Building Blocks for Essay Writing for GCSE AQA
French, Spanish & German
Paper 4: Writing
Covers all 12 AQA topics!
Help students improve their essay-writing skills for Paper 4: Writing!
Covers all 12 AQA topics!
Help students improve their essay-writing skills for Paper 4: Writing!
Structured learning and consolidation for Foundation and Higher in three sections.
The content is high quality and full of authentic idiomatic language
Part 1: Building Knowledge
12 units matched to AQA topics:
- Topic vocabulary and exemplary structures build knowledge for corresponding Part 2 exam-style questions
- Varied activities such as match-up, gap-fill, translation and multiple-choice hone comprehension and writing skills
- Exam tips focus on overcoming common difficulties – key to exam success
The range of question ideas is impressive and will provide useful practice for pupils either as they go through the topic during the course or at the end as revision
Part 2: Exam-style Questions
- 36 original exam-style questions based on the GCSE writing exam ensure targeted revision
- 3 questions per topic – 40 words (F), 90 words (F+H) and 150 words (H) – facilitate practice for all students regardless of level
- mark schemes to help students stay on track
Part 3: Model Essays
- Model essays for all exam-style questions in Part 2 provide exemplary guidance
- Differentiation for grades 4–5, 6–7 and 8–9 allows all students to benefit from tailored solutions
- Suggested additional activities extend learning from model essays
Plus! Answers to all activities enable independent learning as well as classroom learning.
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What do teachers say about this resource? (10497)
An excellent resource that I would definitely use with my students to prepare them for the writing exam. As we are currently remote teaching, I also think this resource can be used by students independently to practise a range of skills such as writing in different tenses before they complete a writing task. Part 1 - I think this section is fantastic because it of allows students to build up their knowledge of grammar, teaches them to plan and allows them to annotate essays before they have a go at writing their own. I also like the fill in the gap activities and the opportunities that these exercises present for student to practise their reading comprehension skills. Parts 2 & 3 are huge teacher savers as they provide a wide range of all questions that appear on the writing paper and the model answers to use with them. Superbly well, the Understanding AOs provides the clearest of guidance on what the students are expected to write for each question on the paper. I would happily purchase this resource for my department and based on this resource, I would also purchase the French one.
On the whole I think it is a superb resource: I like the way the resource covers all AQA GCSE topics and I also like the exam focus for each one: I like how progressive and gradual the resource is , starting from the basics (but often overlooked) skills such as reading the question or writing in different tenses, all the way up to the finishing touches in chapter 12. Part 2 is great with the exam-style questions and the mark schemes.
I particularly find very useful the activities in which students have to read a practice exam question , highlight sections that are irrelevant and rewrite them to fit with the exam question, I think this is a fantastic exercise that could potentially activate students to write better answers by being more aware of what answers the question and what doesn´t. Similarly, I like the exercises where students have to evaluate what is good and bad of a given answer. I think this is great as it shows differentiation and it is an active way of learning for students.
It is a great resource for students to practice not just the writing section of the Spanish GCSE exam, but also the reading part.
What do teachers say about this resource? (10405)
Overall, this is a well-planned, logically structured resource which follows the AQA spec in terms of vocabulary and grammar. Writing is a difficult skill as it is a productive and not receptive skill. This resource gives pupils a step-by-step build up guide to finally writing larger pieces by themselves. Differentiated – great examples of different level essays e.g 40/90/150 worder answers. This went further by showing the general grade difference per task in part 2 e.g which answer is around grades 4-5, 6-7, 8-9. This gives pupils an opportunity to analyse the similarities and differences between each one to spot how the base answer has been enhanced to reach a higher grade. WAGOLL = “what a good one looks like” – pupils will benefit from this resource as they get to see what a good example looks like before attempting their own.
This resource provides a good set of activities to build up writing skills in each of the 12 GCSE topics for AQA German. I like the fact that it includes foundation and higher in the same resource; this means people don’t have to buy twice. Another positive aspect of this resource is that it could be used either during the course as the topics are covered or at the end of the course as revision. Some sections would also be useful for setting as cover work. The range of activities practised is lovely: vocab building, translation, reading comprehension as well as writing. The range of question ideas is impressive and will provide useful practice for pupils either as they go through the topic during the course or at the end as revision. This section will also save teachers time thinking up questions - a big plus! It is a great idea to give model answers at different grades / levels. It also provides good ideas on how to answer questions, in particular the 150 word tasks (which based on specimen and past papers for AQA) are very open-ended. Pupils often aren’t sure what to write and lack the ideas needed to address these questions successfully, so this aspect of the resource will be very welcome. The model answers also give good ideas for stylistic structures which will be needed to score highly at this level (higher).
The content is high quality and full of authentic idiomatic language. It provides a rich source of vocabulary and structures for students to draw on in their own writing. Many strong sequences of activities recycle the same language and will hence be really useful in helping students access texts and begin to integrate new vocabulary into their own writing. Many possible applications, particularly as extension work for the most able – a rich resource with many possibilities.
What do teachers say about this resource? (10406)
This is an excellent resource that I believe will save GCSE French teachers a lot of time and brainpower in preparing a wide variety of skills-based exercises and example exam-style questions on all topics required in the specification to aid their foundation and lower higher students in the preparation for the paper 4 writing examination. I did like the fact that all topics are covered in the resource, but what I liked the most is the variety of different activities that use the skills necessary for exam success. For example, given a bullet point and writing down all vocabulary they could use pertaining to that point, or crossing out the word in the list not relevant to a certain bullet point. It teaches writing skills with a very firm focus on examination performance, which is often missing from writing exercises in textbooks.
This resource will be fantastic for classwork as well as homework tasks/independent learning/extension tasks and intervention, depending on the size of groups and/or ability of students. It is well-designed. All topics from the specification covered, which is useful. All three types of questions covered. I like the 3 parts: practical tips with exercises; a range of potential questions; model essays for different grade range. The resource provides of already made exercises but also potential for extension work using the model essays. An adaptable resource is always a bonus in my view!
I think it could be a very valuable resource for the 150 word question on the higher paper, as there is little guidance out there how to structure these. I liked that the same series of tasks was used for each topic, which would allow pupils to work independently once they had gone through one topic with a teacher. I like that the resource covers every AQA topic, which would potentially make it good value for money. I like that the resource breaks down the essay writing in to small chunks, making it conducive to entering in to working memory and not overloading cognitively. I have not seen many resources that break down the steps needed to tackle the 150 word question. I also like the section where you can assess model answers because this allows for deeper processing by the students.
I like the exam tips and the exercises in the first section are fun: I like the letter snakes!
It is also great to have a bank of exam-type questions. What I like best are the model answers for 8-9, which I would encourage my students to revise from.