Specialistion & the Division of Labour - Homework, Starter, Revision or Flipped Learning task

As a practising Economics teacher, I used this in my lesson as a ‘flipped learning’ resource. Students respond really well to them, and it has upped my homework completion ratio massively! They have also commented upon how much they help their learning. It works equally well as a generic homework activity, a revision tool or a starter activity, however. Student feedback is very positive.

The four-page A4 worksheets can be used to introduce a particular topic. Essentially I distribute the forthcoming task sheet and set as a homework, or just allow reading time as a starter of a lesson. I expect students to have read the text, read the key words and at least attempted the questions before the lesson. We then discuss the text and responses at the start of the lesson, before covering the topic in detail.

I really find them useful as they are excellent and easy homework tasks with limited marking - as marking takes place as the starter of the next lesson. If you prefer not to print them, you can distribute via Teams or even on OneNote (which is what I do), do reduce photocopying. Of course printing is an option, too.

The format of the worksheet is broadly: A thought provoking image, related to the topic in question. This can be used for discussion; a side of text, covering the key elements of the topic; for literacy purposes, definitions of three to five of the key terms featured in the text; Three multiple- choice questions which are generally pretty easy if the student has read the text; approximately three short answer questions; approximately two longer answer questions, open for discussion in the lesson.

These have been written specifically for Edexcel A-Level Economics, but they would work equally well for other exam boards, no problem at all.