S9 E8: The One About RE GCSE Exam Success

Welcome to the R-repodcast. The first dedicated R-repodcast for students and teachers. My name is Louise Jane Smith and this is the R-repodcast, the podcast for those of you who think R-re is boring, which it is and I'll prove it to you. Today's episode is all about exam success. Now I know what you're thinking, you're wondering why I'm doing this episode after the exam season rather than before it. The answer is quite simple. If we gave you loads of advice just before the exams, one, you'd have no time to implement that before your students sat their exams and they wouldn't be able to benefit from that. If we do it now, then actually while you've got more time on your timetable, you've got the time to implement your students next year. So that's why we're doing it now. It's all thought through. Now both of my guests, I've actually had the pleasure of meeting in real life. So please let me introduce Dawn Cox, who I met very briefly at a training session. We were both delivering seminars at and who I might be going away with this summer, but I'll tell you more about that later. And then also Matt Pitcher, who I met at the oldest goodwara in Europe a few weeks ago. So Dawn and Matt, welcome to the R-repodcast. Hello. Now Dawn, you are on my list of guests right back when I started the podcast. I think we had a brief chat, but we finally got a sort of episode together, which I'm really, really happy about. Now I know many listeners are already going to know you through your book, making every R-re lesson count and your many quizzing books, but can you just tell us a little bit about yourself in case anyone doesn't know who you are? Yeah, hi. So yeah, I'm Dawn. I'm ahead of R-re and I've been teaching for over 20 years. I've been teaching R-re's my specialism. In that time, I've done lots of different jobs, but my main passion is always- And you've got a new book out, am I right? Yeah, so we've got a new book come out with Oxford University Press called Oxford Revise, and it's based on a cognitive science principles of retrieval and practice. So it's kind of like a special new way of revising, and that's being printed right now. Very exciting, and we might briefly touch on some of those things later in the episode. Now Matt, we met through the Columns and Gabriel Leadership course and then met in person at the Ariacchiilly Face to Face R-re teachers day out in London, but can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Well, I've been teaching for about 25 years. It seems so much longer sometimes. 21 years as a head of department and I've been the head of faculty in the senior year as well. I also do a bit of work for one of the major exam boards, and I do a bit of running as well. A bit of running. If any, be it on Twitter, knows about that. You run quite a lot, don't you? I run a bit. I run for head space, actually. Honestly, it's amazing, isn't it? It sits my one mental health kind of key in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I do the same thing. Before we start, what I always like to do, and I think about this when I do my teaching, or when I'm doing a training course, that I want each person listening to take away one thing that's going to benefit them. So, Dawn, if you could offer one piece of advice to teachers of GCSE RE, what would that one thing be? It's something quite mundane, really, to read the specification and teach the specification. I think that's what Matt was saying. I'm sorry Matt. Great minds, think alike. It's just the one thing you can do for your students is to go through it, really carefully, and ensure that all of your lessons cover it within the time of the course. You know, when things go wrong in the GCSE, when there's queries about questions, it's usually because teachers haven't quite picked up on one little word in the specification, and the questions are about it, and there's outrage, but actually it's there, it's there in black and white, teach to it, and give it to the students so everyone knows what's going on. Yeah, I wrote down read the spec, read the spec, read the spec. It's the easiest thing to do at the beginning. When you're teaching, we've been teaching this for seven years now, everybody needs to be reading the spec, but I've also written down preparation, get your resources right and your planning right before you start, and just have everything laid out, how do you want things to go, and don't be afraid to change. You know, I've changed the way I've taught this syllabus three times so far in seven years. And I think actually that's what I want to talk about in terms of preparation and sequencing, and the best way to sequence, we're come back to that in a second, but actually my I'll carry on with you. If there is somebody who is starting teaching the exam class from this September for the first time, what do you think the first three things they should do? So we've said read the spec, what happens next? I phrase it as how do I approach this with the class that I would be teaching? So I'd explain to them what we're doing over the course, let all out for them because they need to know what the journey is going to be over the next two years that you've got them or three years from some schools. You need to know how we'll assess them, what are we looking for, what are the kind of key things that they need to work on over the two years or three years, and then explain it's going to be challenging. Our read is a challenging subject, religious studies is challenging, it's not a walk in the park, it will get them thinking, it will get them really scratching their heads at sometimes, and just explain it to them, and as teachers ask for help, there are lots of people out there, a lot of them work for the exam boards, you know, go to the exam, religious studies officer for your exam board and ask them, how do I approach this? They're paid to do that, they're paid to give the advice, they're paid to give the advice free as well, so ask them because that's your starting point and then it all grows from there. That's a good point actually because I think the mistake I've made in the past is one teaching to the textbook, so I use the textbook to help me guide and rather than the specification, and I do feel slightly detached from the exam boards and the people that are there to support me, so that's something that's really good advice. Dawn, what about you? What would be the sort of top three things to do if you were starting teaching? Yeah, similar things to Matt, just to add on top of that exam boards, run sessions for teachers that are new to specification across the board, look out for them on the websites, throughout the year they have training, so including how to mark how to kind of level and mark exam questions, because if we're going to use that as our assessment, then we need to be confident ourselves in what that might look like, so actually using that, and then planning the specification, and I personally don't follow it kind of bullet point by bullet point in the order it's given, I've planned our GCSE curriculum to make more logical sense than it might do on the actual specification, so where do key concepts come in, when are they repeated, do we actually need to teach it as it is on the piece of paper, or can we be more creative and actually think well actually I can put this with this and I can put that with that, so yeah thinking carefully about where different concepts creep up, and also if there's time, if you're able to, to put in more than what's on specification, I know some people will be horrified at me saying that, but you know I'm really lucky I have three years, but you've got year nine in doing some foundational stuff, because in some of the GCSEs they do miss out some really key conceptual ideas that are needed in the religions that we teach, so actually thinking about the foundations for the GCSEs. Yeah and I'm thinking of a good example is the life of Jesus, they do sort of incarnation baptism crucifixion resurrection ascension, and they miss out all of the teachings in the middle, but