GCSE English Lit - Anthology - know all 18?

[s4rah19]

Should the students know all 18 poems? Nephew has said teacher told them they only need to memorise two for each section (so two for love/relationships, two for war/conflict etc). Am I missing something, what is the point of giving them 18 poems? Typical boy, he only knows a few (ones he's done in class), now panicking about ones he doesn't know and realistically is there time to cover the rest? It's almost like teacher is assuming only certain poems will come up, how can they possibly know? Some of them seem so difficult it's taking me all the time to understand them, and I left school over 20 years ago . He's one of those that thinks he got plenty of time, I'll do it tomorrow and then all of a sudden you're sitting the exam at the end of the month! (Yr 10 sitting early )

He seems to think he is a grade 4/5. On the EDUQAS sample marking scheme it has it listed as bands. Does anyone know the difference?

The edqas/wjec is meant to be the worst/hardest board because of this. Dunno if that's true at all. Dd assures me it is!

Two clusters is unusual...

I'm a GCSE Lit examiner.

Best advice I'd give is:

Have a broad working knowledge of each poem (eg a few quotes off by heart, overview of context, themes, language techniques & structure).

Have 2-3 poems you can absolutely nail.

If one of 'your' poems is the named one, happy days, compare it to another of the ones you know inside out.

If it isn't, do your best with that one, but look to shine with how you analyse the best fit one of 'your' poems.

Choose 'your' poems to cover a couple of bases. So if Relationships cluster, pick one romantic one & one about parent/child relationship, so you have ones you're super confident with for different focused questions.

Be very careful to focus on the question. Sometimes they are quite specific - 'How do poets use the structure of Manhunt & one other poem you have studied to explore how a relationship changes over time' - so start by highlighting the key words (structure /time) & make sure each paragraph of your essay makes a comparison about both structure & time!

PLAN. A quick bullet point list, mind map or double bubble then tick off the comparisons as you make them.

OP

I teach Eduqas Lit and know it inside out. Please disregard the well-intentioned discussion of clusters as used by AQA etc. It is irrelevant to your DN.

He should have studied every one of the eighteen poems in class. Your OP implies that he hasn't. This is a serious cause for concern and needs addressing with his school.

Re: bands. The exam boards (and this applies to all of them) do not know the grade boundaries yet because they will be applied across the distribution of the whole cohort. 'Twas always thus but previously we had several years' worth of data to enable us to create informed grade boundaries. We are still required to report grades internally but we have very little to go on and the board will not give us much more guidance than the general bands. If his teachers have placed your DN at a 4/5 then he is working around a B in old money.

Bands are how the examiners mark & are carefully NOT linked to grades - so 9 grades will be generated by marks awarded within 5 or 6 bands.

It's to ensure examiners carefully apply MS & don't just go 'yep, that looks like a grade 6...'

Then marks from different components are added up, the whole cohort are analysed & THEN grade boundaries are set.

So if marks are particularly higher or lower than expected, the number of students attaining different grades is still kept broadly consistent (or depending on your level of cynicism, manipulated to show whatever message the Govt wants to send out about education standards.)

Thanks Crowy, you've given me a lot to think about. Is there anywhere that I can get a breakdown of what he should include in an essay question? I think it would help him loads if I could say start off with a quick overview/context, address question re: language/meaning, address qu. re: structure, lastly your views on message/what poet was trying to a achieve. I've probably got it all wrong but hopefully you get the gist.

Yes, that's about right!

But I've never taught EDUQAS or examined it, (my experience is AQA/Edexcel/OCR) so my suggestions are pretty general.

Angelica will be able to be more specific .

Sorry - clearly wrong there. Glad you got some good advice from people who have taught the board.

I would be contacting the department they should have told him about this already. There is often good stuff on BBC Bitesize that may help with structuring essays and some of my students swear by the CGP books