Hi all,
First of all, who's up for a department trip to Wembley with Oxford United? Secondly ...
Meeting - URGENT!
We have a meeting tonight, and I'd like to propose that we spend it moderating GCSE coursework folders. We are in a difficult situation with moderation this year, due largely to the volcanic disruption, but also due to the fact that we have have seven separate coursework elements to moderate, and only nine staff to do so! My suggestion is as follows:
- all GCSE teachers bring a selection of their folders along - shall we say 5 per teacher, representing the range of ability in each class.
- we work in small groups, sample moderating each other's marking
- we look for and identify patterns - if any particular unit or piece seems to be over / under marked, that teacher can then go back and adjust their marks accordingly. Any moderation issues that are not resolved by the end of the hour can be dealt with by me after the meeting.
This isn't the ideal way to do things I know, but it has the distinct advantage of allowing us all to moderate at the same time, and Gill Barnes has said that sample moderation is fine. I'm aware that this gives staff little notice, but hopefully folders will be ready by now. If this causes problems for anyone, do let me know ASAP!
Hill End - Weds 11th May
The Hill End C/D revision day will take place next Weds. At present, I am inviting all students who were given a D on the most recent report. However, if you are aware that you have given a C grade to a particular student but think they really need the extra input, let me know and I'll see if I can get them in as well.
Accompanying staff will be EWa, JKy, TBo (as last year) - no particular reason for this other than these staff have got it all planned and ready to go - I know that any of the GCSE team would deliver a great job!
Year 10 Exams
Please refer to email from last week re. Year 10 exams. Please let me know how many papers of each tier you need - there may well have to be some sharing, but we are doing the Big Heat one from 2008. I would like to collect marks for this in the same way as with the Year 11 mocks and will be sending around Excel docs accordingly. I'm also keen to make the feedback process as formative as poss, so will send around an approach I used with year 11 - this involves not writing the marks on the paper, but giving students a simplified mark scheme. They then self/peer mark before being given the teacher marks separately, which hopefully helps them to learn more from the feedback process. I did intend to go over the details of this in the meeting but won't have time due to moderation, so look out for an email with full instructions!
Admin Assistant
It has been confirmed that Toni Gaughan will be our Admin assistant from after half-term, giving us 12 hours of support per-fortnight. She currently works with History and Geography and comes highly recommended, so we can look forward to welcoming her to the department in the near future. In the meantime, a reminder that detention requests need to come directly to me, and it is the teacher's responsibility to make sure that the student knows when and where the detention takes place; I'm not able to provide reminders and what-not as Heather used to!
Finally, thanks and well done to Pat and the A Level Lit team for running a successful and productive moderation last week. Oh, and thanks to everyone for the work that went into preparing and delivering what seemed to be a very successful and enjoyable enrichment day on Weds... is it just me or is it all looking a bit busy at the moment?! AND there's an election!
Have a great week everyone,
Tom
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