This week on What Even Is RME?, I am joined by the brilliant Ray Somerville! Ray is a fantastic RME teacher based in Fife (who actually covered my maternity leave a few years ago!). We sat down for our very first in-person podcast record to talk about the realities of teaching RMPS, from 45-minute commutes fueled by musical showtunes to the weirdness of stepping away from the classroom mid-term for maternity leave.

Ray shares some incredibly practical advice for navigating the BGE and Senior Phase, including why she champions open-book assessments for S2, how she successfully teaches Dream Psychology and Freud to S3s, and why you should treat your SQA questioning exactly like an order at a local bakery! Plus, stick around for a hilarious S1 Canva assessment story that proves you can never predict what teenagers will do with technology.

In this episode, we discuss:

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  S3 Electives & Core: Teaching Dream Psychology, exploring Freud, and why giving S3s a choice in how they are assessed (from posters to podcasts) transforms engagement in Medical Ethics.

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  The Assessment Debate: Why Ray uses open-book assessments for S2 Evil & Suffering, and how it directly builds National 4/5 skills.

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  The Canva Voice Note Incident: How an S1 assessment on the Prince of Egypt accidentally resulted in the wildest project title ever.

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  The "Stephens Bakery" Hack: How to stop pupils from answering with "because that's my opinion" by channeling your local bakery and constantly asking, "But why?"

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  New Teacher Advice: The absolute necessity of reading SQA course reports and Education Scotland documents to get candidates through their exams.

• Dream Guests & Mastermind: Why the Dalai Lama would win over the toughest S4 classes, the beauty of teaching Judaism, and some surprise Doctor Who trivia!

🎟️ STARME Festival of Learning: Tickets officially close TODAY! If you haven't grabbed yours, be quick. I will be hosting a session called 'How to Solve a Problem like RME?' where I take a deep dive into my recent research. Come along and say hello!

💬 The Faculty Debate: Thank you to everyone who got involved in the Instagram discussion sparked by the last episode regarding faculty structures and RME's place in the curriculum. Keep those thoughts coming!

Join the Conversation: I would love to know: Are you Team Open-Book or Team Closed-Book for BGE assessments?

Let me know your thoughts!

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  Instagram/X: @learningRMPS

• Email: learningrmps@gmail.com