actually those are helpful, you know if you're going to do the parable of the sheep and the goats, that's helpful for salvation, and that's helpful for the worldwide church and like in the community and things like that, but it misses all of those things out, so that's a really good point, and actually you could bring that into year seven and eight, so you could look what does the GCSE miss out, what could we teach in year seven and eight that will support the curriculum at key stage four. Let's just talk a little bit more about this sequencing then, Dawgs, you've just mentioned there that you don't necessarily do it in a sort of linear way that you look at concepts, can you give us a specific example of how you do that? So let's do an example of in the specification I teach, the festivals of Easter and Christmas are kind of in a practice's ascension, but actually they are linked to the really important beliefs of the crucifixion and the resurrection and the incarnation. Why would I teach them at completely different times, maybe even in a different year? So what I do is we teach, we go through the key events in the life of Jesus beyond what specification, and then we say well how might a Christian celebrate this event? So we put the practices, the celebrations in with the beliefs because that's how they make sense rather than separating them out and doing Christianity practices at a completely different time. Now actually you could say that doing them at a different time would be good retrieval practice, you know, what have we already learnt about the incarnation, what have we learnt about the crucifixion and resurrection, but I just think logically from my students it makes sense to put them together rather than set up. That's a really good example, Matt, you're nodding herotiously. Yeah, when you teach the Eucharist you can bring in last supper and the historical part because then that leads in quite nicely to the festival of Easter and all about sacrifice and all about salvation and those key concepts. I seem to think that the scheme is seven years and it's taken us that long to get down the road to actually reordering a few of the key points in the syllabus and what we're delivering. You said about using the textbook. Use the textbook as an aid the memoir rather than the crux of your teaching and explode that and go different places like dorms and it's so much better sometimes to go down those extra bits of their learning because that kind of backs up their contextual knowledge. If we can't put these ideas into context then we're kind of just teaching them as standalone ideas and concepts but they all feed in and I teach Buddhism and every single one of those teachings kind of feeds into the next and it's like a domino effect in fact you get one dependent rising so it all links in really quite nicely together. And actually that saves you your time so that therefore you can bring in that other stuff as well. Because actually if you're doing incarnation with Christmas then actually that's going to take less time than if you're doing incarnation much down the line having to remember incarnation is and then teach Christmas and it actually prevents the children from forming those connections really confidently in their head between those two things. Yeah I think that's really interesting and actually we do that thing wearing year eight we look at the history of salvation through the Old Testament so the arc of atonement and you know sacrifice through the Israelites so that actually then Jesus coming and dying is understood in its context rather than the Jesus is kind of random and turned up and died for our sins that actually that was the end of a very very long history of salvation. But it's site post in them as well. Yes when they're in year seven and eight say look we'll return to this in two three years time get the hook in early yeah because that will kind of breathe a little bit of more information they'll go up actually they'll want to know quite quickly so by the time you do teach it in years nine ten and eleven it's embedded it's there yeah it's very a lot easier to unpack what they've learned before yeah. Anything else you want to say about sequencing that certainly a lot of the syllabi they they link to themes and thematic approaches so it's when you're teaching the idea within say the parable of sheep and the goat say well you're going to be able to use this in these units and kind of signposting it again and say look down the line will be need in this you need to know this one or yeah how would you apply it in this situation so you kind of. Given them clues about what's coming up in the future yeah and it makes it a little bit easier because they're kind of developing a bit more of their knowledge certainly on that thematic approach which sometimes can be a bit more messy in their ideas but it means that it's reinforcing old ideas but also it gives them hooks to connect the new ideas to because I think it is quite content heavy but I think if you make these links and you double up and go actually you can use this quote. For this topic and this topic or this idea is going to feed forward into this then actually they feel much more confident let's talk about timing so just said that actually if you link beliefs with practices actually it saves you a bit of time if you've got any other tips on how we can teach the amount of content in sort of a finite times I know this is something that teaches struggle with. I do it over three years so we teach the GCSE we start in September year nine and we take three years and we just about finish it but not everyone's going to have that ability so any sort of time saving tips in terms of teaching the curriculum Matt was not with you sometimes depends whether you've got an option or you got full cohort entry in the GCSE because I think that will affect your time. I do option are we quite successful for the fourth biggest option in our school at the moment so it shows that we're doing something right in key stage three but we also teach our core are as well so almost feeding into my core are some of the. Themes that we'll approach later on so we do crime punishment will look at areas around the environment will look at abortion and the nature moral issues. In year 10 so when we teach it in year 11 those people's that already studied it they've already done the groundwork we can go a little bit deeper so that saves a bit of time yeah if you're doing it full cohort. It depends whether you're doing it over the two or the three years and it also depends on how much quicker than time your senior leaders will give you because we're an option we get the same as every other option group but I know that some schools teach it within an hour a week which is kind of like a yeah you're running on the treadmill at 100 miles an hour almost and it basically turns into an essentialism. Yeah what is essential about this is that bomb and bomb and bomb and it's literally a treadmill that you can fall off quite quickly. Dawn how about you how do you sort of deal with the timing issue. So we have three years for the GCSE so timing isn't a huge issue because we do put all the other kind of basics in there if you have got two years I would really think about your key stage three and these kind of key concepts that are going to come up. You need to be really careful not to start teaching the GCSE early that's been criticised and actually you know if you've been doing a certain type of exam question since year seven for five years that's going to be really quite boring and probably quite limiting actually. So I guess using key stage three to give them a really rich foundation that they can keep coming back to even if you're teaching different religions to the ones that you do at GCSE these key concepts that you can keep bringing up. Even things like as Matt was saying about in the the themes is about kind of diversity different views if you can embed that key stage three this diversity when they get to GCSE then they'll be used to looking at alternative different points of you and then