The GCSE English Da Vinci Code

There are a lot of problems with the current exam specifications, but one main problem is that they don’t allow for freedom in our subject. There seem to be so many hidden things you have to do on them that you end up doing students a disservice, if you go, ‘I’ll teach everything but the exam paper.’ The summary question wants you to make inferences, even though nowhere in the question does it say so. The structure question wants you to talk about how the structure adds to the story’s themes, even though the question doesn’t ask for this and simply states that students have to talk about what they find ‘interesting’. Asking a teenager what they find interesting and not interesting is worlds apart from what a chief examiner finds interesting. . 

GCSE English exam success is based on a student’s ability to complete a Krypton Factor assault course. Jump through this hoop. Climb under this netting. Skip up this hill. It is a marathon task and it is no wonder some students leave papers and answers blank. One of my favourite meetings with SLT, is showing them the difference between an English Language paper and another subject. On this page students have to write 2 paragraphs. On this page they write 3 paragraphs. You can easily see how so many students struggle with it. It isn’t skill and knowledge that gets you grades, but endurance. If you can write at length for one hour forty-five minutes, then you’ll get a grade. 

For years, we’ve taught the exam paper as a whole entity. Yes, we might have taught separately the reading and writing section, but we’ve taught them as discrete units. Then, it moves to becoming endless repeats and a challenge for teachers as we try to teach the same thing in a slightly different way. The problem is that by the time you get to Question 4 on an exam paper you and the students have lost the will to live. It is tough and boring. 

This year, we have tried something differently. We are breaking the GCSE exam papers across the year. In Year 10 we focus on Paper 1 and in Year 11 we focus on Paper 2. 

Year 10	Year 11
Paper 1 Q1 and Q2	Paper 2 Q1 and Q2
Paper 1 Q5 story writing	Paper 2 Q5 - structure, introduction and Tone
Paper 1 Q3 and Q4	Paper 2 Q3 and Q4
Paper 1 Q5 descriptive writing	Paper 2 Q5 -strengthening and developing an argument, conclusions

Instead of spending whole terms looking at the paper, we spread the teaching of it so that we are regularly revisiting the elements and building spaced practice. Yes, you could teach the whole paper in one go, but with that approach you don’t get time to practise and hone skills. In between them we read literature texts, short stories and non-fiction. 

For example, with Paper 1, we are spending three weeks looking at reading the text properly and how to answer Paper 1 Q1 and Q2. Getting them attuned to these first is important. How many times have we rushed into the next question, before ensuring things are embedded? We get some questions right before moving on to the next two. 

When we teach Paper 1 Q3 and Q4 later in the year, we will start with a practice on Q1 and Q2 to space out the practice and to ensure things are committed to memory. I hate the idea of GCSE being endless exam papers. Therefore, I think it is important that we break up papers and do interesting things and different things all the time.   

To show you how these units go, I have included two of our first booklets. 

Paper 1 - Q1 and Q2 

Paper 2 - Q1 and Q2 

Building this structure around the papers helps us to address the monotony of the exam papers but also build up that knowledge. All too often, we walk students through papers expecting to remember how to answer each individual question and by the time it comes to their go they have forgotten what to do with Question 1 and 2. Plus, with interleaveing the questions like this, it allows us to build in more opportunities to look at shorts stories. We are not obsessing on getting to Question 4. Stop. Pause. Explore.

Thanks for reading, 

Xris