BTEC First Business by Carol Carysforth and Mike Neild

Teaching Business & Economics, Summer 2005 by Emery, Claire

BTEC First Business by Carol Carysforth and Mike Neild. Heinemann ISBN 0435401386, 408 pages.

This book contains the 3 core units and 3 of the available specialist units, making it possible to teach the whole course if you have planned to teach the course around a textbook. The layout and style is mostly student friendly, though there are sections where the amount of reading can put weaker candidates at a disadvantage.

I was disappointed that not all the units we had chosen were included in the book and we had to wait for the accompanying tutor file for unit 9. Despite this, each unit is covered comprehensively and this did give us the confidence that we were delivering the course at the right level. This was an important positive point about the book as we were all new to BTEC teaching, having just moved away from GNVQ Intermediate for our one-year sixth form course.

The 'Over to You' sections provide good activities for group work and allow personalised learning to take place once the section has been taught. It was refreshing to find that the focus of these sections was working in various size groups. We found it very useful, especially at the beginning of the year when students were not that familiar with their peers, to use these short activities with varying groups of students to allow them to get to know each other and to learn to work in many teams. We have found that they soon became used to moving around the group and very quickly learned each other's strengths.

The section reviews provide good activities for groups of students to test their understanding of the theory contained in the unit. It was easy to pick out the concepts that needed to be reviewed or revised with the class prior to the assignment being set.

The 'Business Matters' boxes were very useful as they provided real examples of the concepts being taught and we found them a good starting point for further research activities. These short sections were also excellent starting points for class discussion and debate about the issues/concepts being taught at that time. Once students had looked at this section, usually together with staff in the classroom, it was easy to ask them to go away and find out similar information about their own chosen business. This meant that by the time we actually set assignments much of the groundwork had been completed. This also gave the students the confidence to question their businesses in a way that gave them the right information for their tasks. The students made good use of the Richer Sounds StudentZone for units 1, 2 and 3, especially the finance sections, which bring some reality into a topic they find difficult.

The occasional 'talking point' sections provide a good start for a proper class debate. It was easy to give each team one of the statements to research and let them go away and write an argument. We also used these in a slightly different way by asking each team to prepare a PowerPoint presentation of their argument, helping with the skills they need in other areas of the course but in a more non-threatening way. Part of the enterprise unit requires them to present a business plan and answer questions; having practised these skills in a group situation, we found they were happy and confident when being assessed.

There are many references to associated web sites for each topic and this helped with the planning of more student centred lessons. Asking students to research and report back on their findings produced much better results than expected as the links had usually been well planned and provided the right information for the task.

Overall, the book is good value for money and is complemented well by the tutor file and CD. The file is, as always with copyright free materials, quite expensive, but a must if you choose the units omitted from the book. The only criticism I would make is the amount of prose can be a major hurdle for a weaker candidate and parts of the book would have benefited from more illustrations or pictures to make it more welcoming for some students.

Claire Emery, Head of Business Ed, Barr Beacon Language College, Walsall.