they'll be used to it so it would be much easier for them to build on that foundation. Amazing now the one thing and I have to admit I'm only just been aware of this because I don't think I read the spec there are key verses and this is something that if you are listening you need to be aware of there are key verses that you have to know that the children have to know off by heart and they have to know the reference. How would you advise them teaching that done. So we teach those references when they come into the story so for example we teach Islam Quran 96 on to five the night of power we teach that when we teach the story of Muhammad and we learn it them. And what we do is we go through the text we talk about what it means and then from that point on and that's early on in year nine regularly we do quizzes test whatever you want to call them with them all the time we give them a fill in the gaps so I give them Quran 96 1 to 5 with some key kind of gaps. Clot of blood missed out recite and they fill it in so they're constantly going back to it over and over again so we're getting them to kind of recall it and in our quizzes and our homework quizzes we're getting them to recall what the key ideas are what do you do that well we placed them into context much the same as dawn does so we if we teach in parable the sheep and the goats they're able to see the three or four different levels that you can use that. And the use of interpretation and paraphrase as well because that's an important thing if you can tell your classes they don't have to have every single word in the right order it's the paraphrase it's the gist and don't just throw that quote in it's got to be woven into the answers got to be backing up an idea or a point and actually showing them how they can use that point that phrase that text your knowledge in their answer. Because all too often you have the quote without the reference or the reference with not the right quote so they do need to think about how they use it what context they're using it and how they can interpret it into their answer yeah and that's interesting because actually I think the children feel a little bit unnerve when they think they've got to know this quote word for word but you're saying even those key quotes that you have reach religion you don't need to know word for word or you talking generally about quotes. I'm talking generally about quotes. Yeah. John chapter one where we're talking about the word yeah they will need to know that but at the same time they're not going to be penalizing the exam for getting it wrong. Right. Okay. In terms of the word order but they will gain the mark for reference and it correctly and using it correctly. Yeah. That's the big thing it's about the use and about how it's being used properly yeah because all too often I think maybe one of the first or second years of doing the exam when we had a proliferation of love your neighbor. Yeah. Littered throughout the exams. Yeah. It got so much that it became a meme on Twitter and Instagram so hey you know it's when I read kind of breaks that wall into mainstream culture but there you go. Because I often get this on my students we should help the poor because love your neighbor and they knew that that link together but they didn't really know how and you know it's actually teaching them why why is helping the poor loving action let's go a bit deeper than that and that takes a bit of skill I think to teach the children how to. Okay that's really interesting on that Lou they'll do it in English yes don't use a quote from a book say Lord the flies or from Christmas Carol and they'll be able to place it and they'll be able to use it so we're using that same skill so I would seriously think about. Explain it to them this is like you would do. use a quote in English. You need to unpack it, pull it in, build it in around, and have that in your answer. Like embed the quote into a point rather than just have it randomly. Exactly. Exactly. And that's the skill. Yeah. And actually maybe. Talk to your English department. That's exactly what's going to say as our e-teachers. Let's go and talk to our English teacher. Observe them teaching. How do you teach them to use quotes in their exam? And then use the same language as English is using so they connect that skill in their brain. That's really, really good advice. So let's think about assessment now. So if you're teaching a GCSE class, how do you assess Matt? What do you do? Well, I purchased some really good books on multiple choice quizzes. Hey! Before that takes. Yeah, I use a lot of multiple choice quizzes. Yes. Starters for retrieval practice. At the beginning of each lesson they know what they're doing. They come in, it's 10 questions, five minutes going over them. Some of the same questions come up again and again and again. It's just drilling it into them. It's non-threatening. We can get on with lessons straight afterwards. But I also involve practice questions. And it's playing with the key words into those questions. So we know most of the questions in the exam are the similar framework. So it's just replacing those key words. And having them placed in there. And so in year 11, I've done the way with extra homework in terms of going and research this or going and do this. All my year 11 homework is purely practice exam questions. You've got 15 minutes tonight. Go and do that long answer question. You've got 20 minutes tonight. Go and do those four mark questions. And it just gets them into the practice and practice. And then I mark them. Then I feedback. And I think they benefit from that. Brilliant. And I want to come back to feedback in a minute in terms of how we do that. How do you assess your classes done? Yeah, really similar way. I'm a little bit maybe different in terms of assessment. I'm not a huge fan of giving children marks, certainly not grades. Really, until a year 11 mark, remember we teach them since beginning of year 9. Children obsess with marks. They obsess with grades. And actually I want them to worry more about what they've done right and what they need to do to improve. And this kind of goes into feedback a little bit. I don't have a mark book of marks of my students. I get a flavour of how they're doing from reading their work. And I can see those misconceptions whether they're structuring it correctly. And I can feedback from that. You know, writing in a mark book two out four is utter nonsense because it doesn't tell me what those two marks were or were not actually in my head if I can work on key skills and work on that with the students as part of feedback. That's my assessment. My assessment is to improve what they're doing. It's not a mark book full of marks and grades. So yeah, I've very much focused on feedback. I'm also not a huge fan of, and Matt, you might disagree, of sharing marks games really with students. I think particularly the longer arts of ones for my students, I'm not even entirely sure what it all means. Very worthy. So I come up with very specific things I tell them to do. Make a point, develop it. They don't need to know the ins and outs of the mark scheme. That's for an examiner. They just need to do what I tell them. And they'll do well. Matt, what do you think about that? No, I don't share the mark schemes with them. Yeah. Because you're basically telling them this is the only right answer. And mark schemes change. Mark schemes change and develop from when they're first written by the time they get to us as teachers. They've probably gone through three, four, five edits and additions. So they're never perfect in terms of what they've got. But also you want them to learn by their mistakes. If you give them the mark scheme straight up or just after they've done, they're not going to learn much from that. So what they're going to learn is by, I always think about the GCSE. You're building a wall or you're building something and you're layering it upon layer upon layer. So the first time they've doing extended answer, it's not going to be brilliant because they don't know the way. And that's where