Exams cancelled

[noblegiraffe]

Alternative arrangements will be made.

How stressful to announce that with no details about what will happen.

@MrsHamlet what subject do you teach? What will be your plan now?

English.
Revision as planned. We don't have a clue what will replace exams so we're following the plan and going back over the early year 10/12 stuff.
They'll do a timed essay in some part of the exam every week like they would be doing normally. It's all very odd - but until someone tells me different, I'm sticking to the plan.

I hope all these articles about 50% school occupancy are just stirring based on extreme examples as otherwise I too feel that years 11 and 13 should have dated in and are taking a massive hit for no purpose.

If A levels were still going ahead in June, as was originally planned, it would give dd some incentive to work hard and have a well set plan for her revision. As it is, there is no clear plan of what to revise. Do they need to have revised the whole syllabus by the time they may go back in case they have mocks? What date that will be, no one knows. Will they be told what topics they will be tested on a week before a test? Will the tests they have already done count towards their grade? If there is no real goal to work towards, how can they plan their study as they would have with A level? All the school is telling them is to keep working hard, because it is all they can do. But trying to persuade dd day after day that it is worth trying, when she has no idea if what she has chosen to revise will ever count towards anything is difficult.

In primary, I once had a teacher say to me that dd was the sort of child who just did well in tests. Teachers are still surprised at the grades she achieves. How do I tell her it is worth keeping on working and keep the momentum going day after tedious lockdown day, when she knows, without exams, her grades will, likely as not, drop.

At least if there were some kind of external assessment in June to work towards, it would be an incentive to keep on with the study.

It is clear to me, though. DD is carrying on as normal. Business as usual. Study, revision, note taking. One, because assessments are going to take place, of that we can be sure. Two, students need to carry on learning and consolidating to ensure they know the content in readiness for further study. DD is hopefully going on to Uni for a science related degree, she needs to know her chemistry and biology. Student who are going on to maths and science A Levels need to know their stuff to be able to cope with the content.

Why would they stop now? They should he doing the opposite!

Excuse typos. The site is lagging when typing for some reason.

@MrsHamlet
Do you happen to have any teacher's material for The crucible by any chance?

@TheSunIsStillShiningits a long time since I taught it but possibly. What sort of thing are you after?

@MrsHamlet
Basically anything that is about what the teachers are expecting kids to see into the play.
Backstory
I come from another country and expectation about what to know in let are very different.
I'm a literacy buff and a journo by profession, and huge theater fan. So my knowledge is vast compared to "normal" ppl.
I have done 1 homework essay for my kid in all his life.
And yet we struggled last term with book related essays and points that needed to be made. Eg. when analyzing a chapter I made 10 points. All valid I'm sure of that. Yet the essay got marked down because I didn't point out that the grammatical structure was x and the use of the word xxxxx was in relation to something. I didn't, as it was so obvious I didn't think to make that point. I went way deeper than the syllabus, and his teacher did mention how in-depth his analysis was, but deducted points for trivial, obvious things not being mentioned.
Now they are going on to The C. and I am having serious problems.

1. They are to analyse a play without having in depth knowledge of what a play is, the history of plays and how/why they formed through the years (think greek/roman plays to comedia dell'arte through Moliere to Beckett/Ionescu to nowish).

So I created a short play syllabus (5 lessons) to walk him through all of those. But without knowing what is expected in this school system from a "play analysis" I am lost on how to best help him in very practical terms. He is a 15yr old boy who doesn't actually give a crap about this whole analysis as he is more engineering mindset than not. And no way in hell I am writing any of his english homework ever again. :)

1. In my opinion, to analyze this play you have to put it in context of world history and literature to really grasp it and go beyond superficial. As they haven't learnt about mccarthy/socialism in the US, cold war in depth (it's ongoing in history, but not there yet) the kids are missing so many layers of meaning.

Last term's Orange is not the only fruit is a great example: all chapters are based on Biblical chapters yet they were not looking at the parallel's between the 2 texts. Half the book's meaning was lost.

Or am I just over complicating things? :)

An interesting thought occurred to me. Will there be anything in the OFQUAL/DoE guidance to allow schools to retain exam 2021 exam changes in their internal exams. Do they revert back to exam structures as per the Oct/Nov 2020 diet of GCSEs and A Level exams.

Btw, learning unseen poetry this weekend, so I can help my son. God, it full, hard and boring - but a response framework I’ve come across provides a model to answer unseen poem qns. I’ll let you know tomorrow my DS and I feel optimistic, unchanged or pessimistic.

Typo - meant to say, “ God, it DULL, hard and boring”

@TheSunIsStillShining what year is your son in? If you can point me in the direction of the specification he's following, I'll have a look and send you anything I can find that might be of use.

@portico I feel your pain. I ditched the poetry to the other teacher - the unseen is bloody stupid.

@MrsHamlet
he is in fifth form. I have no idea what specification he is following. All I know is what this term's book/topic is going to be.
And TIA :)

You've got me stumped @TheSunIsStillShining - I can't find it on any specification, and whilst it sort of doesn't matter, in terms of how it will be assessed it really does!

@TheSunIsStillShining Is your son doing iGCSEs? That's the only place I can see The Crucible. Though I can't see OANTOF on there either!

@MrsHamlet We don't know what will happen next year. Got an email last year the Cambridge will stop doing iGCSE from next year I think, and that they are working with the other provider, but covid kind of took over and never got any updates.
in 2019 they only did normal gcse, or at least I can only see those results posted on the site.

Wish they hadn't done OANTOF. I really hated that book, which is quite rare.

They have textbooks from 3 providers, and no textbook for lit. Are there even any?

Oranges is quite an odd choice for gcse I think.
I'll have a rummage tomorrow

@TheSunIsStillShining your DS is in 5th form aka Year 10 and therefore doesn’t have his GCSEs or A Levels cancelled in line with the topic of the thread. Out of respect for those of us - either parents or teachers - supporting Year 11s or Year 13s, perhaps you could start a new thread?

Excuse crankiness but my Year 11 child, along with her peers, year 13s and their teachers, are victims of a shitstorm right now at a critical and unprecedented time. This thread is full of great information and support and the worries of a parent doing their Year 10’s essay is, IMO, an insensitive diversion. It is very nice of MrsHamlet to help you since, as a GCSE and A Level teacher, she must have enough going on right now.

5th form is year 11

Oh is it?

Earlier in the thread @TheSunIsStillShining said her son is 5th form/Year 10 and doing exams next year

[quote TheSunIsStillShining]@NotDonna
That is what exactly what I said. IF kids stay in same school and do A levels in that subject then it can be skipped as it's redundant.

I don't know how much of a burden it would take off examiners though.

Specifically we don't have to worry about him, he's y10/5th form, so has a year until gcse. He'll be screwed over next year. But let's burn that bridge when we get there :)[/quote]
I was going from this post.

A recap on unseen poetry, we have successfully come out the side. We do AQA. We used the scholastic book, which has a good framework but a scant selection of qns. We will now do qns from the cgp books, which have derailed answers to reference against.

@TheSunIsStillShining you sound far too involved in your sons homework?! Are you actually writing his essays for him?