a number of people asking me about it I decided it was time for a blog.
Ready Steady Cook was an activity that was ‘showcased’ by Mark Mitchell at the recent tutor2u CPD conference, ‘(Probably) the Best Business Lessons Ever’. Mark therefore deserves all the plaudits, throwing of flowers etc for this activity that has become a staple of my teaching….
read more...»Prediction - A plenary and a starter
I was discussing this idea the other night with my good friend Mr Todd and thought it was worth a blog.
After I have done my ‘normal plenary’, I say to the students that I am going to write down 5 key things from the lesson, leave it quite open ended I do. I then, put the 5 points in an envelope, seal it and get one of the students to sign the seal. They love that.
I then place it somewhere visible in the classroom.
At the start of the next lesson, I ask students to ‘predict’ the five points in my envelope (get them to write them down). We then go through them and I write down all the points that they have came up with on the board (what an easy way to review last lessons learning).
I then get the student who signed the envelope to open it and read out the points that I wrote down. I can then assess what I thought were the key points with what they have came up with.
What I love about this is that it takes no planning, it engages the kids and links two lessons together.
Easy…..Derren Brown would be so proud….......
Starter activity - Name that brand
With this starter activity, we get close - very close - to some distinctive brand logos. Can you identify the ten close-ups provided?
Download Name that Brand worksheet
Retail Meets Monopoly - A Business Lesson Cracker
Here is a real treat for business teachers and students. A fantastic interactive resource from the ever-innovative Guardian Business team which invites us to move around the monopoly board of UK retailers. As each retailer announces its trading for the crucial Christmas 2010 period, we are asked to state whether the retailer was a winner or loser? Love it.
