My Little 2.0 Project

The first half term worked beautifully! I attended the Pearson 2.0 ‘getting started’ training event, coming away with a better understanding of the requirements of the papers and ideas to help introduce new concepts. Starting with creative writing and transactional writing, allowed me to get my head around these ideas fully and amend my planning before I had to deliver it.

The biggest issue I’d had was getting my head around the expectations of Paper 1 Questions 2 and 5. Surely it could not be that straightforward? But yes it is! Marks are awarded for expressing why you believe this is successful, ensuring you give 3 different reasons. The more eloquent the three explanations, the further up the three levels you progress. Less than 3 reasons and you are restricted to Level 2. The best bit, you get two opportunities to answer a straightforward question! Where has this style of exam question been for the rest of my career?

The wording of Question 2 is as follows:

In lines (-) the writer tries to persuade/encourage the reader to…

Evaluate how successfully this is achieved.

Give three reasons for your opinion and use examples from lines (-) 6 marks

What a fantastic question! I chose to start with this question when I introduced Victorian language. My theory was teach the concept of explaining ideas then move onto language analysis. The phrases ‘but why do you think that?’ And ‘3, is a magic number!’ Quickly became talking points in every lesson.

Initially, I gave my students the question and asked them how they thought they needed to answer it. At first glance the responses they gave were of language analysis style, ‘the use of the verbs’ ‘the use of alliteration’ etc. The concept was alien, and the phrase ‘they are trying to trick us!’ Was used several times.

I broke it down for them with questioning. Which section of the text have you been asked to look at? What is the question asking you to think about? Does the text persuade or encourage you to do that? Why do you think that? Does that make it successful or unsuccessful? How many reasons do you need?

I teach that the key thing to remember is that it can be all successful, all unsuccessful or aspects of both. It is your opinion and you get marks for justifying your reasons. Most automatically have a combination of the two. Very rarely have I had a student say it was all unsuccessful.

I generally found my students picked up Question 2 fairly confidently by the second lesson. So I gave them question 5 to do on their own. The stronger students made the link. The weaker ones reverted back to language analysis. I made a note to incorporate the wording of each question in the revision work. They are identical questions, but the change in layout, from finding the lines, to a paragraph ready in front of them, completely baffled them.

I gave the students a writing frame and showed them how it could be used with either question. Now they understood 2 was the same as 5. All we needed to develop was a more detailed explanation as to why. Hence the ‘but why?’ Comment earlier.

By checkpoint time, just before Christmas, they were all able to answer the questions well. I was pleasantly confident that the majority of my students could easily get 10 out of the 12 marks available for the two questions. They were on their way to achieving and they could see it. It was at this point my students’ confidence grew and they seemed more eager to attend their English lessons.