I work with many client schools right across the UK and more than one colleague has woefully stated: ‘It’s as if I haven’t taught them anything!’. Of course, we know this isn’t true. But as the pressure mounts across the whole raft of subjects our Year 11s are faced with, and every teacher is testing and tweaking, reteaching and revising, then it’s no wonder many of our students are struggling to retain all of our key messages and top tips.
Since November of last year, I’ve been busy marking mock examination papers to support many of my client schools. It’s a very interesting process to see the work that students are producing from many different schools and many different localities. What becomes even more interesting is that the misconceptions and the areas which students find most difficult to pin down are very similar indeed.
Having served as a Principal Examiner and with years of experience in both developing and applying mark schemes, using those mark schemes with students has always been the key to my methodologies and the success of my own students. A mark scheme should break down with absolute clarity the key components of the Assessment Objectives. Armed with that knowledge, students then have the toolkit to be able to answer the questions on the paper with more confidence and precision.
It was with those principles in mind that I developed the content for the AQA English Language revision pods on GCSEPod. It was only recently that I revisited those pods myself. It’s one thing to type up the content at home and send it off but quite another to see what the clever folk at GCSEPod have done with it. Each of the reading questions has a crisp concise pod, with clear graphics and a really engaging voiceover. We all know how important it is for students to hear those key messages in a voice that isn’t our own! The key benefit is that the pods are literally a couple of minutes each, yet they unpack the questions, the key aspects of the mark scheme and a provide a clear and useful model.
You can find a link to dip into them here
The revision pods would be perfect for those final few lessons – play them as your lesson starter before practising a key question; despatch them to those students who didn’t quite hit their target mark on specific questions; whizz them out through study leave or use them for the perfect ‘night before the exam’ quick recap.
Bearing in mind the weighting of the writing marks, the pods which deal with spelling, punctuation and grammar would also be worth dipping into with less confident writers – it’s always worth one last try at those apostrophes!
Check out our GCSE English Language SPG content here
And if you haven’t discovered Key Stage 3 pod yet – where have you been? This is definitely the time to explore this exciting new departure. I was very privileged to map the English content for this development. It felt like a treat.
It may well be that those students who are now really struggling to stay engaged with GCSE content, could dip into the Year 9 pods and recap on their comprehension skills, their skills of analysis with fresh fiction and non-fiction material and try out some more inspirational writing tasks. Revision by stealth perhaps ... but why not?
Setting up those Key Stage 3 pods for students through Year 7, 8 and 9 will embed those skills step by step through Key Stage 3 so that one day in the not-too-distant future, you’ll be relaxing with a hot cross bun in the Easter hols, not speed planning yet another last-minute revision session. Now that’s got to be worth a try.
Take a look at our KS3 English Year 9 pods samples here
Written by Jo Heathcote - former English teacher and Head of English with three decades of experience. She is a former Principal Examiner and Moderator for two major examination boards, a published author and content creator for GCSEPod.
