Delivery of GCSE Geog in one year - any thoughts?

[will_c]

My school is pushing through GCSE geography to be delivered in one year from Sept 2010 - will there be time for syllabus, fieldwork, controlled assessments, mock, revision programme?

Are exam boards syllabus stuck as 2 years/ can only be delivered in 2 years?

Any thoughts would help as have many concerns?

Thanks

[Chris LS]

Just one thought!
Why would they want to?   
What is the reasoning and justification for it?

[polleyk]

i hope its not just me but you must be joking, 1 year! on 2 one hour lessons a week i would say we are struggling to fit controlled assessment and a human gg unit in to y10 let alone the y11 stuff as well!

[Victoria]

A short course perhaps - but I would not even want to contemplate doing a full GCSE in a year.

Like Chris, I'd be interested to hear the rationale for this suggestion?

[jazzclub]

Two years ago I was in a similar position. I was asked to deliver a two year course in one year in year nine, on 3 hours a week. I soon realised this was not happening!.
I explored the possibility of doing the short course- and tried to sell it, however this back fired when other subjects advertised (and produced the goods in their defence) qualifications worth 2 GCSE's.
Needless to say I did not raise a class and the knock on was that the following year I did not get a year 10 groups as they had not done geography for a year and the same subjects they chose to do in the previous year offered additional qualifications worth 2 and 4 GCSE's in the same slots.

Now- geography in school is restricted to one hour a week in year 8 and the occasional lesson taught by none specialists in the year 7 core curriculum.

Stand up for our subject- I regret not shouting loud enough when I had the chance.

[KML]

I'm teaching a GCSE in a year to Y11 this year. They have 6 x 55 minutes per week and even with this, it is quite a push as Y11 lose so much time for Work Experience, mocks, Sixth Form visits etc etc.

The good thing is, you get a unit of work done quickly and students remember more as you go.

We did it as a trial - Y10 normally have 4 option blocks - this cohort had 2 x 2year options and 2 x 1yr options; owing to the poor organisation, it hasn't been done again with the current Y10 but may come back again in the future...

Personally, I think its working with the current AQA A spec, but wonder if I could fit it in with my new GCSE - Edexcel B.

[anticline]

I have taught GCSE Environmental Science in one hour a week over two years and GCSE Geology in a year even in just a lunchtime, but GCSE Geography in a year that way lies madness.

[Blue Square Thing]

It depends on what year they're in and how many hours a week you can get 'em for.

In general I'd say they get progressively more academically mature as they go through the school - for this reason I wouldn't want to be doing this with Year 10, whereas in Year 12 it'd be a doddle.

Year 11 might bring it's own issues with workload, although with CA coming on stream I'd kinda hope some of those issues would resolve themselves. If it's Yr 10 then you could presumably get a bit of a start with them in Yr 9.

Then it comes down to stuff like time and spec choice. Some of the specs are clearly modular which might give you an advantage as you could examine at least one module in the January, although you'd miss the potential advantage with OCR B (iirc) and the 'missing module'. As far as I know none of the specs would have a problem with you doing stuff in one year.

I worked on the AQA B spec when it was developed and we certainly intended that it would be doable in a single year or across 3 years. You'd just need to check the CA requirements and figure how they'd fit in.

In terms of time - 4 hrs a week (unless they're all ridiculously able perhaps) would be my minimum requirement I think; 5 preferably. I think I'd also be looking for school support wrt fieldwork (no summer term to fit it into when Yr 11 have left etc...) and CA.

It all depends on the curriculum model and the time you'd get to be honest. Until you know that it'd be difficult to say.

You could just do what some other departments seem to do (err, <cough>History) and only choose the cleverest children of course

[IanMurray]

They used to call it 'cramming'.

And it was quite rightly meant as a derogative term for squeezing people through exams whilst skimping on the education.

Now, obviously, absolutely normal since getting exam results for the school is, arguably, the predominant purpose of our schools.

Ian Murray

[Good Skills]

Exam boards have something to answer for here.  My Year 10 have just done the water on the land end of unit test and are already asking why i have been teaching them for so long only to have a really short exam question on a very small piece of the content.

If they examined on the breadth of things in the spec rather than focusing on smaller issues and single issues from SOW (potholes anyone!) this would not even be an option for most schools.

[toonlass]

we do a compressed key stage 3 - so GCSE years 9 & 10.  In yr 11 they start As levels and can pick up GCSEs they regretted not taking.  We do geography in a year, 5 one hour lessons a week, we have loads of time!  It is a girls grammar so they pick things up quick and we have yet to do it with the new AQA GCSE but we get lovely groups of 10/11 students and seeing htem everyday really helps limit the need for recapping etc

Also our students come back after their exams (yuk!) so we got a head start with fieldwork in June.July with the current Yr11s

[add]

Do as toonlos above....we are a comp.

We have a Year 11 as a resit and one year group (we get 6 hours a week).