Moving towards exams

With internal exams finished, marked and entered, I've been turning my attentions to getting my students through their BIG exams at the end of the year. While I'm pleased with the pass rates, I know there's heaps of room to lift more of my students' performances into the Merit and Excellence range. I believe that we can do it!

First up (and something I'm really proud of), I've been working hard to create a revision booklet* which covers the key skills that the Year 11s will need to master. These are writing insightful literary essays and reading and interpreting unfamiliar texts. I've found some resources online (and acknowledged these!) but most of the activities I've developed myself.

I'm really emphasising the importance of personal voice. I want my kids to write responses which show that they have thought about, learned from and engaged in the texts we have studied. I don't want my class to parrot things we have done in class, and although I haven't taught them in any way that suggests they will do this, I still worry. To help the process, there's a couple of tables helping them get their thoughts organised... I hope it works!

The other, and possibly more interesting from my students' perspective, that I've been working on is finding online sources that the students can use for revision. We have our own study site, which is packed with links and activities to develop their knowledge and understanding. It also includes our own class page, which has resources students have developed in class.

I also want them to do practical learning activities as part of our class revision. Some of the things we're going to be doing next term:
  • Online mindmapping through bubbl.us
  • Create a 'facebook' account for a character in one of the texts
  • Editing and rewriting an essay through Google Docs (I love you Google Docs)
  • Create a comic strip of one of the texts (I'm still deciding which program to use)
As well as more practice 'exams' in class. It's going to be a busy couple of weeks.


* I just need to okay the cost of reproducing it with my HOD... probably should have done this first!

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