any secondary English teachers?

Please don't pre plan a story for AQA. I mark the exam and we were told in training that if the story did not fit then it will be capped at level 2/3 (grade 3-6)

I teach mine to do a description along the lines of ...

P1 set the scene, weather and the whole picture
P2 change perspective (time/person/inside/outside)
P4 one sentence paragraph to change the tempo
P5 another perspective
P6 link to the start (bad weather becomes good etc)

Hmm the marks students get in English GCSE are extremely important to every secondary school. Your DD will certainly have been introduced to all the elements of the exam she is going to take.
Be careful how you interact with your daughter here, you might add to the pressure.
Encourage her to be calm, read questions carefully, answer the question, show what she knows, use her time appropriately across the different questions and the marks they are worth.
Encourage her to speak to her English teacher / head of department and make a few concise notes about what to focus on if she feels panicky.
Step back.

Hmm may have misunderstood the question. To clarify, a copy of the mock paper must be retained by the school, but the pupil can have a copy (or the original) to take home.

They do have to keep the mocks. It's post-covid from JCQ, in the 'unlikely' event that exams are cancelled. There are strict rules these days on how the mocks need to be done, and that a copy needs to be retained.

No, they don't have to keep the
mocks.

At this point, I'd leave it and focus on the exams that are sooner - lit 1 is on the 13th. I'll send some stuff tomorrow.

Yea, she will get in to sixth form with grades for her subject in most places, or at least in the school where I teach.

Please follow encourage her not to pre write a story and just shoehorn it in. She will
lose quite a lot of marks for not addressing the task. The best approach is to attempt the descriptive question- the narrative question is often not answered well.

I do find it hard to believe that she hasn’t looked at Paper 2 at all. It is only four weeks until the exam!

If you pm me your email, I can send you some.

We wouldn't, I'm afraid. We don't offer resit.

The mark scheme talks about purpose and audience. If it doesn't meet those, it's a limiting factor.

Mine did this, he hates English but got a 9. The story option is easier IMO if you write a descriptive story. He planned two very descriptive stories, one on waiting for results in a hospital and one about a mythical beast. The trick is being able to make your story fit whatever the title could be. I would recommend she look back at titles from past papers with all different boards and think about how she'd make her stories fit.

I am an examiner. Please tell her that if it doesn't meet the task, she will lose marks.

In addition to all above, tell her it doesn't have to be true! If she's describing her favourite place, or Christmas the examiners won't know if she doesn't really have a naughty little brother or dog who she has brilliantly described!

Checklist. They are looking for accurate punctuation, paragraphing, a variety of sentence lengths and structures, good vocabulary, similes and metaphors . .

Handy hint. Start with a one word sentence. 'Rain! As I pulled back the slightly musty curtains, I watched the raindrops slide down the outside of my window. How could there still be enough water left in heaven for it still to be raining? . . .

Dog hair! When I remember Alfie, the first thing I remember is not his fabulous tail, sweeping everything off the table, nor his chocolate eyes gazing up hopefully at mealtimes, but dog hair! It got everywhere!

Handy hint 2. If you are stuck for an ending, go back to that original word.

Dog hair. What wouldn't I give to spend one more day, cleaning my Alfie's endless dog hair!

HTH

Mine worked on describing weather, so had prepared good descriptors, you can literally google how to describe rain etc and pick out the best bits from several suggestions. They also had people descriptors, so older is better as you can describe wrinkles, stooping, shuffled walking etc. Again google is your friend and synonyms.

AQA has a lot of info on youtube, Bruff as above but also Mr Salles covers all this too and I really rate him. Remember, they are 16, they are not expecting war and peace but good use of language. Mine did a different exam board where there is no photo and they did something by day and the same place by night, ie a children's playground so lots of colours in the day time, laughter, but at night a monochrome place of shadows. So work on those sorts of things.

As a parent you can look at the mark scheme and examiner's reports and find the exemplars, what is a good story? Also in there should be different levels of stories too ie this one is a grade 4 because of this and this one is a 7. Good luck.

I’ve advised my daughter to think of some life experiences she has had that are story worthy and then on the day see if any of them fit in to a theme category.

for example, if you remember a Christmas dinner where everything got burned that might fit into themes like “a family occasion”, “a disaster”, “An unexpected turn of events” etc etc. it’s amazing how many different ways you can spin one story. If you’ve got two or three in your back pocket before you start it might help.

Description much easier than story - I always say imagine you are a camera - record what you can see (hear, smell, feel and taste too) - just as a camera can zoom into areas of interest, so should you. Then zoom out. It’s important they connect the paragraphs as the mark scheme looks for a joined-up piece.

An extremely crude version might go:

Storm clouds gather on the horizon, like an approaching army. The weak sun falters. The clouds advance, heavy with the raindrops which will soon spill onto the people below.
A small man, old and slightly stooped, raises his eyes to the sky. He holds out a gnarled hand, waiting for the inevitable drip. It does not come.
Surrounding the man, people rush about busily darting in and out of lit-up shops, which look like jewels on this overcast day.
A young mother drags her tiny daughter along the pavement. The girls eyes well with tears that threaten to spill like the raindrops. The mother tugs her chubby hand, as the girl slows to inspect the moss growing between cracks in the paving slabs.
Then suddenly, the first of the raindrops plummets to earth, landing at exactly the same spot the girl is staring at. Eyes look heavenward as shoppers rush to put up umbrellas. Another November day.

This is a good video to watch:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fMZf-KblcL4

I was looking at this with my son a couple of days ago. We looked at a paper online, there were lots of blank pages so loads of space for the plan, which it advised to do under the question. As PP above, there was a descriptive question and a story based one. I advised my son to do the descriptive one because I thought he would find it easier to get going with that rather than have to plan a story, which is something he struggles with. He has good language skills but seems to freeze and spend so long thinking when it is a story that he doesn’t have time to do much.

For writing to describe - describe an overview of the whole image - perhaps weather/atmosphere. Isolate four different focal areas in the image - so could be a puddle on the floor, a person in the picture, a rainbow. Describe each focal point using figurative language (similes, metaphors, etc). Link your paragraphs e.g below the angry clouds, a sinewy man stands waiting for the inevitable first drip of rain. When she’s finished the different focal points zoom out to the whole and finish with the big picture. Does that make sense?

The creative writing is either a description inspired by an image, or a story based on a title.

Look on the exam board website - there will be some papers there to look at.

Plans are absolutely allowed and definitely encouraged.