Countdown Connectives for GCSE exam skills

With the GCSE Year 11 Business Studies exams approaching in a few weeks time, I’ve been working with my students at developing their exam skills. Here’s an activity I tried out today that worked pretty well.

Students simply need a pen and some paper, and you then ask for a volunteer to come up and use this powerpoint slide to select 3 business terms and two connectives. They are choosing blind (a bit like Countdown contestants choosing their numbers for the numbers round, hence the name Countdown Connectives).

I then challenge my students to think through and write a paragraph that uses connectives to make the link between the different business concepts. They are of course free to add in others as well, but must use these three concepts as a minimum. This is something you could ask them to do in pairs or on their own. It can also be timed to add some pace to proceedings. You can give them 4 minutes by using this You Tube Countdown music clip.

Some of the combinations are potentially challenging, but this really gets the students thinking and if you think it’s just too difficult you could offer them a ‘joker’ as an opportunity to swap one concept.

The best part is discussing answers as a class. Today one student wanted to argue that a focus on quality would reduce productivity whilst another took the view it would improve productivity. We discussed the issue and identified that it would depend both upon whether a business used quality control or quality assurance and whether we were looking at the long-term or short-term. Also, the activity can be repeated 2 or 3 more times in class.

Overall I found it a great way of getting students to develop answers that link together concepts and use connectives to explain the chain of consequences from an issue.