We’ve worked with English teacher and GCSE examiner Patrick Cragg to create this guide. It’s designed for parents, or anyone supporting a student through their GCSE in English literature. It provides a framework for discussing the play together, which will in turn help to develop your child’s knowledge. You’ll find detailed instructions on how to use the guide within the resource.
When children aren’t offered a place at their first choice school, especially if they’ve worked hard to sit an exam, or gone through an interview process, they can feel disappointed, deflated, and perhaps even rejected. If your child needs some help navigating through some of the discomfort of these emotions, here are our top tips. We’d recommend that you read this advice in advance, so that you can put some pre-emptive steps in place, which will help your child to feel content and hopeful, whatever setting they eventually attend.
In this short webinar, English teacher and examiner, Patrick Cragg talks students through three key motifs from core GCSE text, Macbeth. He explores the themes of blood, night and time, helping young people to increase and consolidate their knowledge of the play as a whole and nudging them to write about Shakespeare’s technique in a more sophisticated way.
In this short webinar, English teacher and examiner Patrick Cragg talks GCSE students through what makes an excellent introduction when writing an essay or answering an exam question. Whilst his advice focuses on the Shakespeare paper, it’s equally applicable to other subject areas.
This webinar, with English teacher and GCSE examiner Patrick Cragg, explains what GCSE students are expected to write in the Shakespeare section of their exam and provides parents with some effective strategies for supporting young people during the revision period.
In this webinar, English teacher and GCSE examiner, Patrick Cragg, talks English teachers through the key things that examiners look for when marking GCSE papers, focusing on insights that he’s gained from his extensive experience.
Researcher of the month, Professor David Putwain, discusses his recent paper which focuses on whether warning GCSE students of the consequences of failure (otherwise known as a ‘fear appeal’) is a motivating strategy in terms of their levels of engagement and achievement. He outlines the reasons why teachers use fear appeals, how this kind of approach can have very different outcomes depending on the way that individual students evaluate the message, and what this means for classroom practice. He also provides us with some great tips and tools that teachers can use to take a temperature check of their students’ levels of test anxiety.
This short questionnaire, devised by Professor David Putwain and colleagues, was developed to measure test or examination anxiety in populations of secondary school students, aged 11 to 19 years. It is intended for use by school practitioners (such as teachers, school pastoral and support staff, educational and school psychologists, and school counsellors) and others who wish to identify highly test anxious students who may benefit from support or intervention, or to evaluate changes in test anxiety before and after intervention.
This user’s manual was produced by Professor David Putwain and colleagues to accompany the MTAS questionnaire, which measures test or examination anxiety in populations of secondary school students, aged 11 to 19 years. It is intended for use by school practitioners (such as teachers, school pastoral and support staff, educational and school psychologists, and school counsellors) and others who wish to identify highly test anxious students who may benefit from support or intervention, or to evaluate changes in test anxiety before and after intervention.
This short questionnaire, devised by Professor David Putwain and colleagues, was developed to measure the perceived frequency that teachers use fear appeals (warning students of the consequences of failure) prior to a high-stakes examination and their appraisal by students as either a challenge or a threat. When used to survey student opinions, it can give teachers a sense of the impact of their messages and reveal how specific individuals are responding.
