Are they stil allowed to take the texts into the English GSCE exam?

[Titsywoo]

DD is in year 7 and apparently they are starting to study Romeo and Juliet now as it is a GCSE text and they don't get to take it into the exam so they need to learn it by heart .

Surely she has this wrong?

Pepper I have explained myself many times over. I was responding to claims that the uk had no closed book exams when they do. I made an assumption (for which I have apologised) that AQA were the same as it was when I last taught it. Until you were rude in your response I was polite in my responses. You are the one that looked a fool by accusing me of not being a teacher and not knowing basic facts - when you made exactly the same mistake by questioning if I taught in the UK as there are no closed book exams (there are)

My daughter will be sitting her AQA English GCSE exams in a few weeks and will not be able to take books into the exam. I am fairly sure that it is the same with all exam boards.
I think some schools are in a panic about these new 9-1 GCSEs and are teaching the curriculum early - Year 7 seems very early!!

Not do you pepper as what you quoted above was in response to your 'don't know what country you live in but Eng Lit was open book until last year's Y12s sat there exams so you are wrong'

No I wasn't - just in part. To quote you now who's the fool?
Ridiculous argument we are both wrong but only one of us is big enough to apologise.

Nor not not

And 11s and there (in my defence there is a raging thunder storm here and I have a screaming colleague hiding in my room!

Macbeth, Jekyl and Hyde, DNA and 15 poems. No books to be taken into the exam. Quotes have to be learnt on all themes/ characters etc. Nightmare.

Back in the day when I did o level and A level we could not take in texts and used to learn quotes off my heart

By heart

O give it a rest purple.....'tis boring. I touched a nerve and you had a hissyfit

Says the poster who can't drop it or admit they too were wrong!

Smacks of you not wanting to admit you were wrong too by the way!

Ladies!! Derailment here!

And fruity I have admitted my mistake and explained ... both PPs who said no closed book were wrong and I was wrong to insinuate all were closed. Some were closed and some open.

Kids panic so much about learning quotes - I have a lesson where I take them in to the exam hall and we put quotes around the room so they can visualise them in the exam (e.g. Light switch with quotes about Juliet). Years of kids doing this in my classes have said it helps!

I'd panic about learning quotes. I managed an a* in an open book exam though as I could write about themes etc. Doubt I would in a closed book one.

Do you work with pixl? They use that technique. It works

To get back to the point of this thread, it is absolutely ridiculous to start the GCSE text in y7. The pupils will be bored rigid by y11. They should be learning the key skills needed while studying other books.

What an appalling indictment of our education system.

We've started in year 9 due to the sheer amount of work that needs to be done.

Out of interest, what is the sheer amount of work that needs to be done? I've got one son who did GCSEs a few years ago and one doing them this year and there didn'tt seem to be an exceptional amount of work, so I'd be interested to know what has changed in the new specification. Aren't they still just reading a few books and poems, writing a few essays and learning a few quotes?

The main area ours are struggling with us how much they're meant to write in the language paper rather than the lit, which feels roughly similar to IGCSE (no coursework) that we had been doing. I am genuinely worried by what are results will be. It doesn't help that a good half of year 11 aren't taking it particularly seriously right now.

It's the length of the texts in fairness. We have to study a whole Shakespeare text whereas before we could narrow the focus a lot. Knowing the texts inside out and due to there being no controlled assessment to support the exam grade there has to be plenty of time for assessment and then working on target areas. The exam is a million times more important than it ever was! And it's hard in my opinion

Agree with everything you've written.

Our school does Macbeth in y8 for the higher sets but teaches Romeo and Juliet for GCSE.

My kids were told that Macbeth was GCSE difficulty but won't be doing questions about it for the exam. (I did Macbeth for O level)

It's changed from open to closed book this year. (AQA)

Similarly zombie - dd studied Macbeth too in Year 8 but began Romeo & Juliet in Year 10 for GCSE.

I did my O level back in 1986 (yikes) and no books allowed then. I remember learning quotes from Shakespeare to prove all the themes within the plays.