I think we'll come to it later where we're modelling and everything like that comes in. Yeah, mark schemes are great, but they're for the teacher, they're not really for the pupil. You can tell them you need to include these ideas. But at the end of the day, it's just a set of guidelines, isn't it? Yeah, that is true. And maybe that can put them off a little bit. It's actually, I don't even understand the mark schemes. So how am I ever going to write, you know, correct answer? And actually, it's useful for us to know as we know how to guide them on what skills they need to develop rather than sharing with them. I think that's good. And at key stage three, we don't really have those mark schemes do we? But they write beautiful answers sometimes without even having a mark scheme to like fall back on. So we actually, when we mark those pieces, if we mark them, we're just reading good content. Why straight jacket them? Yeah. And that's a thing. There's more than one way to write a long answer. There's more than one way to do a 12 marker. And I think I certainly fall into the trap is I like it to be for me late, because I think it makes some children feel safe that you write this and then this and then this and then this and then you do this and then you know, it's a step by step guide. And I think that's a challenge is actually how do you allow children to write high level high quality answers in a way that works for the way that they understand the world. And I think that's a real challenge. Dawn, you mentioned there about feedback and it seems to sort of fall naturally to go and look at feedback. How do you give your feedback? So obviously you've just saying there that when you mark work, the number that they get is an important, but actually the skill that they need to develop is so how do you communicate that with your students? So for the kind of medium and longer answers, we have made these little stickers, which has got the key things on that we want to see. And we literally tick on there whether we can see it or not. And if it's ambiguous, that's not clear enough, you know, of what I want to see. Obviously, I then read all of them, just tick them. And then I think, well, what is it that the students in this group need to know what the things that are going wrong, what the things that I need to remind them of go over again, reteach whatever you want to call it. And I just make a note of them. People make PowerPoint. Sometimes if I've got time, I can make a PowerPoint. Sometimes I'll make a model answer, which directly addresses the key thing that maybe it's been going wrong. I remind them of things. I will also just go back to starters quizzes when I know that I'm feeding back on a piece. I know that there's been certain errors. I will put the questions of the things that have gone wrong in my starter quiz so that we've already gone through the correct answers so that when I give the feedback on the exam question, I say, ah, do you remember in the starter we said actually the correct answer is so and so. So it links it all in with the starter retrieval practice and then the feedback. And then hopefully at that point, when I have kind of done these kind of general explanation, they all do their improvements. And generally they just all get on, I go around checking saying, have you understood what you need to do? If you understood, yes, yes, yes, they improve their answer. And I think don't ever write comments on children's work. Have a PowerPoint slide open, mark, write down maybe the five things that children need to improve and then the child just does whatever they need to do. Because I think it saves a huge amount of time and it's actually much more effective because children are less likely to read comments. Yeah, I've not got time in life to write individual comments and everywhere. I sometimes do write some comments and that might be for an individual where I feel like they need an extra little bit of kind of praise or motivation or sometimes I think I come across quite sarcastic in my marking, quite a few explanation marks and I told you lot to do this sort of thing, but you know, all in good spirits, but I certainly don't mark and write comments on every single piece. Life is too short and I don't actually think it's going to make much difference. If the class feedback is good enough, it's good enough for them. And I only write positive things. So if they're doesn't write, I'll do a little smiley face or something and actually maybe sound really bad now. Fitting exclamations like, what have you done? I do probably put pressure mark. Like what the heck is this? What do you think? So Matt, what about you? How do you give feedback? It's mind's verbal. So, you know, if I'm giving piece of work back, I say, yeah, I really like that bit. If I'm marking a piece of work, I'll actually say like this or I'll highlight a really good line that they've used. And then I'll show it to the rest of the class and say, look at how they've modeled it. How they've put it together because the best thing you could do in a class sometimes is show them what one of their peers have done. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it makes them feel good. As long as you've got the permission of the people beforehand, as you wouldn't want to show them up. But then looking at areas of improvement and having it as a general thing, not as something that you're pinpointing at one or two particular people. So I think they all benefit from hearing areas of improvement. Yeah, yeah, I think you're right. Yeah. And I think showing other children's work I think is lovely. And you could do that very easily just using a visualizer or just take a photo and put it up on the screen because it actually doesn't take you don't have to do lots of photocopying or type it out or anything silly like that. I think that's really helpful. And it's really empowering, I think, for the child that's involved, but also for the children because actually if I write a model answer, it's going to be not the same level as they are going to write, but actually they might still get full marks for it. So I think that's really helpful. Well let's move on to writing mocks and I know that Dawn and I were part of a Twitter conversation about this. But let's start with you Matt. How do you write your mocks? Do you use past papers? Well I read your Twitter conversation. I don't want to make you feel bad. I do use previous exam questions because sometimes the questions do come up in slightly different ways. Yeah. But the themes. So all the exam papers, apart from last years are out there. Pretty much until after the mocks season. So I do toy about with questions I might replace certain keywords. If I think it might be coming up that particular year, I might change but that's an inexact science. Yeah. For instance, I thought abortion was a shoe in this year. No. So I woke up on the day of one of the exams and thinking, I haven't gone through dependent arising and I was like so panicky before the exam. And when it came up, I was like, oh, I have my head in my hands and they were all like, it's fine sir. We read that page. We knew. Yeah. So I kind of mocks. Sometimes I think who are mocks for? Are they for the SLT? Are they for pupils themselves as exam practice? But we do loads of exam practice anyway. So I always say your mocks is just a little bit of evidence. If anything ever happened again, I can fall back on and they just give me a guidance of what I might need to do in the future. But don't stress because most people will improve their mock grade. I hope. Yeah. And I think the advantage of using previous papers, you know, I don't want to say one way is better than other than the advantage of doing that is that it takes a huge amount less time and you've got the mark scheme there and the mark scheme is written by the exam board. And it's actually the process of going through an exam that's the important bit because the exam practice you're going to be doing in lessons anyway. I also think if you've got non-specialists teaching, are you? Or in exam class? Having that there is a life saver for sometimes because they've got something to hold on to. I think the specialist teachers of are you? And hopefully that will be an increasing number over the next few years. We can play about with them. But I think that also takes a little bit of knowledge and a little bit of how to actually write an exam. I certainly haven't written a public exam. So I'm not quite sure. I know those go through a lot of revision, a lot of editing to get to the point. And I think anybody who's written textbooks by including those questions, your questions in the textbooks in 2016, 2015, 2016, they're no comparison now maybe to the ones that we used today. