Preparing students for examinations in geography

Across your initial training experience in two schools you should spend a substantial amount of time teaching and team teaching examination groups, so you can learn how to teach students from year 10 to year 13 (depending on the age range you are training to teach). 

You need to have some continuous teaching of these classes over several weeks to give you experience of planning and assessing. You will understand that teachers are often reluctant to give their examination classes over completely to an inexperienced trainee teacher, so you should expect to be closely monitored in your planning and teaching. Welcome this, so you can rest assured you are not limiting the chances of your students for examination success.

Thoroughly prepare your teaching; in particular, make sure that your subject knowledge of the topics is secure. Read well beyond the course textbooks if the topic is new for you. Always discuss lesson content with the class teacher if you are unsure. Look at mark schemes and criteria or shadow mark some work with your mentor to get a sense of the level at which you need to pitch the subject knowledge in lessons and the expected standards for students.

Key reading

• Harris, M. (2017) Becoming an Outstanding Geography Teacher, Routledge, chapter 14 ‘How to help students achieve in their exams’.

The main advice reinforces that there are not quick fixes. Good teaching has to begin on day one and the strategies that Harris sets out are all part of good teaching. There is nothing particularly different about GCSE or A level teaching. However, there are some techniques that students need to know and be confident in if they are going to achieve their best. Understanding the command words in questions, adopting effective revision practices, and knowing how to use case studies effectively are three that are important.

Preparing most students for examinations involves, for example, making sure they understand the meaning of ‘command’ words used in examination questions.

• See Using command words for an example from one awarding body.

Case study questions are a common feature of geography exams and require students to memorise lots of information. Students can easily get mixed up and confused when recalling case study facts because their working memory has been overloaded. Consider how you can help them to simplify case studies to the most pertinent and useful facts to illustrate the geographical example. 

A good way to help students to commit the information to their long-term memory is to simplify it in a diagram. Students also need to be taught the technique to use a case study effectively to answer examination questions if they are to gain all the marks available.

• Refer to Structuring Geography Case Studies.
• Refer to the PowerPoint from the GA Conference Effective selection and use of case studies.

Other aspects of the GCSE examination that require good preparation are the longer answers for higher-tariff questions and questions that require evaluation of provided resources. Simmons (2016) shows how students can develop their answers to achieve higher level responses.

Refer to these references:

• Guidance from examination boards on-line. For example, the OCR delivery guide.
• For advice on preparing students for examinations see:
  • For GCSE: Chapman and Digby (2006); Enser (2019), chapter 4 ‘Should we be practising for the exam?’ and Rogers (2017), part 5 exams and ideas pp. 70, 74, 75.
  • For A level: Spencer (2018) and Warn (2006)
• Read the Chief Examiner’s annual report for the GCSE/A level specification you teach. Read about using examiners’ reports in Palot and Hore (2019) at A level and Rynne et al (2020) for GCSE.
• See PowerPoint: GCSE geography: preparing for success (AQA) Keith Bartlett and Issue evaluation for all abilities (AQA) Rebecca Blackshaw.

Geography departments often use revision techniques, including the use of past papers, ‘fault and fix tests’, teaching memory techniques. They also often run ‘revision sessions’ prior to examinations to try to increase students’ chances of success. See Puttick (2013) to read about his research project into GCSE geography revision. Harris (2017) reminds us that many students will require guidance and support to revise effectively since they do not always know how to go about it.

Discuss with your geography mentor, and other geography teachers, how they prepare students in examination ‘skills’. How does the school and department organise revision and examination preparation? Ask if you can participate in revision lessons to gain further experience of GCSE classes.

• Read about revision strategies in Brown (2019) and Harris (2017), chapter 14.

Teaching examination classes is high stakes in schools because of the league tables, and Progress 8 scores that hold schools to account. It is a serious responsibility for all teachers. This can lead to the temptation to focus exclusively on preparing students for the examinations. 

Iwaskow (2013) gives an HMI perspective when he urges teachers to avoid this and writes, ‘in order to improve the quality of geography, teaching needs to refocus on learning rather than training in exam technique.’ The message is clear: for geography examination success, students need to develop geographical argument drawing upon rigorous knowledge and understanding. Sustained good teaching over time is the only way to achieve this; there are no short cuts.

Key reading

• To prepare post-16 students for examinations, read Rawlings Smith (2017), especially Building up to exams on page 272 and Figure 11 A level geography: personal preparation game plan; also see Copnall (2002).