Speaker 1: Exam preparation, one word, erm, erm, crikey, problematic, probably, stressful, it is stressful

Speaker 2: but it's exciting, exciting. I'm actually very excited about revision, it's how to make

Speaker 1: it interesting for everybody. You want me to speak? Exam preparation is, er, I think

Speaker 3: of results. Under control, just. What's important is that the, the exam preparation is enjoyable.

Speaker 4: The admin is the vein of my life for GCSE. We enter people at so many different levels at so many different times. Just to make sure everyone's in for the right tier. Foundation or higher tier. There are the modular entries to think about. And I have been waking up

Speaker 5: in the middle of the night thinking, have I entered these students for the right exam?

Speaker 6: You've also got to remember that, what do I want to say? Sorry. But the admin can take

Speaker 3: many forms, it doesn't have to be pieces of paper, records, it can be conversations. Communication.

Speaker 7: One annual phone call to the exam board, just to enquire and ask questions, if there's any changes, surprises, anything new, you can often find out last minute good tips. Make

Speaker 2: sure you just double check all the examination numbers. Double, triple checking. Twice, three times. Look at the website with people who have done the entries before you. So we don't

Speaker 8: trust that we've done it right, we never do, we always think we've done it wrong. And I think that's a good strategy, we always blame ourselves.

Speaker 6: The borderline students are the CD borderline. Students who have achieved a D, who have underachieved

Speaker 5: because they should have achieved a C. Because C is the magic letter, the magic grade. At

Speaker 7: the beginning of year 11, an awful lot of pupils, most of them, come back with positive energy, people, they want to do well, and that's the time to catch them. Those students

Speaker 6: are pulled out of their mainstream classes and placed into new classes with intervention

Speaker 5: teachers. We give them an extra lesson a week of extra maths and make that as different as possible to their normal maths, but targeting the topics that are the DC topics. Pupils who

Speaker 7: are borderline often give one word answers in class. And they tend to have a big problem

Speaker 9: with recall. Do you want to repeat the question? And I think it's really important not to be, give them a ridiculous number of verbs, to give them perhaps ten key verbs that you know

Speaker 7: that they'll use. So for those pupils, the one word that they give me, I'll play a word game, I'll say, OK, you've given me a one word answer and it's correct, but I'd like you to turn that one word into eight words, you've got 30 seconds, go. In one sense, every

Speaker 5: student is a borderline candidate because at whatever point you're at, they're ready to get a grade. Can we get them the next grade?

Speaker 10: My favourite strategy is just to tell them to go to bed at the right time and have a good breakfast.

Speaker 7: Making sure that they've got water. Simple things. Breathe, don't forget to breathe. Making sure that they do hand exercises if their hand gets sore. And I always say to

Speaker 9: them, you've got to sound like you're loving it, even though you're clearly not.

Speaker 5: Turn to the back of the exam, which is usually a blank page, draw out a ten by ten times

Speaker 10: table and fill it in. And think about how everything they've learnt in the last two years fits into that particular question and where it fits in.

Speaker 3: Shall I say it now? What is the question actually asking for? Is it a one mark or a two mark or a three mark question? Look for the questions you're expecting. If it wants more than one mark, then there is more that you have to explain, you have to justify and give an explanation. See if you can find the Pythagoras question.

Speaker 9: I always tell them to listen out for cognates, so words that sound like English words, and it's not going to be a trick, it will actually mean that.

Speaker 11: Keep referring back to the multiple choice section because often that has a lot of the answers for definitions that they'll find later in the exam.

Speaker 1: So if you hear el piano, it will be a piano. If you want to get an A star, obviously the knowledge has to be there, but so much of it is exam technique and timing in particular.

Speaker 7: I'd probably say timing. I've often bought a clock before the exam, and a big clock, and put it on a desk and just got students used to stopping, looking at the clock, looking at where they are and thinking about the rest of the paper.

Speaker 11: Lots of time.

Speaker 1: I have a stopwatch, and they have to answer a Part A question in 12 minutes, a Part B question in 10 minutes, and a Part C question in 8 minutes, which takes their 30 minutes.

Speaker 5: You'll finish the exam early, you'll have 15 minutes, you'll have checked your paper already, go back, you've made a mistake. You know you have, because every time we've done it you've come across, oh did I do that? How silly was that? Look for it.

Speaker 2: I think it's important for students to know the grade boundaries.

Speaker 9: Yeah, definitely. We share them right at the beginning of Year 10. I think if you show it to them, it lends what you're saying more credibility.

Speaker 12: Let's look at the difference between an A grade and a C grade. What has the C grade person not got that the A grade has?

Speaker 5: When the students often start to talk about, oh, what do I have to do to get this, to get that, I just say, let's just try and get as much right as we can.

Speaker 3: If you've enjoyed the journey, the grade will take care of itself.

Speaker 2: What grade would I give myself? God, that's harsh. Blimey. A start, of course.

Speaker 6: I don't know, I'd like to think I was an A grade GCSE teacher.

Speaker 8: I think you'd better ask my students. An A minus. Some days I've gone away from here feeling I've totally failed.

Speaker 5: Mike, that's a terribly... It would be unclassified, without question. There's no classification fits my teaching.

Speaker 13: As a teacher, I think a B, because I think you can always do better.

Speaker 2: Memorising techniques, OK.

Speaker 5: I wrote out a list of five of these yesterday and I can't remember what they were.