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Dawn, I know we do it very similar in that we write our own mark. Talk us through that process, how you do it and why you do it that way. So we've also got the situation that some students obviously troll exam board websites and so they can find and if they get a whiff of you're going to give them the 2019 paper. We have had students in the past that literally go and learn marks games in some subjects and of course they do really well. And to me, that's not the purpose of a mock. Comes back exactly to what Matt said. I think that the purpose of mock for me and what I do with the students is probably quite different from other people. I think it probably depends between subjects and between schools as well. For me, it's not about grade. It's about experiencing a long period of time sitting in a hole in silence with your peers writing for a long period of time and showing what you know. And actually, if you can't remember it, it's not a problem because there's only one exam that matters and that's the real one. So for me, it's a process. So when we designed the mock, it's about what do we need to do here to create a balance for the students of making them feel confident. So a few questions in there that we know there'll be really kind of confident with and will support the students that might need that. We'll also pick topics where we know some of our students are a little bit weaker. Once we've discussed this in department, means of salvation is always there. You know, we really struggle to actually teach that really well. So we want to put that in there so that we know that even if they don't do so well, we know that we'll feed back on it and therefore we can revise it. So we choose them and obviously we do look at some topics that haven't come up. But it's certainly not a paper where we say to the students only revise those things. We'll talk about revision, but we go through all the topics with them anyway. We've taught them everything. This is just a, okay, this topic hasn't come up for a while. Make sure that you definitely know how we would answer it. And then myself and my colleague, we go through what sorts of answers might we get from these questions, what we can accept, what we're not going to accept. So we make it specifically for our children, for our school, for a particular purpose. And that might be different to what other schools and the other pressures that other teachers might have. So if you're under pressure to create grades because these are going to be grades that are for references, getting into sick form, and there are parents that might even be, you know, paying for their child to be taught by you, you know, that might be a different perspective. So you might want to use a previous paper because you've got that structure, you've got that formality there. But for my context, making our own more change to work. And it is a bit more work, but I think it means that you have more control and you can use it for a way that's going to benefit your teaching and benefit the students. You know, I don't think there's necessarily ever one right way to do it. You've got to look at your own individual context and work out who is in your team, what staff have you got, how many children, what the nature of your children, the nature of your school, there's so many things that are going to feed into that decision. Let's now move on to like specific questions, so specific GCSE style questions. And let's start with four markers. Dawn, how do you think students can be successful at the say four mark similar contrasting questions? So we basically teach them for that all four markers, really simple kind of format, two developed points, and make it very obvious to the examiner that you're writing two small paragraphs, and I actually say to them, you know, two times two sentences, because otherwise what my students tend to do is they kind of amalgamate a sentence into another sentence and then it's not developed. So we start with that kind of foundation, so that when you start talking about other types similar contrasting influence, then all you need to do is use that foundation of the two developed points and say, okay, this is what this means, this is how you should address this specific kind of command word to adapt to how you're writing that. And Matt, I know we've talked about the controversy of the word contrasting, that it means different, but I think the children often think it means opposite when it doesn't really mean opposite. Have you got any tips of how to do any of the four markers either the contrasting similar or the influences? Signed post it to the examiner. This is my first point, this is my second point, and like Dawn said, indent it, have two mini paragraphs, it's brilliant. For the influence question, they've got to write about how it influences the believers' actions or behavior or thoughts or faith, and they have to have that. If it's not there, they're not going to pick up the marks for it, so I do little dart boards. So this is what the believer believes, because they do this, so this is how they behave, but bum, bum, bum, bum, and have them write those beforehand. That's the belief, that's why they do it, that's how they behave, and have them go through certainly the themes papers, because that's a really important idea. I actually think the four markers probably the easiest question to pick up four marks in the whole exam, but it's also one that is the easiest to get nothing, because it's reading the question and answering the question that's set, not the question that you want. How do you feel about having a list of influences, like maybe a list of five you've influences, and it doesn't matter what question comes up, you use their worship god or they pray or they feel comforted or whatever it might be. Would you subscribe to that or do you think that's going to be too limiting? I think that might be too limiting, because you want the detail. How would belief in the resurrection influence a Christian today? I know that's pretty much a common type of question there. You'd have to say belief in resurrection that they believe that they will have eternal life for Jesus in heaven when they die, and so they will feel comforted or whatever it might be. I think they have to have the detail and depth in their answer, but the detail and depth can be a sentence or it can be a little bit more extended there. Let's move on to five markers, because one thing I've recently learned and I didn't know this is if you don't say where the source is, you don't get the fifth mark. I probably should have known this earlier, but we're all on a journey. Am I right in thinking that? I noticed certainly in one particular syllabus that is correct. I think if you're going to use the teaching, you need to know where it comes from and the context in which it's written. We'd go back to what I was talking about, and if you weave it into the answer, and it's just not an add-on or an afterthought, or a bad throw a quote in here, because it'll get me my fifth mark. I think we'd cast a mind back maybe to the early day days of how these exams would be in Mark. And I think that's what the impression was. I have to have a quote, doesn't matter where it is, as long as the quote, "Slayer," it gets the mark. And I think the exam boards have kind of caught onto this, is having that reference and source placed in