Having decided that practice and spaced practice were more important than copious notes, we produced a termly booklet of tasks that made the students practise a skill, or directed students to revise a particular aspect. Develop your ability to compare two non-fiction texts 100 plus years apart. This is ideal for Paper 2, Question 4. I had a wealth of experience in my department (76 years of English teaching experience – including two GCSE examiners, which I was at pains to let the Year 11 cohort know!) and this felt like a logical way to utilise that experience effectively. I waited with bated breath. Would they really come in January for revision? Well, yes, they would. It’s early days, but so far the programme seems to have been a real success.

At my school we decided to offer 12 bespoke lectures for students to attend every Thursday afternoon, from January onwards. They were unashamedly academic in tone. don’t spend too long on the question. Get your four points down, get the four marks in the bag and then move on. Similarly useful across a range of different subjects, these are especially handy for internalising bodies of knowledge and key English terminology. Previously, in the run-up to the exams we would dedicate entire lessons to specific set texts or elements of the paper. We would break down the lesson schedule and produce a formula to cover what we felt was important:

We have an enormous range of books to guide you through all the English GCSE revision and practice you need. Plus, we cover every exam board, including AQA, WJEC Eduqas and Edexcel GCSE English Language. connotations close connotation An idea or image which is suggested by a word, which is not its dictionary meaning, eg the connotation of 'desk' might be school. of particular word choices Two lectures would run, for between 30 and 40 minutes – one for English Literature and one for English Language. They would drill into a facet of the exam paper or area of a text. You can use our past paper finder to access free digital copies of our past papers and mark schemes. It doesn’t matter if their revision materials look pretty (unless that makes it more likely that they’ll actually use them). But they will need to be focused, designed for regular practice and able to get the relevant information stored in their heads for life.

Right, we have ten lessons left – so that’s three lessons for Macbeth, four for A Christmas Caroland two for the language papers…’English can be a problematic subject to revise because it is so rich. The most highly motivated and driven students will attend revision sessions, complete practice papers and succeed. However, students in the middle can be very ‘middling’ in their attitude towards revision.

Things also changed in Year 11. Lessons now start with regular questions on all the texts, which serve to highlight gaps and areas for the students to work on – ‘Tom, you need to work on Macbeth; Jasmine, you need to work on your poetry.’ Students should get used to completing deliberate practise tasks for both language and literature topics”We abandoned this approach completely, in favour of placing the emphasis on students from an early stage. It can work particularly well when reading through chapters of a text, watching a Shakespeare play or listening to a lecture. There are also processes when approaching language questions that are quite distinct from essay-style literature responses, which students need to be familiar with.

Students should get used to completing deliberate practise tasks for both language and literature topics. They should take the opportunity to read and annotate, plan their responses and answer longer questions as part of their revision. Teachers are naturally kind, and in our kindness we’ll give students safety blankets. It used to be that if they didn’t revise, they would have at least had these last few lessons to help plug the gaps. The more they do this, the more they’ll ultimately retain. The more intricate their schema, the more the new information will adhere to the old. Metacognition It can be useful to turn these into distinct homework tasks and encourage the systematic approaches above, so that they’re able to focus on knowledge and retrieval. This will help them considerably when they come to attempt those longer exam responses that are designed bring their knowledge together.

Revision tool archive

For new specifications where there are no past papers, we provide specimen papers and mark schemes. TeachIt offers resources for revision and study. Although these resources are aimed at teachers, you can use them too after signing up. There are different levels of membership, including free, which still offers access to useful resources. You can only access past papers that relate to the current specification. Papers from previous years won't show if the specification has changed or expired. Use this Kray twins Powerpoint, two reading extracts, worksheet and example answer to explore and practise skills for both Paper 1 and Paper 2. There’s enough materials here for three lessons. Question 1 should hopefully be quite straightforward for you. You will be asked to find four specific bits of information (such as a description of something) from a specific part of the text. It’s likely there will be more than four pieces of information available, so you’ll have plenty to choose from. You can either put your answers in your own words, or quote directly from the text.