Kate Rayner

Hi, everyone, thanks for accessing this HSC hub Community and family studies support resource. I'm Kate Rayner, the Curriculum support advisor in the PDHPE Secondary Education team. This resource is a part of a suite of videos focused on building understanding around the New South Wales Education Standards Authority Glossary of keywords. This resource aims to take a deeper look at the glossary words and how they can be explicitly taught in the subject of Community and family studies. It focuses on the key words most commonly used in HSC examinations.

The CAFs Glossary of key words resources can be accessed and watched in any order. Each resource is designed to build an understanding of a single glossary word, and it does this by breaking that word down, understanding how it can be represented in a marking criteria, and then using students sample responses to demonstrate the language of the word. Each resource models a step by step approach to building understanding. It shows teachers a way that glossary words can be explicitly taught. Teachers may decide they want to use parts of this resource with students as a guide model, with a series of classroom activities, allowing students to demonstrate their understanding of each glossary word and the language of the glossary word in responses.

This resource uses student's sample responses or paragraphs to model the language of the glossary word and will do so in the context of Community and Family Studies called Content Only. It's important to note though, that the glossary of key words can be directly transferred to the option content as well.

Glossary of key words, what do they mean and how do I support my students to use them? The purpose behind the glossary is to help students better prepare for the HSC by showing them that certain key words are used similarly in examination questions across different subjects they're studying. In classrooms, teachers of different subjects could use the glossary to help students to better understand what the exam question in their subject requires. Students should recognize a consistent approach of teachers of different subjects, and get cues to how to approach exam questions. When using key words to construct questions, tasks and marking criteria, it's helpful to ask what the use of the word in a particular question requires students to do. Key words are best discussed with students in a context of questions, content and tasks they're working on, rather than in isolation. Teachers must ensure that they do not use them in ways that conflict with their particular meaning within subjects. For example, a word like evaluate requires a different kind of response in mathematics to that from history. Account for in history requires a different response to that in CAFs. It's important to know where the similarities are and where the differences are. And talking to teachers across different KLA faculties will help to do this.

It's important to explain to students what the glossary of key words are, and why we need to respond to them. We can see the glossary of key words as a set of verbs. And we know a verb is a doing word like skipping or hopping. So, if I asked your students to do something like hop and then gave them the success criteria for it, such as move up and down off the ground continuously and on one foot, what would it look like? How confident do you think they would be to start hopping? How confident would you be to make a judgment on how well they achieved it? Do you think any of them would have skipped? Probably not. And that's because they know what hopping looks like, and you gave them the success criteria to achieve it. The glossary words can be seen in the exact same way, stage four and five of the prelim course are for students to learn what the verb looks like, and build understanding of criteria to achieve success when responding to them. The same way they could achieve success when they responded to the doing word hop. Therefore, the glossary of key words is asking students to do something with the content. The content, the information that's learnt dictated by the syllabus doesn't change, how it's represented on paper does. It's important to know that the complexity of these words changes. Starts with something simple like identify, which involves recall, moving in complexity to a word like explain where students use the skill of identifying multiple concepts, and show the effect of these concepts on each other. To analyse where students are using the skill of identifying concepts, creating a relationship or effect between concepts, and then thinking critically to demonstrate the impact of that relationship. So when teaching these words, we can't just apply the glossary word as it sits with the content in the syllabus. Students should not be rote learning responses, teaching and learning activities are needed that offer the opportunity to think critically about the content to enable opinions to be formed and judgments to be made. Order problem solve so that students would be thinking about impact of actions. This learning and thinking will help students apply these glossary words to any content.

In this CAFs Glossary of key words resource, we'll take a deeper look at the terms compare and contrast. This next section will model a step by step approach to building understanding for these terms compare and contrast. It will show you a way these glossary words can be explicitly taught. This section is designed to be delivered direct to students, teachers may choose to use this for their own learning, or alternatively, they may consider sharing the video direct to their class as they unpack the glossary words together.

Compare and contrast. These words whether written in a question individually or together require you to identify two key concepts and then find the links between them. These links should show how they're the same or the impact or influence or value is the same, or how the two concepts are different. But how do you validate or prove that these concepts are different? That's through the examples you provide. The weakness for some students when responding to questions like this isn't in their content knowledge, but rather how they structure their content.

