Revision....and this time, it's personal.

Season's Greetings Everyone!!!

Ah yes, the season is upon us at last....

*Clears throat and sings*

Deck the hall with chairs and tables
Fah la la la la la la la laa
As and Bs for the most able
Fah la la la la la la la laaaaa!


OK, I know my singing is appalling and it's not Christmas, but the exam season.

My Yr 11 class are about to sit their GCSE in German.

They are stressed and panicking.

Some of them.

Everyone is telling them to revise!

So, what's the best way to revise?

If you google "German GCSE revision" there are a million (slight exaggeration, there are only 964,000) webpages which claim they can help you.

But can they?

Yes.

Ah, but can they?

Well, yes.

Obviously, but how relevant are they to the needs of your students?

I like to think that I know my students quite well.

I tried to personalise their revision by  producing a chart of what they are good at based on the past exam questions they'd taken.

I produced this:

For each Reading and Listening exam paper they'd taken so far I made a sheet for each student based on their achievement for each question.

If they got full marks, they highlighted it in green.

If they got more than half marks it was orange.

If they got half marks, or fewer, it was pink.  

So each student now knows which topics they know well and which ones they need to work harder at.

Rocket science it ain't.

How do I use it?  

Well my bell activity might be: "Write 10 key words from one of your red topics"
or a main activity might be: "Create a mindmap for one of your red or orange topics"
.
They could even find a partner who has a green topic which is one of their red/orange topics and test each other.

So far they're responding well to it.

Only time will tell...