A Level Sociology
We are really pleased you are looking at studying
A Level Sociology at Blackpool Sixth.
Our friendly Social Science team can’t wait to welcome you and have asked us to share some books and documentaries they think will help prepare you for starting your course. Hope you enjoy!
BTEC Health & Social Care
We are really looking forward to welcoming you to study BTEC Health and Social Care at Blackpool Sixth.
Our friendly staff have created a list of books and programmes you may find interesting. Don’t worry about getting through them all – we know there is a lot on the list, but this will hopefully give you something to work on whilst you are at home.
Films:
- Wonder – (PG) Inspiring story of a boy with facial differences who enters the fifth grade, attending a mainstream elementary school for the first time. Coping with being different. Coping with life/life events
- Hidden figures – (PG) Anti discrimination. Care values
- Still Alice – (12A) Story of a woman living with Alzheimer’s disease. Illness/Disorders
- My sister’s keeper – (12A) “The only way to save your daughter is to sacrifice her sister”. Anna has never been given a choice: she was born to be her sister Kate’s bone marrow donor and she has always given Kate everything she needs. Relationships/family
- Three identical strangers – (12A) Identical triplets become separated at birth and adopted by three different families. Years later, their amazing reunion becomes a global sensation. Relationships/family
- Bohemian Rhapsody – (12A) Freddy Mercury defies stereotypes and convention to become one of history’s most beloved entertainers. Lifestyle factors/social & cultural stereotypes
- Me before You – (12A) A young and quirky woman becomes a caregiver for a wealthy young banker left paralysed from an accident two years earlier. Life events/formal & informal care/disability
- The Children Act – (12A) Adam Henry has leukaemia. His doctors want to perform a blood transfusion but his parents are Jehovah’s Witnesses, and believe that having a blood transfusion is against biblical principles. Illness/ethics/relationships
- To the bone – (15 Netflix) Eating disorders/anorexia Diet and appearance
- Sorry we missed you (15) Ricky and his family have been fighting an uphill struggle against debt since the financial crash. Social & cultural factors/income & wealth/life circumstances
- The Upside – (12A) The relationship between a wealthy man with quadriplegia and a recent unemployed ex-convict. Disability/relationships
TV programmes:
- Babies : their wonderful world – BBC. Explores how the first 2 years of life shapes the adults we become. Infancy development/lifestages
- The secret life of 4 and 5 year olds – Channel 4. Great for looking at childhood development/lifestages (especially socialisation skills)
- Old people’s home for 4 year olds – Channel 4. How the company of 4 year olds helped to improve the mood, mobility and memory of the elderly. Lifestages.
- Born to be different – Channel 4. The pressures and joys of bringing up a disabled child. https://www.channel4.com/programmes/born-to-be-different/ Disability/infancy and childhood/life events.
- Speech journey – You Tube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt7y1IM2jOM How children learn to talk from birth to 5 years old. Intellectual development
- Mum, Dad, Alzheimer’s and Me – You Tube. Real life story investigating the care of Alzheimers sufferers in the UK. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LprTLaO1AF0 Old age/disorders
- Louis Theroux, Extreme Love: Dementia – BBC 2 Sufferers and carers explore the struggle of living with dementia. Disorders/formal and informal carers https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01gvt26
- The restaurant that makes mistakes – Channel 4. Volunteers living with some form of dementia run a pop up restaurant in Bristol. Middle – Old age/disorders
- The big hospital experiment – BBC. A group of volunteers embark on a social experiment, with a shortage of staff, how can they help on the frontline of the NHS? Care values/Health care services
- Britain’s hidden hungry – BBC. Investigates the growing importance of charity foodbanks to thousands of hungry people across the UK by following the stories of three users of a foodbank. Diet and appearance.
