Any English teachers about?

[YoniFucker]

What did you think of today's paper?

I won the staffroom competition for guessing the topics/ extracts so I'm made up the prize was booze. Not sure what to make of the paper - I teach a lowish set so they found it quite hard. It sounded pretty doable! Which exam board are you with?

We're edexcel. I totally failed the prediction test. My class now claim I owe them each 10p.

Which board are you?

Ha! My lot still don't quite believe that I don't get to see the paper before the exam...

We're with AQA so today was Shakespeare and 19th century, both extract based.

English teacher here, but also have a DS taking AQA lit. He was a bit surprised by the Merchant of Venice question as it wasn't an extract he was expecting, but he sounds as if he did OK. He liked the Jekyl and Hyde question.

Is your DS at your school? I was so pleased with the Jekyll and Hyde extract, just dreamy! We did R&J, which also sounded doable (male power in I.1).

Twitter is going mad about that R&J question ("we read the whole flipping book...")

Edexcel was Shakespeare and modern text. Macbeth was a bit of a curveball but they managed I think. They seemed a bit toooo confident afterwards. Always worrying!

My kids were saying they didn't know the R&J extract, whereas I have vivid memories for the wrong reasons of teaching them all about the build up of tension... I can totally imagine the whinging about it though

CIE iGCSE this morning, poetry and prose set texts, students seemed happy and questions were ok. Fingers crossed!

No, he's not at my school Puffin. I teach in a special school now and an away from all this madness! He was very confident about Jekyll and Hyde before going in but although he thought the question was OK, I think he was very deflated overall by not recognising the Merchant extract. Initially he says he'd just 'said that Portia was a feminist in three different ways' but when he talked in more detail about what he'd written, he'd put in quite a bit of context ( Elizabethan attitudes to women, Shakespeare's feminism, irony of male actors playing women playing men etc). He used the word juxtaposition. He just didn't analyse the extract in huge detail I don't think.

Eduqas was a dream of a paper (Shakes and poetry anthology). The R&J extract was 3.1 and the essay was Juliet throughout the play.

Hoping we won't pay for it with a bastard of a paper on Friday. It's the 2.5 hour beast for Eduqas - 20th century prose / drama, 19th century prose and unseen poetry.

Was a tad surprised (but not necessarily disappointed) by the AQA R&J extract after being told by the chief examiner (who visited our school) that they would 'focus on key characters.'

Kids were slightly bemused but not too bothered given they had lots to write about.

Not at work until tomorrow so no idea yet?

I know you'll all be at work ( I'm part time) but can I ask a question about the AQA poetry? DS has left his booklet on the kitchen table - flicking through it I can see he's got detailed annotation on a number of poems but 7 are completely blank! This may be because he's got notes in another book - he told me the other day that his preference would be for Ozymandias and London, but both these are unannotated in the booklet. Is it sensible to leave any of them untouched though? My Last Duchess is one - I would have thought that was a strong possibility for the paper? < silent inward shriek>

Sprog if he's doing AQA poetry then he should have studied one cluster of 15 poems. I'd expect his anthology to have 15 annotated poems and 15 that he will probably never have read. If he's mentioned London and Ozymandias then he's probably done the 'power and conflict' cluster, but he should know all of them in that cluster.

Yes he's doing power and conflict. 8 poems annotated, 7 not 😮😮. Let's hope the notes are elsewhere.

Thought the edexcel was great!

Loved both the AQA Literature papers. Had lots of very happy students. They.would have liked a bigger R&J extract but thought it was great for whole text links.

Bit of a curveball on one question on the Eduqas second paper but generally pretty friendly and although I haven't seen them yet I'm told that the unseen poems were pretty accessible.

So - do any of you do R&J on OCR...?!?!?

AQA here.

Sympathy for Jekyll?? Not an awful lot to go on in terms of language in the R & J extract I thought, although a lot of the kids were happy as they go to use their beloved 'hang, beg, starve, die on the streets,' quote!

I think there was a bit of disparity on paper 1 - Macbeth, M of V, MAAN, P &P, Frank, SH - all the most obvious characters and themes. J &H, R& J and CC, not so much.

Fucking CIE 'discuss the significance of Launcelot Gobbo to the plot of MoV'!!!

theduchessstill
See I thought the ACC one was entirely predictable. So likely that I actually did a mock paper walk through on Crachits and poverty about a fortnight before the exams.

Equally, love was specimen for R&J so our bets were on violence, family or fate. So we did loads on those 3 before the exam.

I did think the power and conflict one was oddly easy mind.

Yes, Maisy, ours were very familiar with that particular extract, but poverty in the rest of the novel, rather than specifically the Cratchits and poverty in the rest of the novel would have allowed them to include a wider range of example and show greater knowledge of the text as a whole. That was our take on it anyway.

Oh well, just a waiting game now...