Although I’ve created my own and posted a few examples of Sociology Learning Mats, I hadn’t, until Liam Core sent me this example, come across the idea of a Sociology Literacy Mat – a collection of tips, prompts, hints and reminders designed to help students get to grips with answering sociological (exam) questions. This particular Mat includes brief advice on things like:
• Constructing answers
• Examples of evidence
• Spelling sociological terms
• Question Command Words
• Key terminology
• Elaboration tips.
I’ve left the Mat in its original PowerPoint form because this format is easy to edit if you want to personalise the Mat to your own particular specification or if you simply want to display the Mat for your students on a screen.
If you want to print or distribute the Mat to individual students, just use the PowerPoint Export function to convert it to an A4 pdf file.
This format can be useful if you get your students to do timed essay questions in class: if you laminate the Mat, for example, its then available for students to use for reference as they practice answering questions.
Eleanor Johnson has created a ‘Write and Speak Like a Sociologist‘ vocabulary strip, based on the Sociology Literacy Mat, designed to help students improve the structure and flow of their answers through a range of handy writing prompts.