Yr 11 support thread - the scaffolding is holding up well

[pointythings]

Because we need a new thread now that things are really hotting up!

However having difficulty getting higher tier maths ones but are on order. They do edexel and aqa.

Gdd sitting mocks next week and already today 3 hours revision on biology which I helped with .I.e asked questions from revision textbook on all units so far covered (5) by school and any bits she was not sure of were written down to revise thoroughly. She surprised herself by knowing so much. We will start chemistry in a minute doing the same thing, its fun to be able to verbalise their knowledge and is better than poring over a book for endless hours.

This exam is all about timing. For Paper 1, AQA, 75% of marks are for the last 2 questions but pupils, especially able ones, waste time on Q2 and 3, writing far too much. It is essential for success that 45 minutes is spent on Section B and that 10 min of that is planning. The Chief Examiner has stated that if people run out of time plans will be looked at.
Spend time reading extracts and highlight in different colours structural and language features. Remind your child that sentence structure is not a structural feature. Technical terminology has to be used accurately and single word analysis is needed for top grades.
When writing remember to start sentences with verbs/adverbs occasionally, keep the tenses sustained and allow time to proof read. The marker will be looking for evidence of 'conscious crafting' so if you think of a better word add it. Think in advance of a metaphor or simile you could use for sky/ water/tree you can probably slot that into any piece of creative writing. Remember not to comma splice since AQA have a bee in their bonnet about this.
Any school predicting 9's is playing a dangerous game since with a limited % it might well take 100% to achieve a 9. And this is just for Paper 1.

Thanks Red. They have done one creative writing piece in two years. DD says she has forgotten how to write.

Thank you- just read that to ds. He didn't know about the comma splice thing, but they've spent ages practicing timings.

Interesting that ds seems to have benefited from being at a school with very few high ability pupils- they have made no assumptions about exam technique or the ability to read the rubric and work from there- they have been hammering timing and exam technique all year.

Ds has never comma spliced in his life (proud Mum ) and he has brilliant technical accuracy as well as natural creativity.

It's the first half of the paper I'm worried about: I agree that the split of marks could be confusing and I think ds sometimes doesn't focus enough on what the question is asking.

Very nervous for tomorrow (History) and Tuesday (English) as they're both A level choices (lit, not lang, for English, but still...)

Comma splicing has been explicitly included in the Chief Examiner's report for both GCSE and IGCSE for AQA as a criticism over the past 3. years. Just a proof reading check.

The biggest problem with it is that Dickens and the rest of the literary canon do it non stop!

Redsrule - I am a fellow English teacher. Out of interest, where did you get the diktat that sentence structure is not a structural feature!? It has confused me for two years that sentence forms (which are certainly not language features ) seem to come up in the bullet points for language questions. I do wish the exam board wouldn't separate language and structure, which are after all entirely complementary, in this way.

Off to google comma splicing

Reds thank you so much for your earlier tips. I have just copied and sent to DS, very useful. English is a weak subject of mine and DH so we have found it difficult to support DS with it.

Also, where is info about bee in bonnet re comma splicing coming from?

My headteacher comma splices as do most of the English department so probably just as well that he has his qualifications...

Sorry - just cross posted with you. Haven't read that report. Not massively important at Grade 5 ish downwards, would have thought

panicking as DS is a demon splicer

It's not really just a proofreading check for most though is it? If you don't get it, you don't get it on the whole with commas, I think....

I just desperately teach mine to use a range of punctuation and to vary paragraph lengths. Which they forget. Every time.

Unfortunately , we have a three tier system. We blithely assume they will come to us in year 9 having been taught punctuation. They haven't.

and the rest of the literary canon

Susan Hill and Michael Morpurgo have terrible punctuation , too! Drives me potty.

Piggy it was emphasised in the AQA Preparing to Examine course I went on in November. They said it almost always leads to comments on language rather than structure so to focus on repetition, foreshadowing, extended metaphors etc etc etc.

Comma splicing keeps on coming up in the examiner's report on previous exams. It appears to have an impact on marking for Section B. On the same course a very well written exemplar, apart from splicing, appeared to be significantly marked down and that was the only consistent error.

Margaret Atwood also comma splices with abandon in her earlier novels, but she's Margaret Atwood and all is forgiven.

Thanks reds you made me worry a bit as I thought what you were saying is that they have to write about loads of stuff to do with sentence types in the language question. I think they are running the risk of excluding it altogether : which will have a knock on effect into students' writing! What I find interesting is that all this focus on structure hasn't actually done anything to improve students' own writing : it's the same as it always was. the good ones do it well; the weak ones do it badly...

Interesting about extended metaphors which I think of as a language feature!

They are obsessed with cinematic techniques, I have noticed, so we do get legions of year 9s (whose middle school teachers keep setting them GCSE papers rather than getting them to -ooh - read! write creatively! Punctuate!) telling us we have to imagine a camera 'zooming in'...

And whatsherface who wrote Wolf Hall!

She'd get a grade 4 to go with her two Booker Prizes.

I agree with the sentence structure but at least it will avoid the 'short, snappy sentence' nonsense!

Haha - not with my kids, Reds !

In fact snappy would be a step up from 'the writer uses a lot of short sentances' (usually when they don't.)

Bloody autocorrect! That was meant to say

'the writter uses alot of short sentances'

The computer said no.

I empathise!