there and being used. - Yeah, I have always suggested like, start with your quote. So in the Bible it says this, this means that, therefore Christians believe this, because for me that's the most logical, it's not the only way of doing it. You can say Christians believe this, therefore they do this, they believe it because it says in the Bible. But for that, for me, feels a bit clunky. Dawn, how do you teach your five markers? - So one thing that we do, people might have heard me talking about this before, is what the students struggle with is, if in the question they see the topic, the concept, whatever it is, the belief. And then they think, oh, can't think of something that goes with this quotation. So once a fortnight, we do with them, we call it a quote test. And I give them a topic, so say let's abortion. And then I say, Christianity or Islam, and they have to write out a full sentence, using the source, starting with the Bible says, the Hadith says, the Quran says, "And finish it off with something that could be used in a five mark answer to do with abortion." So what I'm doing is, I'm getting them to make an association. Here's a topic, here's a quotation that I already know that I can use in my answer. We do that for three years every fortnight. So they are so used to coming up with it. And also, I don't accept their answer unless it is in a full sentence with the reference. The Bible says, the Hadith said, they don't get the marks. So they're so kind of drilled at doing that. So it's helping them to remember what might link in. And I won't accept vague love your neighbour. For lots of things, because actually, no, we know some more sophisticated things here. We know some better things. So yeah, it's about drilling the students on that. And also, I mean, there's nothing wrong really in some exam boards. In the, if you get students to always include quotations in the medium answers, not the short ones, actually, if they always do that, then in the one which requires the quotation, they'll automatically get that mark, because that's how they write. And if you're talking about these sorts of things, how can you not use things from the Bible, the Quran, the Hadith, because actually that is what we're learning. So you can encourage them in the board that I do, in the form mark questions to put quotations in, because actually, that becomes a development in itself. Now, I do the same thing, I always say in the form mark, because you don't need them to get the marks, but they're sometimes the easiest way of explaining why a Christian does something, or thinks something, or believe something, or whatever, I think, yeah, I think that's a good point. And actually, we start with the five markers, we teach them that skill before anything else, because actually, if you can do the five markers, you can do 12 and you can do four, you know, it's the same. So let's move on to 12 markers, because I think this is a difficult thing to teach a child how to do. I think sometimes children are slightly overwhelmed, but actually, once they get it, I think is the best thing. I think they actually prefer the 12 markers in the end to the short answer ones. Dawn, have you got any sort of top tips for how to teach students how to write good 12 markers? - Okay, so I think it depends on your context in your students to start off with. So teacher share acronyms, structures, et cetera, et cetera. And there will be some students and some schools for whom that is needed, that framework, that structure is needed, but there will be other colleagues that teach in schools where the students already know how to write fluent arguments, and you don't need to spend any time doing that. So it really is that balance. So with our students, we do have a mix. I start off with a really simple framework with them that they all start doing, but actually, I'm not sure that that would always get the top top marks, but what it will do is it will get my students who are kind of aiming for grades fours and fives. It will get them that grade because it will get them a good level on the longer answer. Then I refine it with students to show them how they could make it more sophisticated in its argumentation. It's kind of logical reasoning. I get them to think about kind of debating, you know, no one stands and has a debate and says, "Here's my three reasons why abortion is wrong. Here's the first reason." That's not a debate. A debate is where you interact and you kind of weave these arguments and I try to get them to imagine a debate with somebody that's got a different point of view. How are you gonna counter that? You're gonna say, "Yes, but on the other hand, you could argue this." No, but the evidence shows that this and it's kind of getting that, which we'll get to the higher levels. But we do lots of modeling for them. I actually don't introduce 12 mark questions to our students to halfway through the course. I don't think that you can draw on enough information until you know enough that you can pull into the answers. In my context, we need to teach a lot of foundations. Then they have the skill of pulling in all this different information. We model it for them. We do a lot of metacognition work with them where we get them to talk about what they've done in their answer, talk to a partner. What would you put in this answer and why and kind of talk things through and that seems to work really well? Amazing. Matt. I was going to say, we break it down and model it for them. Guided practice. I really like the "I do, we do." You do kind of framework because I think that brings it in. I've talked a lot to our English department about how we write and how we frame things that we've been used in the writing revolution. I don't know, Joe Keneh had been really big on that. So if anybody wants to know how to write those kind of longer answers, his work and his blog is brilliant on it. So that'd be really good to go back. And also looking at evaluation throughout the answer because sometimes they won't get to the conclusion because it'd be the last question they do in the exam. So if they're adding in their strengths and the weaknesses of the various points that they're making as they go along, it will show any examiner, this is me evaluating throughout. And I do like Dawn's "Weak or Them Ping Pong" answers. So they're batting each point backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. And it gives an actual structure for the argument that they're making. You know, we start them out and then Joe's also used these kind of things. You talk about your favourite chocolate bar and you argue those points. And you're actually making it seem quite trivial and quite small. But then you just insert an exam style question and it suddenly makes sense to them because they're saying actually, yeah, you're not talking about these big high and you're not making it really difficult for them. You're trying to make it as easy as possible. And these 12-mart or extended answer questions are quite simple if approaching the right way. - It's really interesting, isn't it? 