Medicine through time

As someone who rarely makes use of a textbook in the ‘traditional’ sense, I’ve probably got a rather strange take on what ‘must have’ resources are. I’ve also been lucky enough to be in schools with IT facilities that have been extremely good, and have grown too accustomed to having laptops, projectors, video cameras and the like around. However they’re often used simply because they’re there and aren’t always vital to the learning outcomes. This is a simple selection of things that I’d hate to teach medicine without.

Costume. Now I don’t really like dressing up in the classroom all that much - as anyone who’s met me at SHP conferences will be able to testify, if there’s a threat of me in costume, I’m in hiding - BUT, as much as I feel daft, uncomfortable and way out of my comfort zone, I don’t think I could teach the medicine course as effectively without making use of costume. Why? It’s memorable for the students. If the teacher, a students or a pressganged coleague / guest is in costume and role, then hotseating becomes more ‘real’, the activity is more memorable and the fact that the teacher is making a fool of him/herself is, sadly, enough to make even the most disinterested of 15 year olds pay attention for a short period of time. Costume ideas: a toga is simple enough to create for roleplaying Hippocrates, Galen etc. I’ve got a range of outfits for the medieval and early modern periods from living history weekends that we run, these are great for medieval healers, barber surgeons and the like. Uniforms from either world war are relatively easy to fnd online - usually some on ebay at a reasonable cost - and they’re useful elsewhere in the curriculum as well. Others - take a visit to the drama department and see what they’ve got. With Shakespeare and Dickens being favourites of Drama teachers, there’s a good chance that you could get the kit together for most periods. If your budget can stretch to it, theres always costume hire to consider, though I’d imagine that this would need to be for a ‘big’ activity or project.

Artefacts. Even if they’re improvised, replicas or at a push photos of artefacts, they offer a great deal in the classroom. Some museums offer loans services of artefacts and you might be able to get a tailored box for sectins of the medicine course. Jumble Sales and ebay are also great sources of artefacts for the course. Examples of artefacts and improvisations I use - hand powered drills, rope, saws and hammers are all improvisations to use when looking at surgery. Surgeons tools - bought on ebay for about £10. Herbs, a pestal and mortar set and a few od bottles soon creates a medival doctors surgery and a visit to the Science dept to rummage around their glassware normally roduces something that can pass for a urine jar. Other things - I bought a few boxes from historyboxes.com for KS3 but asked them to adapt the boxes a bit so that it could be used for elements of the KS4 course. Buying might stretch budgets a bit but there are several comapnies scattered around the country who’ll rent out themed boxes of artefacts that can do the job. The best sources of artefacts I’ve found are living history enthusiasts, and I’m lucky in that I know quite a few and, certainly for more recent developments, people in the medical profession as they can sometimes pass on out of date equipment, accounts and images that are of use.

Poster paper - and lots of it! Why? It’s easy to make tabards with it in seconds, so adaptations of exercises is quick and easy; easy to use in group work and it allows the group to present their work without having to go off an create powerpoints etc, whilst also allowing the work to then be displayed; notes on it can be BIG, links can be highlighted easily and its easy to photograph the results.

A big box. A little strange perhaps but students love mysteries and the big box is my teaching equivalent of the magicians hat (though theres no sign of rabbits just yet). It simply allows there to be an element of suprise in lessons, allows for a range of source types to be used (and hidden from view until the right time) and it makes getting a varied collection of resources from one group of students to another very simple. Standard contents for me would be a few extracts from sources or textbooks, a couple of images, an artefact or two and, if needed, tabards, prompt cards and info packs to distribute as and when required. I’ve found that this makes voting exercises more fun and realistic as there’s been close control over what students have had access to - so for beliefs about the Black Death, for example, the box might have produced images of Flaggelants, a bishops hat to prompt a bit of roleplaying and a few sources about the pestilence being Gods Will. This visualises and reenforces understanding of one belief set, which is then analysed, discussed and / or recorded as notes, before moving onto an alternative viewpoint.

Reference Area. I really don’t like just telling students the answer to a question, I much prefer them to figure it out themselves. So a simple solution is the reference area. Simply a collection of reference books, textbooks, journals and print outs in a folder that (hopefully) covers just about any question that they’ll ever come up with. Uses - first and foremost, they don’t ask me for an answer until they’ve tried and failed to find an answer in the reference area. For students who don’t find the answer theres a logging sheet to complete to show what they did to try and find the information - saves them randomly flicking without trying to find anything. Result - they find things out for themselves and I can work with individuals or groups rather than being asked to provide basic information. Also useful when doing Q&A as students who don’t know answers to questions can be asked to find it out themselves, rather than simpl moving the question around to another student - I think this is imortant as tagetted questioning is done to ensure that those specific students know the answers, letting them say ‘don’t know and allowing them to slump back into their chair whilst teachers pet answers for them does them no good at all! The reference area is also great in revision quizzes. If its adaptable enough the contens can be split into 5 or 6 equal sets and given to groups. They then do research / revise quizzes that require them to cite a source of information that proves that they are right. Why do that? It means that they HAVE to use information in sources and extract it, they get used to working with a variety of source types and if they’ve got reference materials there for the quiz you can differentiate the questions given to groups.

Extremely bias sales pitch time - Dynamic Learning in Medicine through time. Ok, I’m bound to say that I couldn’t do without it as I’d be daft not to advertise something I co-authored but I’d find it incredibly difficult to cater for the vast array of needs and abilities in groups I’ve previously taught without having flexible and adpatable IT resources to hand. Most of the time in my classroom there’ll be some students working away from the rest of the class, completing something on computers, with video cameras etc. This is part and parcel of the way that I differentiate, it allows an element of flexibility within the classroom and means that the class, between them, have always covered evrything in a variety of ways - which can then be shared and used by all of them.