You can see from the heading that these are considered Middle order glossary words, and that is because of their perceived difficulty. To effectively answer these types of questions you need to go through a series of steps. Please note it's important to know that the number and complexity of steps are less than Higher order glossary words such as analyse, evaluate, or to what extent.

Let's have a quick look at the steps. Step one. In order to show similarities or differences you have to have two concepts. The question will tell you or indicate them. The concepts are usually content points, but they don't have to be. They could be about the similarities between impact influence, value, suitability. Plan this response out carefully, before answering, think about the two concepts. Think about all the characteristics and features of the concepts. Are some of the characteristics the same? If so, these can be matched up into themes. Do they have the same effect? Or are they totally different? You can match these up to create themes. Once you've identified the common themes between the two concepts, whether similar or different, provide the detailed content knowledge of them. Step three, present these two concepts in the same paragraph. The paragraphs will be organized by the themes identified and the two concepts linked through comparative language. These will be modelled on the next slide using some content to show these steps in detail.

In order to support the understanding of this keyword and the steps I've created in the previous slide, I've unpacked the glossary word using the content from research methodology. To put the three steps into a context. The visual on the following slide also helps to show these steps. In compare and contrast, stronger responses demonstrate a student's ability to use the characteristics and features of the concept to create themes, and then show how they're similar or different. Therefore comparing and contrasting. Weaker responses show an inability of the student to organize their content knowledge in this way, or they lack the depth by just defining the two concepts. This is a really different way of thinking and organizing the content. I'm going to unpack the question on screen to show how I use my content knowledge to create themes, to build my answer.

The two concepts within the question of case studies in questionnaires, they're two very different concepts each with their own definition. However, we need to look beyond the definition to create the themes and demonstrate content knowledge. So we're going to look at the characteristics and features of these methodologies. We know the purpose of the methodology is to collect data. We can identify the data that the methodology collects, this will create a theme, who will I go to collect that data? Sources of data can become a theme. Will I collect that data through a sample group? And how will I collect it? For example, the method will be important as well as the size. All of these ideas can be, can create themes, as well as reducing bias resources needed, ethical considerations, and ensuring reliability and validity. For example, when I look at the characteristics and features of the types of data that I collect for case studies, I know that because I'm the researcher, it collects primary data. However, due to the depth of content and a small number of respondents, I'll look together the thoughts and opinions of the respondents and therefore I'm collecting qualitative data. I'll do this using open ended questions. As I look at the characteristics and features of questionnaire, I know again that I'm the researcher so I'm collecting primary data, a similarity. But due to the nature of the questions that I ask and the purpose of why I'm using the questionnaire, I'm going to use close into questions so that the data can be graphed and trends can be created. Therefore, I'm collecting quantitative data, a difference.

Once I've created these themes, such as types of data collected, I can show that I'm comparing this content through a comparative a linking word. So, I know that I'm responding to the glossary would compare. If the question was describe case studies and questionnaires as methodologies, I could simply create two paragraphs, the first relating to case studies, and the second relating to questionnaires. The content however, would remain the same.

On screen is a visual aid showing the three steps for answering a compare and contrast question. You'll see two large boxes representing the two concepts. In this case concept one a case study and concept two a questionnaire. A small white box sits between the two large blue boxes linking the two concepts with comparative language, which kind of looks like a sandwich. These three boxes together represent one paragraph. The theme of the paragraph in this case is the comparison in the types of data these methodologies collect.

I've created this visual to show you how to move from the idea of creating themes for the two concepts given to putting them on paper in a comparative way. You'll see in the next slide that there is still an element of depth of content needed in this type of question. And therefore it's not enough to just define the two concepts and this is the reason that the themes need to be created.

Why is it important we respond to the glossary word? I've used the online program Wordle to create a visual representation, you can see on screen of the language from the marking criteria of the top marks for all the questions that use the glossary words compare and contrast from the last seven years of New South Wales HSC CAFs examinations. The words that showed the characteristic students needed to access the top marks of the marking criteria, were directly copied and pasted from the NASA examination pack into Wordle. For every time a word is repeated, the word within Wordle increases in size. Therefore, the larger the word the more common it was seen in the marking criteria.

