For A Few (A-Level Sociology) Organisers More

Every now and then – between creating short-but-beautifully-crafted films and resources that both push the a-level envelope and suggest interesting new ways of doing familiar things – I like to revisit old hits as a way of reassuring myself that, when it comes to creating interest and generating those sweet, sweet, Likes, you just can’t beat something that’s proved hugely popular in the past.

And one of the biggest Recurring Hits has to be Knowledge Organisers, an idea whose brief moment in the spotlight I thought had long-since passed, replaced by some New Kid in Town offering some new-fangled educational take that turns everybody’s fickle eyes.

But what do I know?

Knowledge Organisers are very much still in the spotlight, helped perhaps by the incredible amounts of time and effort some teachers have put into creating some fairly stunning efforts.

So much effort for so little recognition.

It was ever thus.

And In the spirit of profiting undeservedly from the labour of others I thought I’d dip into my grab-bag of carefully conserved resources (aka stuff I found while looking for other stuff) to share a little of the love.

I promise you won’t be disappointed. Although if you are, don’t blame me. Seriously, none of these are mine. Look at the metadata if you don’t believe me.

In a slight departure from the norm I’ve split the Organisers into two types, the first being blank Organiser Templates and the second being the usual completed Organisers. I wanted to start with Blank Templates because I think they’re useful for teachers who want to encourage their students to create their own, personal, Organisers. These are probably best-created as students progress through a course, rather than at the end of Modules or Units and they can be set as a kind of running homework to encourage consistent completion.

It may be a lot of extra work for students over the course of a couple of years  but they’ll see the benefits in the long run, not the least being they won’t have to spend time they probably won’t have between a course ending and exams starting creating these revision aids.

Blank Templates

While ready-made KO’s have their obvious advantages, if you want to make your own – or provide the tools for your students to make their own – then Blank Templates will save you a lot of time and trouble .

Graded Template: This is probably one of the most sophisticated KO’s you’re likely to encounter in that the knowledge is organised in two ways: firstly, by Grade (A, C and E) and secondly using PEEL as a way of structuring essay answers. Probably best approached by teachers with a lot of time on their hands coupled with high-level organisational skills…

Changes in Family Structure: Attractive one-page organiser that requires students to relate various types of social change (legal, economic…) to structural changes such as changes in family size.

Functionalism: One-page template on Functionalism and class inequality students complete for themselves.

Marxism: One page template focused around the difference between base and superstructure.

Weber: One-page template for Weber and social stratification.

Globalisation and digital communication: A decidedly-niche template for OCR’s globalisation and digital comms option, but useful if you need it.

Culture and Identity: How do we acquire identities?

Theories of Crime

Completed Organisers

Complete AQA Course: Someone has gone to a lot of time and thought to design and create these beautifully-presented Organisers covering the whole AQA course – Sociology Theory, Families and Households, Education, Research Methods, Beliefs in Society, Crime and Deviance. Among some of the very best Organisers I’ve seen.

Education

Education and Research Methods: An extensive revision-type document containing required knowledge, extensive links to further information, practice exam questions and a range of revision tools.

Education and Methods: A whole lot of Methods stuff with the added bonus of being directly focused on Education.

Education and Research Methods: Not your traditional KO, this is more like an extensive list of required knowledge, mixed-in with hints and suggestions about required skills. There are also a large number of video (YouTube) and web links to explore, plus practice exam questions and a final section containing some interesting revision tools.

Beliefs in Society

Beliefs in Society: A cross between an Organiser and a revision booklet, this runs to 60-odd pages of numbered Notes.

Religion and Society: Organisations, secularisation, globalisation, religion, science and ideology.

Global development

Global Development: As with its Education and Research Methods counterpart, this is an extensive revision-type document containing required knowledge, extensive links to further information, practice exam questions and a range of revision tools.

Crime and Deviance

Crime Control and Punishment covers left and right realism, surveillance, punishment and crime control strategies.

Offending: Explanations for Offending / Lack of Offending.

Key Theories and Concepts: Patterns and theories of crime, crime and the media, globalisation, green and state crime, crime control, punishment and victims.

Crime and Deviance covers theories, patterns, solutions to crime and measuring crime.

Crime: Types, Media representations, statistics.

Crime: Sociological, Individualistic and Biological explanations.

Research Methods

PowerPoint Presentation (southwolds.co.uk)

Family

Demographic Trends: This one-page Organiser combines a simple graded list (A-E) of knowledge students need to know with information on areas like levels of application and evaluation needed for each grade.