This resource has many features which make it accessible to students to work through unaided, particularly the more able students. However, it is not intended that it should be treated as a game-type activity, a stand-alone resource, nor a complete learning package. For students to gain the full benefit of the theory tips and activities, teachers need to be fully interactive with the students to support them with developing their skills at applying theory to a business case. From there, students should be expected to extend their critical thinking through the skills of analysis and evaluation. Several of the activities are based on this concept and this is seen as the true student support and developmental value of this resource. In those cases it is unlikely that even the most able student will be able to work through the entire activity without some teacher input for guidance.

This resource is intended to develop students’ abilities at applying theory to a particular business situation. It is therefore essential that students become very familiar with the V Print ‘story’ and should be regularly accessing the profiles of the office staff. These profiles can can also be downloaded and printed for classroom use.

Download Profiles

Many of the activities which help students extend their critical thinking skills do so through the use of a ‘writing frame’ and give an option to print off their work. However, students should be strongly urged to view these writing frames merely as exemplars for learning and personal development followed by critical review and re-writing, and not to see them as an end product for portfolio work. A good standard portfolio task would need to demonstrate the concepts raised in the ‘writing frames’ more than once and from different perspectives.

All of the learning chunks have at least two activities which have to be accessed in the order in which they are presented. It is appreciated that for some classes it will not be possible or practicable to complete all activities in one chunk at one sitting. This will necessitate those targeting, say task 3, working through the previous activities once again. However, it is not envisaged that, if the proposed activity is to be delivered through a teacher-led demonstration, working through the previous activities is unlikely to be any more time consuming for teachers than preliminary preparation for any normal classroom activity. When students are asked to start work on, say, activity 2 having gone through activity 1 in a previous lesson, it would be expected that they should be able to the preceding tasks quickly. If they cannot, they clearly need to be revisiting them anyway.

Each of the learning chunks is intended to be a stand-alone activity and they are listed in alphabetical order. Successful completion of any one of the chunks is not dependent upon completion of an earlier chunk. One exception to this is that teachers may feel it useful, before going through the ratio analysis chunk, to have worked through the balance sheet and profit and loss chunks first.

The following notes are intended to give guidance on delivery of each of the learning chunks, to advise on recommended expected prior learning and give suggestions for extension activities. Whilst they are not intended to constitute complete lesson plans, they have been provided in Word format which will enable those teachers who wish to use the copy and paste facility to incorporate relevant parts into their lesson plans to do so. Teachers may find the following lesson plan template useful for this purpose.

Download Lesson Plan Template

Download this entire section as a handbook. The handbook includes this page of notes and all the individual guidance sheets listed below.