It has been a long time since I have blogged…I have been away from education since January in order to have my son and care for him on maternity leave. He is now 5 months old and I am finding myself thinking about returning to work, how I will balance motherhood and teaching part-time and getting to grips with the new GCSE specification.
We are sticking with AQA and the first unit we will teach is Health and the People. There are some similarities with Medicine Through Time, so as a department we thought this the best place to begin. I have created a student-friendly mark scheme and felt the following points might help them.
Question 1 is similar to the previous utility question in the Germany paper. For top marks, challenging the source will be important. We must encourage students to challenge the sources they are given by examining reliability, bias and limitations. It will be interesting to see how I can support my students to do this with evidence and explanation as opposed to exaggerated opinion…
Question 2 seems fairly straightforward (am I being too optimistic?) and may be a good starting place for some of our lower attainers to get to grips with the paper. Students must fully explain the significance of an aspect of medicine and use their understanding in a wider historical context for top marks. Students will need to be able to make links to how certain aspects of medicine have changed and developed over time.
Question 3 invites students to compare similarities between aspects of medicine and here students will really need to consider the impact of for example, the government, on medicine, or the changes to attitudes or religion over time.
Question 4 seems fairly similar to the previous factors question, whereby students need to evaluate the relative merits of certain factors linked to an aspect of medicine. I term this question the BIG WHOPPER to try and get students to understand just how important it is to answer this question. 20 marks! A whopper. With 16 marks up for grabs and 4 marks for SPAG it might be worth students tackling this question first if they tire easily, struggle with SPAG or just want to get that extended piece of writing out of the way. Planning will be essential for this question in order to reach top marks with a well-sustained judgement and coherent piece of writing.
More to follow as I begin to plan for September…