'Cause I think my logical thing is to say, some Christians think this because of that, the Bible says this, which means that, however other Christians disagree with this point 'cause they interpret that as this way. But actually that's not based on evidence or not many people support that. But actually the way that I teach my children is to write a paragraph for a paragraph against and then a conclusion which is easier to teach, I think in some ways, but actually isn't necessarily the way that evaluation works. Matt, can I just ask how you teach evaluations? I think it's easy to teach what different Christians think, but actually to decide and make a judgment, which is what you need for that sort of level four answer. How do you teach how to make a judgment? - I think we need to take a person the opinion out. - Yeah. - First of all, because their opinion is not what we're asking them to do. We're asking them to give the opinion what a Christian or a Buddhist or a Muslim or Hindu would think. And because there's so many diverse points of view, you know, our Christians can have very different opinions about all kinds of topics that we study in the exam. When some people teach it or when it's been taught before, they think just Christians think this and other people think this. And they don't kind of see the messiness or divergent sort of difference between views. So I try and make it as simple as possible. Why is that a strong argument? What are they saying here that you can back up with a belief or a point of view? How do you know who's come out and said these kind of things before? We're dealing with teenagers. They are kind of almost tuned to sometimes question and query and awful lot of things because they have curiosity and they want to know and they want to find out why these things. So set them the challenge. Why is that a strong answer? Why is that a weak point? Because they'll see all kinds of things in the news and the village and media center which did a brilliant pod with. They have really good summary sheets. You can take one of those ideas and you can use that as a 12th mark inspiration because you can see why would that group say this and why would that group say that and place the ideas into context. But we make it sometimes more difficult than it really is. We over complicate things because we think we're not doing it properly. Everybody else is doing it. We've seen it on the web or we've seen it on Twitter. Everybody's doing it this way. I've got to do it. Take a step back and actually think, now actually know you didn't brilliantly but you just need to kind of make it simple for them. The simpler we can make it, the better I think sometimes. cases, isn't it? Keep it simple, stupid. Can I just add something in? Just something that we do, and again, it's a time thing, but it's to do with teaching, is that I find that when we have time to go off and look at things like social science data, that in itself helps with evaluation. Because what that often does is when you look at surveys, when you look at statistics and things like that, it gives you information that can enhance their answer, which also helps them to evaluate. So for example, we looked at some statistics, I think some like 60% of people that go into prison in England reaffend. Well, straight away, you can use that as a counter argument to why prisons don't actually reform people, and you're creating some sort of evaluation, looking at statistics of surveys, of Catholic Christians being asked about contraception. My counter, the actual teachings that you're teaching, but gives them the chance to evaluate, go on the other hand, in reality, this is what Catholic Christians might think. So that social science data really gives them a rich way to be able to counter instead of this just on the one hand, some Christians, other Christians, it really gives that kind of meat in a way. - And it's a good experience, isn't it? That's really powerful. And I was going to say, Pew Research, EW Research, is a really great place to find social statistics on all manner of things to do with religion, ethics, and social sciences and things like that. It's great. Let's just talk about pedagogy, and let's look at ineffective ways to teach GCSE and effective. Dawn, what's the way we do? - The worst things that I do, or the people could do, it's really difficult because obviously context matters. I think just going through the textbook page by page will work for some students, and I do know their schools where the students just want that to happen, but I think that actually not putting in that kind of richness beyond the textbook can be limiting. Come back to me on something else. (laughing) I can see his thinking. I don't want to ask people. - It's not a video curriculum. We can't teach the subject through documentaries and TV shows. We need to challenge them. And we don't need to have the textbook as a be all an end all. Variety is the name of the game sometimes. I think some of the best textbooks I'm using are 25 years old and they predate the spec because they've got the content in there which I want to use. But I don't use them every time. I must have, I'm a bit of a converter workbooks because I know them the rest of my department we're teaching the same thing across the board. - You get that consistency. - Yeah, yeah. But I also want some independence and replay to our strengths. So how I teach it is different to how my two colleagues will teach it in slightly different ways. But I think that's an element of control in my classroom. I've played about with layouts. I've played about with using the visualizer which is an absolute godsend. I thought they were just an HP for a long time and then no, I love it. There is a wealth of good stuff out there. There's also an awful lot of rubbish. And you've got to be really picky about what you're using in your classroom and how you use it because you might use something which other people have said, "Oh, this is brilliant. It's the best thing since sliced bread and it falls flat on its face with your class because it's not tuned to them." Well, you're taking it almost off the shelf and you haven't put any thought into it or adapted it to your situation. And your people, your context, the levels of their understanding and how they're going to react to it as well. - And that links back to what you were saying at the beginning about choosing your resources carefully. I think that's really important. Do you want to add about positive pedagogies, things you've found that have worked? - This might link into what we might talk about. But I think the kind of the worst thing that you can do is think that because you've said it and you've had a lesson on it and the children have learned it and that they know it. That's the worst thing to us, yeah. Learning happens over a long period of time to get things into our long-term memory takes a lot more than just doing a lesson on angels in Islam. A lesson on angels in Islam and never coming back to it. Only a certain percentage of students will remember that two years later. And I think what we need to do is to ensure that students can remember in the long term and check that they've learned it. Don't just assume, I told you that. Why don't you remember that? It's got to be, oh, actually, maybe I didn't explain that very well because you're clearly all not remembering it. All you've all just misunderstood. I need to address that in a slightly different way. So it's just, yeah, ensuring that really learning happens not just going through a course. - We have this, I've done an episode on it on Reconciliation. The all-round year 11's got zero in the mop. And we're like, we're clearly not teaching this right. This is absolutely down on us if nobody's really understood it. You know, the odd kid got like full marks 'cause they just learned it. But as a whole, they didn't, we went back and like, we thought about how we taught it so that they could remember it. And there's still stuff, there's still stuff in the curriculum. Like the laws prayer, they're really struggling, the story of Job, they're really struggling with, and the Creed. They're the three things that we're clearly just not teaching correctly 'cause they just don't feel confident at it. Let's talk about revision. You mentioned revision earlier, Dawn. Have you found any sort of techniques that work? So I hate the word revision. Sorry. Unfortunately, in people's minds, including parents, revision happens at the end of a course, maybe from Christmas onwards or Easter if you're lucky and research has shown that that's not the best way to learn. Cramming works, that's the problem, but it doesn't work as well as long-term, retrieval and revision. So we basically get them revising from day one, from the second lesson, I'm getting them retrieving, revising the last lesson. Every lesson has retrieval, revision, if you want to call it. All of our homeworks are revision from day one. So they're revising for three years, and I don't tell them to do any revision at the end of year 11. I've not mentioned it at all. I've not told them to do