The A-Level and GCSE countdown has started. Even if your students don’t realise it yet senior leadership are focusing on the end of year results, so we’ve broken down how you can make the run-up to exams nice and easy for both yourself and your students.
Teaching
What have you got left to teach? It is helpful to count out how many lessons you have left with individual classes and plot out what you are going to be covering. Don’t get caught out by:
- Lessons lost to mock exams
- Lessons lost to other subject revision sessions for mock exams
- Lessons you spend directing revision for mock exams
- Lessons lost to practical exams e.g. art and PE
- Lessons lost to actual GCSE exams
- Lessons lost to other subject revision sessions during exam season
- Trips and assemblies
- Absence and illness
By planning out your lessons you can show the students that attendance is vital over the next few months because they can’t miss a thing.
If you still have lots of content to cover, discuss as a team where you can streamline lessons. Can you convert some content into homework booklets to save class time?
Also, by planning revision sessions in advance you can afford to be flexible with your long term plans. It is also a chance to start thinking about interleaving in past topics.
Checklist
You’ve gone through the specification to plan out your curriculum but do students have their own checklist?
Personal Learning Checklists (PLCs) for the entire course can be daunting but when split into topics make a simple and efficient method for students to identify strengths, weaknesses and any missed learning, all to help inform their revision.
Here are some posts about using PLCs along with a few examples:
- Personal Learning Checklists (PLCs)
- Personal learning checklists as a means of boosting exam grades
- Mock exam analysis
- Blank PLC
- TeachIt Geography PLCs
- Lots of schools have them published on their websites (e.g. Sackville and Blenheim) – NOTE: before using blindly, make sure they are for the correct specification.
We love to hear from you, so if you have a preference on certain topics you’d like covered or have a suggestion for a future hot topic, please email –training@prosperoteaching.com
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