Three things have really stood out. The first, the large words are ‘similarities and differences’, meaning for every one of these marking criteria this language was most common and therefore it's essential to show similarities and differences. Surprisingly, the and or seen in the definition of compare is not as large in font size. The second are the words ‘relevant’ and’ examples’. These two words are of equal size to ‘similarities and differences’ and this means that when you show similarities and differences, you also have to use relevant and examples to validate your point. And finally, the words ‘knowledge’ and ‘understanding’ of the content is important. And those two words are prominent in the image to confirm that.

Interestingly, the smaller language around these keywords shows where in the syllabus the comparison questions have come from to date. For example, on screen you can see words like ‘research’, ‘parenting’, ‘roles’,’ individual’, ‘paid’, ‘unpaid’, ‘social’ and ‘work’. Indicating that questions most often come from Research methodology, Parenting and caring and Individual and work. It's important to note that any other area of content could be compared for example, content from groups in context. This is because the simple premise of compare and contrast is to create a comparison between the themes of the concepts, these themes are developed through matching of characteristics and features. And therefore, if students have developed this skill of comparison, they should be able to compare the characteristics and features of any of the course concepts.

In our next section, we'll use a set of classroom activities which can be used in a range of ways as individual tasks for students to work through. These are also available as Word documents for download on the HSC hub. Teachers may choose to use this section for their own learning or use the activities with a class. In this instance, teachers may consider showing the video direct to their class as they unpack the glossary words and work through each activity together. On the following slides are three samples that respond directly to compare and contrast questions. These can be printed and worked on individually or pulled apart as a class. Due to the broad nature of the content where examples are different from what you've been told in class, seek clarification from your teacher.

When reading through these, see if you can identify and highlight to create a visual of the language within the text that shows where the two concepts are link, also known as the comparative language. Write these words on a post-it and create a word bank for yourself, or for a word bank for your classroom. Once you've found the comparative language, look for other writing tips. How often is a comparison made within a paragraph? Is the comparison showing a similarity? Where's that in the paragraph? Is it at the beginning, in the middle or the end? If the sample is showing a difference between the concepts where is that shown in the paragraph? Can you identify with the themes used to create the links between the concepts? Here's the first of three of the sample scripts. Use the sample script below to find the comparative language for the question, compare the suitability of two methodologies for sensitive research topics, six marks.

[Refer to booklet for script]

How did you go? On screen you'll see the exact same script as the previous slide. However, I will draw your attention to the red and blue writing. When you look at this response, and only say one example of comparative language highlighted in red, the language is in comparison to, it showing a difference and is right in the middle of the paragraph with the content knowledge of the two concepts either side. This may make it seem like a weaker response having only one comparative link. However, if you look closer into the depth of the content chosen, there are many differences between the two methodologies, which will count as differences due to the way that themes have been matched. As the characteristics and features of both concepts, a case study and questionnaire unpacked, you will see that the content follows the same themes. The themes that I've linked together relate to the resource of time, the type of data collected, unethical behaviour including integrity of the data. These are highlighted in blue. Because of the marks allocated, six marks and the nature of the themes, I've included these themes within the one paragraph with only the one comparative link. However, if there was a higher mark value allocated, or there was more detail content attached to the themes. I might think about using these themes to create a clear paragraph structure.

For a response like this, there's no right or wrong about the number of paragraphs needed to meet the criteria, only the depth of knowledge, the direct comparison between the two concepts and examples are being looked for. You may wonder why there's no similarities given, however, for a question like this the glossary word is just compare. If we were to refer back to the definition of compare, it shows similarities and slash or differences. If when you get to a question like this, and you feel like there are no similarities, make sure you offer a larger number of differences.

Here is the second of three sample scripts. Use the sample script below to find the comparative language for the question, compare and contrast how available services are in the community, eight marks.

