As part of the Global Perspectives IGCSE, students need to undertake a piece of individual research of at least 750 words, accompanied by a practical solution (e.g. film, T-shirts, posters, charity campaign…) that encourages community involvement and cross-cultural evaluation. For some students, particularly EAL/ESL pupils or those with processing/executive function disorders, this can be a daunting task, so a planning sheet is essential (even for those with good planning skills - as many 14-16-year-olds will never have attempted a task of this magnitude). The planning sheet forces students to identify a topic area and refine this into a specific question before writing down their main ideas and considering problems and possible solutions from multiple perspectives (local, global…).

The text file is taken from the Financial Times and talks about climate change in Tibet. Students should read this in advance and come to class with a list of vocabulary questions, which could be worked through in groups for speediness if there are many questions. If there are only a few questions, this could be done as a class. The comprehension questions help to gauge student understanding of the content and begin to assess their critical thinking skills. This exercise can be used for students aged 14-18 in subjects such as Geography and Global Perspectives.

Students comparatively evaluate fast foods from different popular outlets based on calories, saturated fat, size (grams), appearance, taste, price and value. The task enables numeracy and literacy integration within social studies-style subjects (including Global Perspectives and PSHE) by asking them to create bar graphs and write commentaries based on their findings, which can then be used for display.