Emily Tostevin is a Religious Studies and History Teacher with responsibility for Gifted, Able and Talented Education at St Sampson’s High, a mixed secondary school in Guernsey, Channel Islands. Emily worked for Health and Social Services before training as a teacher at Oxford University in 2010. Since then she worked for one year with the anti-smoking charity GASP, the Guernsey Adolescent Smokefree Project, before starting at St Sampson’s in 2012.
Last term I decided over breakfast that I needed to do something to make my Year 7 scheme of work on celebrations start off on a more interesting note. I concluded that simply greeting my class at the door and saying “we’re going to be studying religious and non-religious celebrations for the next six lessons” didn’t truly seem to grab my audience, and so I went about thinking of a more interesting way to introduce the topic. By the time I had arrived at school I had decided on a way to ‘parachute’ my students into an engaging lesson. I grabbed myself two student volunteers on the way into the building (whom I bribed with the promise of Maltesers...) to help set up my classroom.
Last month I received an email asking me to write an article entitled ‘Great Ways to Teach Bonfire Night’. Having been a teacher of RS and history for four years, and still not yet lost any of my enthusiasm for the job, I was really keen and immediately agreed to do it.
A community-driven platform for showcasing the latest innovations and voices in schools
Pioneer House
North Road
Ellesmere Port
CH65 1AD
United Kingdom