[Refer to booklet for script]

How did you go? On screen you'll see the exact same script as the previous slide. And again, I'm going to draw your attention to the dark red writing It shows all the comparative links. You'll notice that there are more compared to the last script that we pulled apart. And that's because for this question, you were asked to show the similarities and differences or opposites, because of the glossary of key words, combination, compare and contrast. Unlike the last script, we were just asked to compare. You'll notice in the second sentence in the light pink writing, I've outlined the themes which I'll use to create the comparisons such as characteristics of the individual and aspects of the services such as location and confidentiality. For this question, the two concepts, the two groups. However, if I just show the characteristics and features of the two groups, or define the two groups, I'll not be answering the question despite responding to the glossary word.

Here, you need to be strategic about how you create your themes. Once you've recognized where in the syllabus this content is coming from, access to services, themes can be created. However, it's not asking about the services themselves, but rather access to them. So I can't use that learn about dot point. The theme for this response has been created through the learn about dot point from factors affecting access to services. I've taken a critical thinking approach to this response, and this is due to the higher nature of the marks allocated. Though this wouldn't be present in the marking criteria, it just allowed for the themes to be created. The theme of characteristics of the individual within the group, have been compared such as gender and disability, the dot points, the aspects of services such as location has also been compared. Examples such as Telecross and Meals on wheels breaking down location services for one group, compared to the other, have been used to support the statements of comparison, validating them. And finally, the theme of community attitudes leading to more government funding could be themed under the learn about dot point resources. Language that shows the similarities between the groups is for both, and it can be said for both groups, whereas the contrast showing differences is in stark comparison and compared to.

Here's the third of three scripts. Use the sample script below to find the comparative language for the question. For two types of social parents, compare how setting limits can contribute to building a positive relationship with dependence, five marks.

[Refer to booklet for script]

How did you go? Are becoming more confident to identify the comparative language? On screen you can see the exact same script as from the previous slide. And again, I'll draw your attention to the dark red writing showing the comparative links. You will notice that there are both similarities and differences. This response acknowledges the definition of compare as similarities and differences, rather than similarities and or differences. For this question, you were asked to share the similarities and or differences between the two types of social parents and how the limits set influence the relationship between parent and dependent. Here you need to show your understanding of the social parent’s situation, and how the situation when setting limits might need to change to ensure a positive relationship is built. This will be supported through the clear examples that are specific to each type of social parent. This is really important as these examples are highly specific to the social parenting situation to highlight the differences. Therefore, you're showing that you're responding to the glossary word contrast. The language that shows similarities include for both. This can also be said and as neither. The language showing differences includes differs as and in this relationship.

We're now going to have a quick recap of some of the tips that you may have picked up throughout this video. Number one, comparative language must be present within the paragraph along with content knowledge of two concepts that are dictated by the question. Themes can be created by matching up the characteristics and features of the concepts or syllabus content, like in the second sample that we looked at. These themes can be present within the one paragraph depending on the depth of knowledge, or if there's a lot of content knowledge attached to the theme. You can use those to create different paragraphs. Three, writing about two concepts in different paragraphs does not have a direct comparison. Stronger responses will show both similarities and differences, or where there are no identifiable similarities, many differences should be offered. Lastly, statements of comparison must be validated with clear and relevant examples.

So by now you should have collected on post-it notes or in the back of your book, a word bank of comparative language you could apply if you were to get a similar question in the HSC examination. However, think about what other language could be used. Build on the word bank that you've created with some other ways of showing similarities and differences.

Extension activities. The sample paragraphs can be used in lots of different ways. Use the paragraphs that have been given as the beginning paragraph for a whole script. For each of the questions identify exactly where in the syllabus it comes from, and then identify other students learn about dot points, or themes that could be used to create new paragraphs. Use the paragraphs that you've been given to model what the other paragraphs might look like. Think about what the comparative language might sit in your other paragraphs, at the beginning, the middle or the end of the paragraph. Think about the marks that have been allocated. What would happen if the marks changed? Would you read more or less paragraphs? Use the guide of three lines per mark. This is not always the case but it's a general guide, in and right in the space allowed. Be sure to fill up every line, write small and go all the way to the edges of the lines. Time yourself, after planning what your next paragraph might look like, allow yourself the time to write the rest of the response. Finally, replace the compare and contrast glossary word with other glossary words, like asses or discuss. How might change, this change the response. The content won't change, but how you write it on paper will.

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