anything, 'cause I'm really confident that what we've done in three years is enough. That's radical, and I think actually, sometimes we just do things because that's what we've always done, and we sometimes need to go, what if we did it slightly differently? And I think revision's one of those things that's so part and parcel with education that sometimes we don't question its effectiveness. I think that's real challenge to me actually. Matt, how about you? - I've written, take the long view, but retrieval is an ongoing process. So obviously, doing that, I was speaking from the same-- - Singing from the same hymn book to be on brand. - So I think in terms of effective revision, different pupils will revise or study in different ways. So it's not having a hard and fast, and you have to do it this way, you have to do it that way. So at the beginning of the course, I have all the materials that they'll ever need to revise available to them straight away. That it's there. There's nothing secret, there's nothing hidden, there's nothing gonna jump out on them. I might update them every now and then, but they're there for them, they can access them. I do not want any of my pupils to come back to me on results then, said, "You never taught me that "or you never gave us the revision materials." I said, "Well, because I know it's there, "they just didn't access them." And I signposted it to them, but the parents know exactly where they are. I said, "Your children will never, ever say "they have nothing to do in terms of homework "or learning for our e because it's always there. "It's there. "It's that over to the shoulder." And that's as honest as I can say it to them, because if you're upfront, nothing will catch them out. Yeah. It does. But I think the greatest compliment at child can give me is miss everything that came up new taught us, because it doesn't mean that they're gonna do well, it doesn't mean that they've answered the question correctly, but actually if they're familiar with the content, because you've made them confident in their content, I think that's the best that I can hope for. It's not about grades for me. I was really happy to see that it all came out smiling at the end of the exams. And I sat the exam this year, it's not easy, 'cause I haven't done a GCSE REE for 30 years. I was like, "I've probably shouldn't." No, I've already checked. I've never done it. I've never done it. No, and I, well, that's what I thought. I'd be really interested. Norify. It is not easy. And I knew what to write. I knew the answers to all the questions, but my, when I went to bed, my arm was still cramping from having to write for our 45 minutes. It's, oh, I hope you get a grade for me. I'm gonna have to question my life for you, if I don't. (laughing) That's what scares me is not doing as well as some of my projects. And I told my year 11s and they were so chuffed. And they said, "Best what if we get better than you?" I was like, "That is my greatest dream." "If I can teach you to be better than me, then that's great." "My ego will be totally bruised, and I'll have to maybe find a new job." But I see that would be wonderful. Is there anything else you want to say that you haven't had the opportunity to do? Just spend as much time as you can, kind of doing retrieval with students, I think, and planet, plan retrieval. Don't kind of leave it. Use homework to your advantage. Structure it. Certainly don't ever just say to students, your homework is to revise. make it really specific, make it really clear the topic you're covering, how it's going to help them, because then it provides this kind of big picture. We're providing a big picture, we're covering everything so that they walk in that exam, totally confident, and they walk out happy. Matt. I'm going to go right back to what I said at the beginning. It's all about the preparation. If you can prepare your students well, if you can prepare your lessons well, everything should run smoother than what they would have done. Not every day is going to be a smooth day, not every day is going to be brilliant, but the good days will far outweigh the bad, I think on that. Yeah. And Matt, if you can wake up tomorrow and one thing was different about the current GCSE RE, what would you want it to be? This content, I think there are topics, certainly in some of the papers that were whole units in previous incarnations of the GCSEs. And I think we're being asked to almost funnel as much and cram as much in as we can. And I think sometimes we don't unpack it enough, and we can not give them the time to unpack it. So I would like to see a little bit of thinning out certainly of the thematic. Oh no, me, it's Christian practices. Just goes on forever. It's just so much of it. But that's the condensing, that's the way you need to merge some of the ideas together. But there's about 20 different lessons in there. It's just crazy. Dole, what about you? If you can wake up tomorrow and one thing was different about the RE GCSE, what would you want it to be? Oh, this is a difficult one. I think maybe the opportunity for it to cover doctrine, but also reality. So in the example that I said before, we can talk about what the doctrines are, what the teachings are, but also give value to, okay, what's the reality, what's the lived experience, and kind of bringing that in a bit more rather than just kind of looking at the teachings. And I know that's tricky because how people live is a fluid and it's wide-ranging, but just a bit more of the lived religion, I think, rather than just this is what the sources of authority say. And I think there's a nod to it in the questions that say, you know, from the modern Muslims in Britain today, but I think those types of questions actually really freak the child out, because there's so many words in them, and they're trying to work out what's the belief or what's the question asking me. You know, I think if the syllabus was much more focused on lived experiences, then questions like that would probably be answered better. So yeah, that's good. And final thoughts, Dawn? Just make sure that you teach the GCSE specification that's there, and then we won't have any surprises and each individual word. We know that questions have been asked about one word in a bullet point, not just the bullet points. You know, you can have a 12 mark question on who do, you can have a 12 mark question on incarnations. So really, really clear that everything and anything on that piece of paper can be asked about. Yeah, I think that's important. And thank you. It's where you started and where you ended. I think that's really helpful for people. Matt, enjoy the teaching of it, because if you start to dread the content or how you're going to deliver it, or it then becomes a bit of a bug bear and a monkey on your back, I think you need to enjoy the process. And if it seems dull and slow going, change it. Speed it up a bit, make it a bit more challenging, do a comparison, bring in some new ideas, because that's sometimes a hook of, oh, I don't remember that bit. And actually, that links back to what you said right at the beginning about asking for help. You know, if you're getting to the point where you're like, oh, I'm a bit unmotivated, it's a bit dry, go and talk to someone else, go back to the exam board and go, right, have you got something that can help me with this? I think, you know, that's great. I love that. I love when things come full circle. Thank you. Guys, thank you so much for giving up your half to, or recording this and half to, and Dawn's literally just jumped off a delayed flight. So it's very gracious of both of you to spend your time doing this. So thank you so much. And I know that there's going to be so much appreciation from this and other what you've said today and how helpful it has been. Thank you so much. My pleasure. My name is Louise and this is the R.E. podcast. The podcast for those of you who think R.E. is boring, but it's not. You just might need to go and find help to make it more interesting. But thank you so much for letting us all the life out of you.