Understanding AQA English GCSE

Here is a resource that I made today to help my students understand the structure of their examinations in GCSE English. It gives you a way to teach ‘the big picture’ in an active fashion by presenting the students with a partially completed chart of the two examinations. They are then asked to use the [...]

What makes you tick?

Just before I switched on my laptop, I was marking Year 10 English homework. My favourite method of marking does not involve sitting with a huge pile of scripts isolated from the writers but sometimes it works out that way [And yes, I have a 'favourite type of marking' - odd comment I know but [...]

Exam keywords game

Just how do you teach the idea of identifying examination keywords? Well, you could try shooting ducks…
Recently I was working with Judith on a series of starters for less able students to teach the idea of identifying keywords in examination questions. We made several really good resources (if I say so myself) and I was [...]

Another blow to autonomy and professionalism

The trouble with focussing every school on ‘results, results, results’ and its position in the league table is that teachers pass this stress on to their students who sometimes want to take short cuts with their assessment. There are stories of middle class parents who provide such short cuts by effectively writing coursework for their [...]

Thinking ahead in DT

I get about a bit. Er-hum, maybe I should clarify that – I get to work with quite a few subject areas. Recently I worked with a Design and Technology department that was concerned about their students’ ability to anticipate difficulties that they might face when working on a given project. It was a fair [...]