Express Language

This graphic is really helpful for anyone trying to make sense of the new grading system. Higher level students sometimes feel hard done by when they receive a 7 instead of an 8 (especially those super MFL students who have suffered from the high grade boundaries this year and really deserved an 8!) but look - it still equates to an A!

GCSE results day! 🤞🏻🤞🏻

Every year, I find myself explaining the grading system to someone. Yesterday, it was someone’s granny who wanted to understand her grandchildren’s results today. 🙂

Here’s a helpful graphic for anyone else who needs it. 👍🏻

Thank you so much Bon Bon Blossom for this gorgeous end-of-term arrangement! The flowers are absolutely exquisite and I love the abeille! 🐝

Happy summer holidays to everyone!

Today’s lesson prep involves making cakes ready to fulfil a request to decorate them with coloured icing (while talking in French about the colours, ingredients, etc). Yum!😋

What a gift to be presented with as one young pupil came through the door yesterday! Thank you, G, for your painting!

Can you tell what it is yet?! 😱

Let’s just take a moment to celebrate this absolute superstar who has not only finished her Spanish GCSE but has also done ten other GCSEs and, as pictured, has been commended by the Anthea Bell Prize at Queen’s College, Oxford, for a creative translation she did in her spare time!

Here she is with her certificate 🏆

Teaching is hard work and can feel pretty thankless, especially when all anyone wants from you at the end of a busy year is spreadsheets!

But this really does make it all worthwhile. Everything we teachers do is for the pupils - yes, we care about data, but only because we care about our students and their futures! So I am super happy and grateful today to receive this heartfelt thank you from a student and her parent.

Thank you to L and her mum 🥰

Heart full 🥰

Today learning words beginning with b in French phonics combined with our obsession with evil fruit… 🍌 👿

I was sorting some stuff out the other day and came across this letter addressed to the summer/me (we are one and the same) and comprised entirely of Spanish summer-related vocabulary.

❤️

This half term in GCSE English we’ve been working hard on getting to grips with analysing language and structure in texts. It can be quite an ask for teenagers because so much of it is about identifying, explaining and analysing their own experience of and response to their reading, and conveying that clearly, confidently, concisely and within a time limit is really quite demanding! Sometimes it helps to go back to the basics of figurative language that we learned in primary school, to help develop the skills and confidence we need in answering a GCSE exam question.

What language and structure techniques can you see in this extract of Roald Dahl’s ‘The BFG’?