Speaker 4: I can't remember. For each case study, you have to have either five numerical facts or five place-specific facts.

Speaker 2: Metric units are a nightmare to memorise for metric and imperial conversions. So if they can associate, say, a foot, which is 30 centimetres, I always get the 30 centimetre ruler, demonstrate to them, this is a foot, remember it, this is a bit like a very large foot.

Speaker 5: The volume of a cylinder, which started with a piece, a pizza, which had radius Z, height A.

Speaker 9: I'll give them cats. Cats never like rats.

Speaker 5: So the area was pi R squared, P, I, Z, Z, A.

Speaker 9: You'll never find double letters of C, N, L and R in Spanish. I do a lot of mind mapping just with pictures.

Speaker 7: I did a four-paragraph rap and I had four main points there, why Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. Each point was the lead sentence of the rap.

Speaker 1: The relationships unit has a lot to do with sex, so they might draw some fairly dodgy pictures, but if it makes them remember what they need, as long as it's not pornographic, I don't particularly care. It's remembering those key points in that order. The point is revision is personal and for each individual, as long as they can recall it from an image, even if it makes them laugh, the job's done.

Speaker 7: Hitler was pissed at the Treaty of Versailles. The Nazis promised to weave it bye-bye. Sorry, I can't do this. You can't say pissed on telly, but the kids would remember that. What was the question?

Speaker 10: Favourite revision strategy would probably be making sure that revision is revisiting things but not repeating them. Should I start again? Do you want me to go back?

Speaker 3: We get students to write an exam question in the style of the exam paper and then they will deliver that question to the whole class.

Speaker 6: Alternatively, they might have a chat show with the author and so it's all about being a little bit dramatic.

Speaker 3: The student who's written the question becomes the expert.

Speaker 4: Mastermind. Another came up with a monopoly board with all of the different case studies around it.

Speaker 7: They've got to come up with a list of up to ten questions, between five and ten questions, that I'm going to ask another group.

Speaker 5: Maths is different to many other subjects in that there are a lot of short questions, so we practice a lot of short questions.

Speaker 7: I then give the groups another topic to revise. This topic is their specialist subject.

Speaker 10: It's always nice actually to keep revision resources separate and do not touch them until it comes to that revision period, so that it is fresh for them, it is fresh for you.

Speaker 11: I just thought of another good revision strategy.

Speaker 10: Speed dating.

Speaker 11: And they have to come in, have two minutes with the first person, then move on and they have to grade each other.

Speaker 9: Particularly for some of the shy girls, but also shy boys, I think they find it quite difficult to speak and that's why it's really important that they're used to doing that and you break down some of the barriers and make it a bit more fun.

Speaker 8: I think they really do have to trust that you have their best interests at heart.

Speaker 12: It's about putting them at ease and letting them know and making sure you know the sorts of things that come up often.

Speaker 13: And they need to know that someone will say to them, you know what, if you've never done clay before, don't pick now to do it.

Speaker 12: I know that this question has come up eight out of ten times, so it's likely to come up again.

Speaker 6: And you've got to trust them, you've got to have high expectations of them.

Speaker 5: The number of students I've come across over the years who have no confidence in their maths, give them the confidence and they find that actually they can do it.

Speaker 2: Is it all sounding OK?

Speaker 14: Teachers have to be great actors. I'm not sure, sometimes a bit of obvious anxiety is not a bad thing.

Speaker 10: We do worry about the students' grades and at the end of the day we have to make sure the students know that we are not worried, we have every faith in them and they will be absolutely fine.

Speaker 9: Yes, be able to calm them down, but show them, yeah, actually, they should feel a bit nervous about this and they should be working flipping hard and they should care about it.

Speaker 13: I think they need to know that you care enough to worry.

Speaker 14: The point of exams?

Speaker 12: I don't know really.

Speaker 5: I'm not sure I know the answer to that question.

Speaker 12: I think we have to have exams for quality assurance purposes really. I think more than anything it's for students to know they can do it themselves.

Speaker 9: It's good to work to a deadline. It means that students actually go away and learn. And so I suppose it's a good thing.

Speaker 1: As a whole I think students do better in exam conditions than they do through coursework. Examiners have higher expectations of coursework and often the results are better if it is a 100% exam.

Speaker 5: And don't ask me why I teach maths because I definitely don't know the answer to that one. What do you think is the biggest mistake students make? I thought you might ask that for some reason.

Speaker 9: There must be. There must be a million things.

Speaker 5: Nothing.

Speaker 9: Well, there's not one thing I wouldn't do.

Speaker 5: Don't do nothing. Make sure you are doing something.

Speaker 4: I think overkill on exam questions. I've done in the past. And students have just like groaned, oh my god, not another question this.

Speaker 6: Taking students through every single poem that they have to know.

Speaker 11: Simply putting things up on the board and getting the pupils to copy it out because there's a rush to get through a whole level of theory.

Speaker 6: Because I'm paranoid that what if it comes up in the exam, they're going to freak out. And I kick myself for doing that every time.

Speaker 10: Sometimes you have to lie.

Speaker 5: Don't tell them they're going to fail would be one.

Speaker 10: Sometimes you have to think, well the exam is three days away, what grade am I going to put on this piece of work?

Speaker 8: Honesty is not always the best policy. I can't think of anything that's been a disaster that I wouldn't do again. Because I think you learn by your mistakes.

Speaker 5: Try everything.

Speaker 13: Stop now.

Speaker 5: Dish.