This post is my last for Hodder's Expert Blogger on their Geograpy Nest website
It can be found here:
Since the excitement of the GA Annual Conference last weekend, my week since has been far more mundane. Our Year 12 and 13’s returned to school on Tuesday for their trial exams (mocks) and my teaching week was reduced by 60% though I had to do two invigilation periods. As an examiner for Edexcel for the GCE exam, I was quickly pressed into service to mark the Unit 2 exam – Geographical Investigations. Having marked this paper externally in January, all 48 papers were marked fairly quickly and without too many dramas. All 48 managed to do the two options (Extreme Weather and Rebranding) that we have studied albeit with varying degrees of success.
Having also marked the Unit 4 –Geographical Research unit, I also volunteered to mark all 42 of these as well. With our students having a free choice of topics, I was cursing myself at 10pm on Sunday evening when I still had 6 research reports to do on Tectonic Hazards. Eventually sometime before midnight, I had completed all 41 with one still to be completed due to illness. I now have to talk through all 42 reports with their authors to feedback my thoughts sometime this week. Both Units 3 & 4 have pre-release materials and having used the January series, a few of our pupils decided that they wouldn’t really put themselves out preparing using ‘old’ pre-release materials for the exam. This is part and parcel of the ‘retake culture’ that has pervaded exams in recent years.
When the AS and A2 exams first came along in 2000, only one retake was allowed; why the change? Exams are now big business and I guess that more retakes means bigger profits for the companies who own the exam boards. As a parent, I have spent enough money on AS retakes in the last couple of years to spend on a weekend away in mainland Europe! However, as a teacher, retakes have enabled my pupils to improve their UMS scores to such an extent that top grades become a matter of formality and they get places at good universities. Poorer students don’t really get this advantage. Perhaps the proposed change back to linear courses will see the end of the ‘retake culture’ and we see a return to ‘back to the future’. I personally would prefer university applications to take place post A level results with university courses starting in January. It would result in a much more streamlined admissions system where students would only apply for universities where they stand a realistic chance of getting in to with their grades.
My only other classes last week were my two Year 11 Edexcel International GCSE sets. At the moment, I am looking at the compulsory fieldwork elements. On each of the physical questions on the exam, there is a compulsory section (20% of the marks for the question) on each. As we do Rivers and Coasts, I am revising the 4 pieces of fieldwork they needed to know. On the Rivers section, they have to know how to measure/calculate the discharge of a small stream. They also have to know how they would investigate the quality of the water on a small river or stream. This is done using the kick test to collect freshwater invertebrates in a net then identify them using an identification chart from the Field Studies Council. In fact, I recorded a short piece of film from BBC’s Countryfile programme a while ago that explains the whole process really well and serves as a good piece of revision.
In our coastal fieldwork, we have to do a beach profile using basic levelling and a survey of people’s attitudes towards coastal protection. We normally do this on a day out in Borth in Mid-Wales, where we also study management of the coast. The Urban option has a land use and an environmental quality survey to carry out – we do this over a morning in Shrewsbury
As well as completing the survey work, my pupils also have to have an appreciation of sampling, risk assessments and the evaluation of the methods used to collect, present and analyse their data. When we looked at the choice of GCSE exams, we considered a number of courses but decided that controlled assessment would be very difficult to administer in a school like ours for a number of reasons. I think we made the right choice given the comments we have heard about controlled assessment from colleagues in other schools. The only drawback about Edexcel International GCSE is the length of the exam that is currently 2¾ hours, however our pupils seem to prefer this to coursework.
My other major task for the week was to book my lectures for next year for the Shropshire GA branch, of which I am the organiser. I have decided this year to go back to some of my best lecturers of the past five years. So I have engaged the services of Martin Degg (often misquoted as Dregg in many text books) of the University of Chester to talk about Earthquakes, Bob Digby (next year’s GA President) to talk about the Olympic Legacy, Alan Parkinson (formerly of the GA) to talk about Flooding and a real geographical megastar, Prof. Michael Bradford to talk about Manchester. We also have a joint lecture with the RGS featuring Max Hall, a polar explorer.
I can’t sign of from my last blog of April without mentioning cricket – Jon Wolton from Edexcel contacted me last week and promised to replace the mugs and pens that were mistakenly taken at the GA conference, but also asked me to write a piece on the ‘Globalisation of Cricket’ for the Edexcel Geography website!
Needless to say, our cricket at school has been decimated by the weather this week, though our 1st XI did manage to play in Birmingham Birmingham
The experience of writing a blog has been a new experience for me, I hope that you have had an insight of my life teaching in a major public school and you have enjoyed what you have read. I hope that I am asked again to do this in the not too distant future.
My very best wishes to you all,
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