This post is intended to be used for us to signpost people to a “sort of” set of instructions on how to access and generate the R.A.G. paper functionality that we’ve developed – an overview is also available on the R.A.G. tab at the top of this webpage. Essentially, the idea is all around providing support to other teachers to help students to correct/hone/refine their work having done an assessment – we’ve always got the students to complete a “RAG” sheet which is stuck in their books and then in various ways we’ve worked through corrections etc but its a ball ache. As practising teachers we know how busy everyone is so wanted to keep our solution simple – we wanted something that got students focused on improving their raw score without adding to teacher workload. I suppose we also wanted to pass some of the responsibility back to students and parents … give them the tools to help themselves.

This is still very much  an ongoing project (I’m going to use this post as a way of listing what papers are currently included!) … so far we have alternative questions, worked solutions* and video support* available for: –

  • Edexcel
    • Summer 2023 (all Foundation tier papers – Higher tier Paper 1 … Paper 2 and Paper 3 is coming soon)
    • November 2022 (all papers on both Higher and Foundation tiers)
    • Summer 2022 (all papers on both Higher and Foundation tiers)
    • November 2021 – (all papers on both Higher and Foundation tiers)
    • June 2021 – No papers sat
    • November 2020 – (all papers on both Higher and Foundation tiers)
    • June 2020 – No papers sat
    • November 2019 -(all papers on both Higher and Foundation tiers)
    • Summer 2019 – (all papers on both Higher and Foundation tiers)
    • November 2018 (all papers on both Higher and Foundation tiers)
    • Summer 2018 (all papers on both Higher and Foundation tier)
    • November 2017  (all papers on both Higher and Foundation tier)
    • Summer 2017 (all papers on both Higher and Foundation tiers)
  • AQA
    • Summer 2019 – Foundation Paper 1, Higher Paper 1 and Foundation Paper 2 
    • Summer 2018 – Foundation Paper 1)
    • November 2017 (all papers on both Higher and Foundation tiers)
  • OCR
    • November 2017 (all papers on both Higher and Foundation tiers)

This function essentially generates alternative questions testing EXACTLY the same skill as the original one on the test they sat (and not a question from a load of others that were flagged as, say, also being “Pythagoras” if that’s what the original question was about … after all, it could be testing a totally different skill too) from a set of three possible alternatives so effectively all your students could end up with totally different papers. There is also the ability to exclude any questions that they “nailed” if you wished – the idea is that students can focus and hone in on topics that in the first instance, they know something about (i.e. the amber questions) and then the ones that they didn’t get any marks on (i.e. the red questions). The version that our subscribers get, also includes video support and worked solutions (along with the ability to do multi-student upload). I’ve put together some powerpoint slides and also some one minute video clips that can be used to show students/teachers how to generate papers which I hope will be useful:

This PPT -> RAG introduction  includes THREE sections – two for JustMaths subscribers and one for R.A.G.Lite

Seager and I have already used these in totally different ways:

  • I batch uploaded* the data from a paper my students had done and got them emailed to my gaffer (**waves**) who then forwarded to the students – we could have got them emailed direct to students – and at parents evening the students were told that they were also going to get a paper copy (without the worked solutions) to work on. The idea being that they can view the worked solutions and access the video support through the electronic copy on their email.
  • Seager took his group to an IT room and got them to input their own scores and generate their own papers. I like this idea because it means that they can know how to do it themselves in future (if permitted they could do it sitting in the maths classrooms through their phones). He then got them to print copies so that they had something to work on too.

I do hope that people will find this function useful and if you do use it we’d love to hear how it goes for you.

*available with the JustMaths online subscription only.Â