OPEN YOUR MIND Bishop Vesey's Grammar School supra-curriculum booklet It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it – Oscar Wilde It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it. –Oscar Wilde Open Your Mind Introduction – A note from the Editor……………………. Dear student, At Bishop Vesey’s Grammar School, we aspire to foster in our students a love of learning. We also aim at to provide appropriate support and challenge for our students in order for them to fulfil their potential. Super-Curriculum encapsulates all those activities that nurture academic enquiry beyond the measurable outcomes of examination results. We also know that potential future universities and employers will be interested and impressed by the initiative taken by students who have eng aged with super-curricular activities. Engaging in super curricular activities will help students develop a love for their favourite subject or subjects. Included in this booklet are a collection of ‘subject pages’, which have been designed by Academic Departments at BVGS, which include a variety of prompts and ideas, which will enable you to explore your favourite subjects beyond the confines of the taught syllabus. These ‘subject pages’ are by no means exhaustive lists but should offer students a source of inspiration to explore their favourite subjects. These activities can take many forms including wider reading, watching online materials, d ownloading podcasts, attending University lectures/masterclasses, arranging Summer School placements, engaging with H.E ‘super - curricular’ initiatives or visiting museums/places of academic interest. You might also like to join a regional or national club or society related to your academic interests, or enter compet itions such as essay prizes or Maths Olympiads. Mr David T. Goodwin Where to start? There are a number of suggested websites and activities below, which will help to stretch and challenge you outside of the classroom. You can use them to deepen your understanding in a particular subject area or to gain a broader knowledge about content outside of the curriculum. http://www.myheplus.com/ Thinking about applying to University and looking for ways to explore your subject beyond the curriculum? Then this website is for you. Cambridge postgraduate students and academics at the cutting edge of research in their field produce each topic. The topics provide guided activities, questions to think about and suggestions for further reading. The main subject pages also give you a quick guide to what it would be like to study the subject at university level and suggest some further resources to check out. Click on a subject icon or search all topics to get started! https://oxplore.org/ Oxplore, is an innovative digital outreach portal from the University of Oxford. As the ‘Home of Big Questions’ it aims to engage those from 11 to 18 years with debates and ideas that go beyond what is covered in the school classroom. Big questions tackle complex ideas across a wide range of subjects and draw on the latest research undertaken at Oxford What is iTunes U? Apple now features free downloadable material (audio and video) provided by many universities and accessed through the 'iTunes U' section of the iTunes store. Material is gathered from lecture series, public talks, news podcasts, public videos, etc. Any media player that can play .mp4 video or AAC audio files will work. You must go through iTunes to download the content but can then use the media player of your choice with the downloaded files. Apple has free versions of iTunes available for Macs running 10.3 and up and PCs running Microsoft Windows XP and up. What is YouTube EDU You can create, discover, and share educational videos with YouTube EDU. YouTube's #Education channel has thousands of educational videos, including those from partners like Khan Academy, Stanford, and TED-Ed. Use YouTube EDU to find short lessons to watch full courses from the world's leading universities, professional development material, inspiring videos from global thought leaders, and supplement your in-school learning. www.futurelearn.com www.futurelearn.com is a website featuring online (free) courses set up by many of the top universities in this country and leading global H.E institutions. They are a wonderful way to be able to stretch yourself academically. Online learning offers a new way to explore subjects you are passionate about and enables you to expand your interests. Find your interests by browsing the online course categories http://staircase12.univ.ox.ac.uk/ University College Oxford's online hub of resources for students aiming high at school and thinking about applying to top universities. You'll find plenty of resources to help you develop your interests, book reviews from current undergrads to help you 'read around' your subject, ideas for stretching yourself beyond the school syllabus (now an essential for entry to highly selective universities) and some stuff about student life at “Univ” for good measure. https://share.trin.cam.ac.uk/sites/public/Tutorial/Cambridge-wider-reading- suggestions.pdf Trinity College, Cambridge have put together a selection of reading lists and resources. They say: This selection of reading lists and resources has been gathered (fairly randomly!) from the Cambridge departmental and College websites, other universities and other sources on the internet. These lists are certainly NOT ‘required reading’ for Cambridge applicants. They simply provide some suggestions for places to start exploring your own interests in your chosen subject independently - What is a TED Talk? A TED talk is a video created from a presentation at the main TED (technology, entertainment, design) conference or one of its many satellite events around the world. TED talks are limited to a maximum length of 18 minutes but may be on any topic. Here's the TEDx website's explanation of selection criteria: "TED looks for engaging, charismatic speakers whose talks expose new ideas that are supported by concrete evidence and are relevant to a broad, international audience." Over the years, presenters of TED talks have included Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Bono, Jane Goodall, Malcolm Gladwell, Gordon Brown, Richard Dawkins Mike Rowe, Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Vint Cerf. Why not create your own? Read a quality newspaper or the online version Newspapers carry the news of the world. Newspapers provide information and general knowledge. Newspapers provide news about a country’s economic situation, sports, games, entertainment, trade and commerce. Reading newspapers make you well informed. It enables you to take part in every discussion pertaining to the world’s current events. Readers of quality newspapers, including online versions, make more progress in vocabulary throughout their lives compared to those who did not read newspapers. Use relevant podcasts Podcasts of academic lectures are increasingly available – start with iTunesU or search for podcasts on University websites. Podcasts enable students to access the information any time they want. Students can download the information to the device of their choice and listen/watch whenever they are free www.podcasts.ox.ac.uk/ www.bath.ac.uk/podcast/ www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/podcasts/index.aspx www.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/podcasts/media www.mypodcasts.manchester.ac.uk/ Very Short Introductions can change the way you think about the things that interest you, and are the perfect introduction to subjects you previously knew nothing about. Because of this, they have proven to be extremely popular with general readers, as well as students and their lecturers. "The Very Short Introductions range from worth reading to wonderfully appealing... Much of the pleasure to be found in them is the bedrock of good nonfiction: facts... They appeal to us because the world is vast and strange, because everywhere we look, from the firefly flashing in the darkness to Auden's elegy for Yeats, there is something to provoke our curiosity, some sliver of existence that we want to understand." - New Yorker Magazine Phillip Allan Reviews Topical articles, cutting-edge research and brand new case studies will deepen your students' subject knowledge and help them develop independent learning skills, while revision support and expert exam advice will make sure they know how to perform when it really matters. View the back issues of Philip Allan Reviews on their website. Which gives you free access to digital copies of the magazine. Please ask in the BVGS Library if you wish to access this wonderful resource. The use of TV and Radio Archive materials. It is very worthwhile to look on BBC iplayer for factual TV and radio programmes; “In Our Time” is a particularly useful introduction to hundreds of subjects: www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/in-our-time/archive/ A guide to making the most of this booklet: Each of our subject pages are organised in the following ways: 1. ‘Getting started’ linked to KS3 topics offered within School 2. ‘Going further’ activities that are beyond the confines of the syllabus and designed for students who have selected a particular subject at GCSE or A-Level and might be interested in widening their understanding. 3. ‘Open your mind’ section is designed to support University applications to specific courses. The ‘subject pages’ will also be organised in terms of the suggested activities to be undertaken: Reading – books are still the best way to learn new facts and new ideas. Watching/listening Following Doing Wider Reading List (Highly recommended) The link below will take you to a pdf document, which provides some suggestions for places to start exploring your own subject interests independently. The information has been collated by Trinity College Cambridge and is sourced from departmental and College websites, other universities and wider sources on the internet.