Re-thinking Starters:

1. Re-thinking Starters: Initial Stimulus Material Rebecca Priest, Bablake School, Coventry

2. Why? • Enquiry approach – one way of creating a ‘need to know’ • Applying an idea from history teaching (Phillips, 2001) to geography, as suggested by Roberts (2013) ‘A high-quality geography education should inspire in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives’. Department for Education (2013)

3. Criteria for ISM • Uses material in certain ways to stimulate interest and curiosity • Establishes of a line of geographical enquiry via a key question or a series of questions • Outlines learning aims and objectives in a clever, meaningful way

4. How is ISM different to starters? • create an interest • ‘deliberately oblique manner’ • longer • encourage questions • own lived experiences • tangible/concrete • forms enquiry questions

5. From concrete to conceptual…

6. Other ways that I have used ISM in my lessons: • Y8 - Sorting recycling • Y7 - Cocoa beans • Y10 –Living in inner city Birmingham • Y8 - Rainforest sounds • Y9 - Email from a Polish migrant • Y12 – Excerpt from Dan Brown’s ‘Inferno’ • Y10 - Cut off images

7. Each cocoa bean represents 1p The chocolate bar costs 50p You have 2 minutes to split your beans between the 6 groups to represent how much money you think they receive from the cost of the bar

8. Shops 12p 20p 8p How much do they really receive? Chocolate company UK G’ment 7p 2p 1p Non-cocoa ingredients G’ment were cocoa beans come from Cocoa bean farmers

9. Other ways that I have used ISM in my lessons: • Y8 - Sorting recycling • Y7 - Cocoa beans • Y10 –Living in inner city Birmingham • Y8 - Rainforest sounds • Y9 - Email from a Polish migrant • Y12 – Excerpt from Dan Brown’s ‘Inferno’ • Y10 - Cut off images

10. What does the other half of the photograph look like underneath this?

11. Other ways that I have used ISM in my lessons: • Y8 - Sorting recycling • Y7 - Cocoa beans • Y10 –Living in inner city Birmingham • Y8 - Sounds • Y9 - Email from a Polish migrant • Y12 – Excerpt from Dan Brown’s ‘Inferno’ • Y10 - Cut off images

12. What can you hear? • What would it feel like to be standing in this place? • What might you be doing?

13. Tips • Don’t give too much away – don’t tell them about the photo/objects/topic • Plan questions • Doesn’t have to be spectacular – use images/quotes from textbooks in an ‘ISM way’

15. Tips • Don’t give too much away – don’t tell them about the photo/objects/topic • Plan questions • Doesn’t have to be spectacular – use images/quotes from textbooks in an ‘ISM way’

16. References • Department for Education (2013) Geography: Programmes of study for Key Stages 1-3. Available from: https://www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/curriculum/na tionalcurriculum2014/b00220600/consultation-national-curriculumpos/draft-pos-subjects • Phillips (2001) ‘Making history curious: Using Initial Stimulus Material (ISM) to promote enquiry, thinking and literacy’, Teaching History, 105, pp.19-24. • Roberts (2013) ‘ Geography Through Enquiry: Approaches to teaching and learning in the secondary school’ Sheffield, The Geographical Association.