- Supersize v Superskinny – Channel 4. Dieting and extreme eating lifestyles. Diet and appearance
- Rio Ferdinand: “Thinking Out Loud: Love, Grief and Being Mum and Dad” Talks at Google. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgoRcxm5BUk Coping with life events
- Rio and Kate: becoming a step family. Rio Ferdinand’s fiancée Kate Wright integrates into the family as a step mum https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000f9sg Coping with life events/family units
- Driven : The Billy Monger Story. The remarkable story of 18-year-old Billy Monger as he attempts to become the first ever amputee to race competitively in a single-seater racing car https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06qx4gt Life events (unexpected)
- 24 hours in A & E – Channel 4. Emergency cases entering A & E. Life events
- Health before the NHS – The road to recovery https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y7zeZPfD8k The shocking story of the health of Britain before the NHS. Care values/health care services
- Care – BBC drama https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EJXDk-B8h0 Discrimination/disability
- DIY S.O.S. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006pnjk Friends, family and local trades help to transform the homes of families with special needs across Britain. Barriers to accessing services/physical barriers
- Crisis in Care: BBC Panorama https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005jpf Panorama reveals the failings of our social care system, as our population gets older and more of us need help with day to day living. Old age/care services
- The Nine to Five with Stacey Dooley https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p06zhfvw/the-nine-to-five-with-stacey-dooley-series-1-2-caring-and-sharing Stacey Dooley takes five teenagers to a care home for work experience. Types of support/voluntary support/old age
- Katie Piper: My beautiful face – recovery after acid attack. Self-esteem/self-confidence/ lifestyle
- Call the Midwife – BBC life events/childbirth/formal support
- Jesy Nelson – BBC 3 Little Mix star Jesy Nelson goes on a journey of rehabilitation as she opens up about abuse she has suffered at the hands of cyberbullies. Social/cultural factors that affect development
Books:
- David Pelzer – A Child Called It
- Davide Pelzer – A Man Named Dave
- Adam Kay – This is Going to Hurt
- Brian Conaghan – The Weight of a Thousand Feathers
- Alex Michaelides – The Silent Patient
- Richard Shepherd – Unnatural Causes
- Malala Yousafzai – I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban
- R J Palacio – Wonder
- Angie Thomas – The Hate U Give
- Michael Newton – Savage Girls and Wild Boys: A History of Feral Children
- Ray Jones – The Story of Baby P: Setting the record straight
- Hope Daniels – Tainted Love
- Jojo Moyes – Me before You
- Jen Pedro Roy – Good Enough
- Emma Healey – Elizabeth is Missing
- John Holt – How Children Learn
- John Holt – How Children fail
- Oliver Sacks – The Man who mistook his wife for a Hat
- Tessa Livingstone – Child of our Time
- Jennifer Niven – All the Bright Places
- Malorie Blackman – Pig Heart Boy
- Meredith Russo – If I was your Girl
- John Green – The Fault in our Stars
- Dr Judith Rapoport – The Boy Who Couldn’t Stop Washing: Experience and Treatment of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
- Paul Kalanithi – When Breath becomes Air
- Henry Marsh – Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery
- Rachel Lippincott – Five Feet Apart
- Henry Marsh – Admissions
- Bill Bryson – The Body: A Guide for Occupants
- Christie Watson – The Language of Kindness: A Nurse’s Story
- Suzi Brent – Nee Naw: Real Life Dispatches from Ambulance Control
- Malorie Blackman – Noughts and Crosses
- Melvin Burgess – Junk
- Alexander Masters – Stuart: A Life Backwards
- Torey Hayden – Just Another Kid
- Clare Mackintosh – After the End
Worksheets:
Here are some fun worksheets that you can print off to have a go at at home to help prepare you for starting a BTEC Health and Social Care course at Blackpool Sixth. Don’t worry if you don’t have a printer, just have a think about the answers and write them down.
Level 3 Criminology
Criminology Media Project
As part of your extended learning, you will be expected to complete a series of reports about criminology in the media. There are many TV Shows, Films, Books, Magazines and Websites about Criminology – it will be your task to watch, read and research different areas of Criminology and write a short report about each of them.
Below is not an extensive list – but it should help to get you started. You do not need to watch or read everything on this list, these are just recommendations!
