Year 10: an update.

In other news, I am so proud of the change in attitude my Year 10 class have had since my last post about them.

With three and a half weeks to go until the end of term, I was suddenly struck by the sheer volume of work we had left to do. We still needed to finish annotating the scenes from Romeo & Juliet, we needed to watch the film and make notes about the relevant scenes (a crucial part of the assessment), we needed to carry out a mock, create sound assessment plans and then actually do the assessment. I also needed to mark the mocks to give some feedback to them before the assessment. I panicked. I explained to them. They panicked. Then we pulled together.

Some of the lessons did end up being a bit of a lecture, which I could be happier about but it just became about getting the job done, rather than flowery approaches. The kids seemed to respond well too and they really got their heads down and tackled the work head on. We had several lessons where I encouraged them to work together, use the computers, and make their own interpretations and the notes from the film were largely their own thinking too. They have done brilliantly and I don't feel anywhere near as nervous about the actual assessment as I did last time.

I feel really proud of them; they've stepped up to the plate and taken on quite a mammoth task. Their essay writing skills are the only issue but we did some major troubleshooting of that this week and I'm hoping that some of it will have gone in. There's only one or two who I'm not 100% confident of but I'm hoping that there will be a much higher percentage of them getting into Band 4/5 this time.

It's a learning process for me too. Last year, my classes were all Key Stage 3 and so I am a bit rusty when it comes to GCSE. However, I feel like I and my Year 10 beauties have hit our stride with this work. So, keep your fingers crossed that the assessments show this to be true!!