Network events – GCSE English – Autumn 2015

1. Network events – GCSE English – Autumn 2015

2. Session Agenda • An overview of the specs • Spoken Language endorsement • 19th Century unseen texts • What is evaluation? • Planning • Questions and ideas for next network event

3. SPECIFICATIONS OVERVIEW

4. GCSE English Language

5. GCSE English Language Assessment objectives for Reading

6. GCSE English Literature

7. GCSE English Literature

8. GCSE English Literature

9. Spoken Language Endorsement

10. Spoken Language endorsement • Spoken language assessments will be assessed by teachers (with provision for students to be directly assessed by the exam boards where desirable or necessary) using a set of criteria that will be common across all exam boards. • There will be three levels of achievement, “Pass”, “Merit” and “Distinction”, and one outcome indicating the required standard was not met. This will be called “Not Classified”. • A student must meet all of the criteria in relation to a level to be awarded that level. • Spoken language assessments may be externally assessed by exam boards and/or internally assessed by teachers, using criteria set by Ofqual. • Exam boards will monitor the assessment of spoken language where this is undertaken by teachers by requiring schools to submit audio-visual recordings of a sample of their students.

11. Marking Criteria • General Criteria • To be awarded a Pass, Merit or Distinction a Learner must – • be audible, and • use Spoken Standard English which, for the purposes of the spoken language assessment, means that a Learner must – • be intelligible, and • generally use language appropriate to the formal setting of the presentation.

12. Marking Criteria

13. Format of presentation and Audience • Format: Could include: • A speech or talk by a Learner, followed by questions from the audienceor • a formal dialogue, such as an interview where the Learner is able to prepare extended responses to questions or prompts which have been shared in advance, followed by questions from the audience. • Audience: • an audience consisting of at least two people can be more likely to create the circumstances under which a Learner can demonstrate the knowledge, skills and understanding necessary to reach the higher specified levels of attainment in the spoken language assessment. • an audience should be composed of individuals able to provide the Learner with opportunities to respond to appropriate questions

14. Recording and monitoring • OfQual require that: • each Centre which delivers spoken language assessments provides the awarding organisation with a complete and unedited audiovisual recording of the evidence generated in that assessment by a sample of Learners, • (b) it uses those recordings as part of the means by which it determines whether or not – • (i) the spoken language assessment remains fit for purpose, and • (ii) the criteria against which Learners' performance is differentiated are being applied accurately and consistently by Assessors in different Centres and by Assessors in the same Centre. • Edexcelwill only require centres to record a sample of students rather than the whole cohort.

15. 19th Century Unseen Extracts

16. Dynamic Reading: An Investigative Paradigm To improve their reading skills, students will be: collecting, classifying, noticing, speculating, predicting, adapting, substituting, experimenting, inventing, making.

17. Developing Dynamic Readers • Readers who: • question and challenge by investigating the form and language of the text • make connections with other texts, narratives, media, genres – intertextuality • envisage and predict, through exploratory talk, by writing next chapters, extra scenes, fan-fiction, translating into performance or media text • Speculate on different readings, meanings and authorial intentions • play with ideas by changing the form, the narrative, the genre, identities of the characters • keep options open as they read.

18. Let’s Think in English – 19th Century Fiction • An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1890): • The activity uses Ambrose Bierce’s short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridgeand part of the film version of the story. • The reading of the story is stopped twice: firstly, to enable students to consider the implications of the man’s watch slowing down and other evidence; • and secondly, to ask students to deduce the ending of the story. • This process explores the methods by which Bierce builds complex alternative possibilities in an apparently simple action story, while also foreshadowing the surprise ending.

19. AO4 - Evaluation

20. What is evaluation? Questions on both papers will ask students to evaluate how well the writer achieves something (e.g. creating tension) In exemplar responses the greatest issue was students producing an AO2 answer: • focus on ‘how well’, not ‘how’ • use evaluative language – opinion, judgement • focus on ideas, events, themes and settings.

21. Levels for Evaluation

22. Planning

23. Planning • Is enough time devoted, explicitly and systematically, to the teaching of writing? • Are all your plans tied down to block units, or have you begun to introduce continuous units? • How are you going to incorporate Spoken Language?

24. Contact information English Subject Advisor, Clare Haviland: • teachingenglish@pearson.com • Tele: 0844 372 2188 • http://www.edexcel.com/Subjects/English/Pages/Default.aspx • English forum look at and participate in: www.community.edexcel.com/english/default.aspx • Twitter: www.twitter.com/EnglishSubAdv • www.edexcel.com/learningforabetterfuture