I called into Seager’s classroom today when he was doing a one -to-one session with some students today  (I know I said one-to-one and “students” is plural – we do mainly small groups but its still called 1:1 .. don’t ask!) and I saw the way he uses the ResultsPlus template. Each student had their own specific analysis and they then highlighted just the Top 40 topics that they didn’t get full marks on – they could see quite clearly that a C is achievable had they gotten those questions right … I can imagine it must be a real “facepalm” moment for some students.  

Some teachers think that as a result of the whole culture of exams and league tables that, some schools are  “game playing”  … seriously this is not a game, its all about the students, and setting them up for their future. We don’t advocate teaching to the test, but we do target specific topics for our intervention students in the run up to an exam – a bit like every teacher does in the lead in to exams …. except these same teachers would call it “revision”. As I was driving home, Seager and I had a conversation which turned into a discussion about what I’d seen. The highlighting is an exercise that he does will all his students, and he wants our version to be colour coded showing the number of marks, covered by the Top 40 topics … it turns out that in the June 2013 1MAOH papers it was 74 marks. In addition to those marks there are others that most students should be able to get based on very basic knowledge. Basically this represents a massive chunk of marks towards gaining a B or even an A.  

Don’t have a go about us focussing on getting the “C” – yes, we do to some extent, but we don’t stop there – we see the C grade as the first hurdle that the students need to overcome before moving onwards and upwards, but despite that, for some of our cohort getting a C will represent 4 or even 5 levels of progress so is a massive LIFE CHANGING achievement.

PS: – I promise I haven’t given up on putting together new worksheets, its just been a very busy start to the new year. I have some cracking stuff in the pipeline … so watch this space.