FILMS
- 12 Angry Men (U) – A jury deliberates behind closed doors on the fate of someone accused of murder. One lone dissenter within the jury (played by Henry Fonda) pleads a compelling case to convince the other eleven jurors that this is not a clear-cut case, unveiling and challenging prejudices and preconceptions as they arise in the debate.
- The Stanford Prison Experiment (15) – A film adaptation of a psychological experiment by Phillip Zimbardo into societal roles. Zimbardo assigns college students in America the role of either a prisoner or prison guard and places them in a mock prison to simply watch how they behave. What do you think will happen? What would you do in this situation?
- Bowling for Columbine (15) – Bowling for Columbine is a 2002 American documentary film written, produced, directed, and narrated by Michael Moore. The film explores what Moore suggests are the primary causes for the Columbine High School massacre in 1999 and other acts of gun violence. He focuses on the background and environment in which the massacre took place and some common public opinions and assumptions about related issues. The film also looks into the nature of violence in the United States.
TV SHOWS/DOCUMENTARIES
Amanda Knox- first watch the documentary on netflix then watch the BBC documentary on youtube- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erla7Ley4Tw
Record your views on the case following each documentary- did you notice any changes?
Any of the documentaries in the BBC series- Love and Hate crime https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05r3vw3/episodes/player
- The Mind Explained – Netflix
- Catfish- always on MTV!
- Killer: In the Mind of Aaron Hernandez – Netflix
- Ted Bundy- Netflix
- The Confession Killer- Netflix
- I am killer – Netflix – This might be something you wouldn’t have thought of as a first pick, but psychologically, this is a very interesting topic. In I am a Killer, criminals who have received the death penalty relay the events for which they have been convicted from their own perspective. Speaking from death row, these criminals give you a very different side to the stories you hear about on the news. Along with the stories, the events are re-enacted without being too graphic. Do these killers feel guilty? Some do, but not all respond in a way you might want to see (with remorse).
Some come across as (surprisingly?) regular people, while others seem closer to the “stereotypical” image you may have of a murderer. This can make the series unsettling at times, but also turns it into a very compelling watch. I am a Killer doesn’t veer either way of the judgement, you’re left to make up your own mind about what has happened. How guilty do you think they are? It’s a well thought-out series, and definitely interesting for anyone interested in psychology. Especially for fans of criminology, forensic psychology and social psychology; this is a good one.
- Mindhunter – Netflix – This one is topically related to I am a Killer, but is set in the late 1970s. As you may know, compared to all the big fields of science – chemistry, physics, biology etc. – psychology is quite young. During the time the series is set criminal psychology and profiling were just about starting to gain serious interest. The premise of the series revolves around FBI agents and a psychologist from the FBI’s behavioural science unit who interview serial killers in the hopes of gaining insight as to why these people turned out this way. They hope to be able to apply this knowledge to solving future cases.
- True Detective – IMDB describes the series as ‘seasonal anthology series in which police investigations unearth the personal and professional secrets of those involved, both within and outside the law’. It’s often described as a dark, brooding and brilliant detective drama, with an interest in the minds of all those involved in the crime. It switches between present times and flashbacks, and has garnered a lot of praise not only for its storylines, but also for the dramatic and thoughtful way it is shot.
VIDEOS
Type criminology into youtube and take your pick. There are TED Talks, CrashCourse videos and so much more. If you can, copy and paste the URL into your Criminology Media Project Review. Below are a few videos of specific events which are interesting and relevant to the criminology course we study.
- Mods & Rockers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFL54R9g5Io
- Jamie Bulger https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jamie+bulger+documentary
- Young gunman Panorama https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3O3bh59dRA
- Hillsborough – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU5b7kfwVkA
OJ Simpson – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugdTdHiVfYI&t=3s - if you have Netflix, please watch https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/80083977
Damilola Taylor – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA8669b7gKk&t=2s - Stephen Lawrence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsHwKPE0mjU&t=28s –
- Timothy Evans (10 Rillington Place) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSL_zNIxM-k
- Sally Clark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F03Wf3Ivzs
- Barry George https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP__n6s4lZU
- Babies behind bars https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nErmW89_hr0
A Level Psychology
