How we mark work . . .

Someone asked, so here's an example of the marking criteria in the UK, for marking KS4 work only (KS3 and KS5 are different, of course!).

http://www.haikuwhiz.com/attachments/1033.pdf

I hope one can see how detailed it is. We moderate lots. We all meet, all bring our students' work, and check each others' work, and make sure we're all marking exactly the same . . . since eventually, all this work gets sent to the Powers That Be and they look at a sampling of folders before awarding the students their GCSE(s); they of course need to know that teachers are marking fairly and consistently. We do this with CW, with mock exams . . . with everything! So much fun to be had.

Off to the Netherlands for a week . . .

. . . to welcome the new little one into the world. Looking forward to posting pics of her very soon!

Meantime, here's a gorgeous picture my daughter took of Maya, her almost-four year old, at the beach recently. Maya was watching for whales (reports to me that she saw none, but also has me looking out for them on my trip through the Chunnel tomorrow morning, and take pictures through the train windows. LOL! Ah, innocence).

EDIT: I came, I left, and the baby never showed up! I guess they make their own time-tables, don't they?

KS4 work . . .

In KS4 (year 10 and 11, and you keep the same kids for both years), they do coursework (CW) and study other texts for the exam, all of which are compiled to become their final GCSE grade(s).

Students work to get at least five A* to C grades ("A-star to C"), which is good enough to get them into university. You're goal as an English teacher is to help them get two of them. The work consists of . . .

1) 3 speaking-listening (SL) tasks (you can do a lot more of those, and count the three best ones -- there is specific criteria for what types of tasks: Individual, group, and drama; argue, explore, and explain).

2) 5 pieces of CW (Shakespeare, Media, Prose, Original Writing, and Post-1914 Drama), with specific criteria on each. (We must allow students to redraft CW twice as a minimum, so that they can improve to the best of their ability (therefore, we give specific advice when we mark the first draft). At my school we do all the CW in year 10, then the novels and poems in year 11. We fit the SL tasks in here and there, in both years.

3) 20 poems: 8 from Different Cultures, 4 each from Pre-1914, Duffy, and Armitage (or Pre-1914, Heaney, and Clarke).

4) a novel, which is part of the exam (I'm doing Of Mice and Men with my lower set, and The Catcher in the Rye with my top set).

5) at the end of year 11, they take two exams, and receive two GCSEs for English -- the English Lit GCSE, and the English Language GCSE. Those are as follows:

a) In the Language exam, there are two papers, with two parts to each to them (covering Different Cultures poems, media non-fiction writing, persuasive writing, and informative writing). That exam is 60% of their final English Language GCSE, certain parts from the 5 pieces of the CW equal 20% (Media, Original Writing, and an average of Shakespeare and Prose -- Drama doesn't factor in here); the S/L tasks make up the final 20%.

b) For the English Lit GCSE, 30% of the mark is from their CW (Shakespeare, Prose, and Drama, averaged), and 70% is from the exam, which is one paper, 2 parts to it (the novel, and then the Pre-1914/Duffy/Armitage poems).

Oh, and they'll have various levels for the exam (Entry level, Foundation, Higher) -- you have to figure out which students need which, and get them ready for those. A few may not take a second GCSE in Lit (very low ability students).

My little Maya-papaya (my granddaughter) . . .

Have too much champagne, kiss too many men, love too much, laugh too loud, throw caution to the wind and your inhibitions out the window. Life is happening now, not 10 pounds from now.

My daughter takes some brilliant photos; thought I'd post a few here.

QTS . . .

I am now officially qualified in the UK! It's been a lot of work, a time-consuming process, and I did it in a few short months, but I've done it!

I took literacy, numeracy, and ICT tests at the university (passed them all first try!), I created a portfolio covering 41 standards (and a minimum of 3 pieces of evidence per standard, although in reality, I had twice that), and I endured many observations of lessons and inspections of my marking and planning.

Today was the last observation, and my portfolio was scrutinised . . . and the Cambridge Partnership assessor who was hired to evaluate my work pronounced me a (once again) qualified teacher at 11:11 a.m. today.

Excellent.

I do owe my school a huge thank you, for all their help in this process.