Summer Exams

AQA	8700/1	Paper 1 – Explorations in Creative Reading and Writing
AQA	8700/2	Paper 2 – Writers’ Perspectives and Viewpoints

The main support students will receive in the upcoming months is during their English lessons- these are extremely valuable and students should be putting high levels of effort into each and every one, however there are also many ways you can improve your English progress outside of lesson times. 

• English Exam Questions  

  • If you would like to take an exam question home, please speak to your class teacher. Students are encouraged to complete a question every week as part of their independent revision and study and hand it in to be marked by English teachers. 

• Texts and revision guides are available to purchase via Wisepay (see more information below).   

• English language revision-  

  • Use the activities in your revision guide 
  • Read as many fiction and non-fiction texts as you can 
  • Create a bank of inspiring images to use for your creative writing 
  • Read the news and debate ideas presented by the news (use this in your transactional writing) 
  • Request exam papers and time yourself answering questions- return these to teachers to be marked. 

• Revision timetables with planned in time for English  

• Regularly re-evaluating progress-  

  • Students should be asking themselves- what is my weakest topic? What do I need to focus on? Have I made improvements on a topic? Do I now need to move on to something different? We encourage students to regularly liaise with their English teachers to have practice work marked and to identify any areas of improvement.
• Show my Homework-  
  • Students are set a past paper to complete over the term. As students learn the skills required in lessons, they are to complete the question at home. Students are to hand in a completed paper at the end of the term to be marked by their class teachers. 

    Exam Summary

    Please find attached an Exam Summary.

    Paper 1 Language focuses on fiction texts and students are required to write a narrative or description worth 50% of the exam.

    Paper 2 Language focuses on non-fiction texts and students are required to write their own persuasive piece such as a: speech, letter or article on a given topic. This question is also worth 50% of the marks available for this paper.

    A comprehensive revision website for both Language papers is ‘Mr Bruff’ on You Tube, which can be accessed here: AQA English Language Paper 1 and  AQA English Language Paper 2

    Revision Powerpoint from Assembly on 27th February

    Revision Support

1.       https://www.aqaenglishrevision.com/home 

Really useful for quick, bitesize bits of information on the exams (and no jargon!). Quick quizzes, etc, to help you prepare. 

2.       Do some quizzes on FreeRice 

These are great vocabulary quizzes for English Language.  Your teacher can set up a group and you can compete against each other. 

Every correct answer gifts rice to the United Nations Food Programme 

Find it on www.freerice.com 

You will need to sign in and set up an account. 

Happy quizzing! 

3.       Checking out Genius.com for poetry annotations! 

This great website which is free to all allows users to add to annotations of a vast range of poems and it allows you to access them.  Whilst we need to be critical about what we are getting from this (because anyone can add), I can rarely say I have felt anything is wrong on there.  ALL YOUR POWER AND CONFLICT POEMS ARE ON THERE and it is great for revision.  Check it out on: 

https://genius.com/John-agard-checking-out-me-history-annotated 

This URL is for ‘Checking out me History’ but there is one for all poems.  Just click on the part of the poem and read the annotation.  If you search Genius poetry + Poem title you’ll find it 

4.       Listening to a revision podcast! 

GCSE English podcast has a new episode every week and focuses on how to answer exam questions. Each episode is on a topic linked to a set text or a language paper. You can look through the episodes and pick any that support your revision. Remember to click on the bio of each episode to download a handout, complete with the question they are discussing, quotations, vocabulary and contextual information. 

5.       Using your learning style to help you revise. 

For example, if songs/ rhymes help you remember things, can you turn quotations into a rap like the example below? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dABvuspS9Vo 

For those who learn by doing/ listening, consider the look, cover, say, check technique or work in pairs to quiz one another. 

For visual learners, using dual coding or creating relationship maps.

 

 Additional Support Sessions from 4pm-5pm on a Thursday