Summer Examinations

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 literature revision activities-  
  • Use the activities in the revision guides 
  • Re-read the texts and annotate them 
  • Create mind-maps exploring themes  
  • Characters and key quotations 
  • Create comparisons of the poems 
  • Create revision cards where you have exploded quotations. 
  • Once you feel confident with your knowledge of the texts, start to complete timed responses and hand them in to your English teacher to be marked.
  • Revise dual coding  
  • Use GCSEPod and Massolit to revise the texts and complete topic/ module quizzes.
  • Once you feel confident with your knowledge of the texts, start to completed timed responses and hand them in t your English teacher 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? 

• Show my homework- 

  • Students will be set weekly quotations in their literature lectures. They will be quizzed on these quotations every Wednesday.

• Exam Summary

  Please find attached an Exam Summary.

  Students have to write essays on a given theme or character. The texts (with revision website links) our students have studied are: 

  • A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens (students in Mrs Brown’s and Miss Magnay’s class have studied Jekyll and Hyde, RL Stevenson, instead)   A Christmas Carol or Jekyll and Hyde
  • An Inspector Calls, JB Priestley An Inspector Calls
  • Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet revision videos
  • Power and Conflict Poetry from the AQA Anthology: Power and Conflict revision

  Students can also make mind maps on characters and themes, flash cards of key quotations to memorise. Furthermore, they can write and bring in practice essays for their teachers to mark.

  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
       1. Drop in sessions 4pm-5pm on a Thursday

2. Stretch and Challenge Club

Thursday 4pm- 5pm. A club is for students currently working at the top band, Grade 7-9. These sessions are lecture based and explore critical theories