RE gcse Year 11

[Blubell46]

Hi all,

My ds is in Year 11 and needs help with RE. He loves the sciences but RE was compulsory and he does not warm to the subject.

He had an exam late September and now he is having another exam next week. He didn't do well in September and the idea was to have intervention classes till the final exams but due to lock down this has not happened.

They were supposed to have mock exams in January but now that will be postponed till he goes back but they want to see if the kids have any gaps in their learning .

I think it is exam technique but I thought maybe any parents out there can share some tips how to approach this subject...crash course before his exam on Tuesday.

Thank you

Which part in particular?

I think for RE (and a bit similar for history) there are 4 markers, 8 markers and longer ones (can't remember if Dd said they were 12 or 16) and there's still a formula to what you need to say.

Hers had lots of things like "what do the different religions say about death/abortion etc" and you had to give 2-3 who basically agreed and 2-3 who didn't plus a brief outline of what they said. It always seemed to be that the quakers didn't mind and said it was personal choice!

..... to add : sometimes children who are good at science get lost as they don't know where to start with essay subjects - but those subjects do very much still have a fairly set framework of what you need to say to get the marks.

Yes, there is a formula to answering the questions.
There is also a lot of writing - I think it's the worst subject for fitting everything in the time, so it's worth focusing on exam technique regarding timings e.g. there's no point writing a perfect 4 mark answer if it means you didn't start the 12 mark question. Or you only finish 3 of the 4 sets of questions. Work out the relative times he should spend on each question, make him learn them, and tell them he needs to move on when he's spent that amount of time.

RE is one of DD's few remaining GCSEs.

Do you have access to his exam paper to see where he lost marks?
That would be the obvious starting point.

Can he give religious positions/arguments for all the issues on the 4 studied themes. Can be back them up with relevant quotes from Bible/Qu'ran?

Does he clearly understand the mark scheme for the higher mark questions?

Can he explain what both faiths believe wrt things like marriage and life after death?

Does he have his own opinions on the topics taught?

Which board is he doing, and which spec. AQA has a spec A and a spec B