Year 12 Induction Activities

This resource can be used as an Induction lesson for students who have selected Sociology as an option, or as part of a 'taster day' for prospective students.

The following activities are designed to help introduce students to the world of sociology. This pack contains a series of activities that will engage students in an active and creative way. This activity encourages discussion, groupwork and focused thinking. It is designed to illustrate how competing perspectives are central to Sociology and how this fosters opportunities for challenging and evaluative thinking.

The context of the session is Inequality in Educational Attainment.

The pack includes the following:
(a) An activity on the role of schools and how they market themselves and their values.
(b) A data activity, with weblinks to reports on social groups and educational attainment which students are
invited to examine and identify key patterns.
(c) An activity to introduce the difference between home background and external factors.
(d) A card sort to enable groups of students to explore different factors causing differences in educational
attainment. This involves ranking and linking competing ideas. This includes 2 card sorts (1 home
background factors and 1 in-school factors), these are written in 'student speak' to enable easy access for
students new to sociology. There are 9 cards for each (which enables diamond 9 ranking possibilities).
(e) A 'Summer Assignment' on Youth Crime, with web-linked sources which can be used for benchmarking
literacy at the start of the academic year.