A/A* GCSE conference

Friday afternoon is not the ideal time to enthuse 60 GCSE students about revision, but that is the task I've been charged with, and the free lunch and goodie bag of revision aids does help. The students are off timetable and individually invited by letter to raise the status of the event.


Rather than bang on about revision techniques, this afternoon is aimed at what it really takes to get the top grades. The sessions include:

Using Music to Aid Memory
Using Art to Analyse
The Internal and External Locus of Control
Time Organisation
SOLO Taxonomy - Relational and Extended Abstract Thinking

There is also an introductory video with 6th Formers talking about what did / didn't work for them.

It is all delivered by staff at the school. The Time Organisation session, voted one of the best, is delivered by a Faculty Support Manager and is a version of CPD delivered to teachers at one of our learning fairs.

Last year it went extremely well, the student feedback was overwhelmingly positive with all the sessions scoring 3.5 or more out of 5 for usefulness. After Easter, all students except one (but there is always one) said they had used something they had learnt to help revise over the holiday and something from the goodie bag.

The goodie bag includes:

Post-it notes
Coloured pens
File cards
Highlighters
Memory sticks
Key ring memo blocks (from Muji)

The most popular being the file cards and the least the memory sticks (which happily flies in the face of claims that only flash, expensive things appeal to kids!)

Well, I hope it goes as well this year as last. Our A/A* results increased significantly. Of course it's impossible to tell how much this contributed to it, but I like to think it played some part.