3 Things That Totally Changed How I See Study and Exams

Ep. 137

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These are the 3 moments that started and then led me deep into the world of exams, exam marking, assessment and the discovery that subject knowledge alone isn't the key to academic success.
 

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You’re listening to The Parents of Hardworking Teens Podcast, episode 137 - 3 things that totally changed the way I look at study, education and assessment.

Hey VIP’s.

How are you? I hope you and your teen are doing great. If they’re on school holidays right now, depending on where you are, then I hope they’re enjoying some fun and relaxation - or some time to get their exam prep under way if they’re in Y12 or 13. And if you’re in the final week of term, then I hope final assessment or exams are going well!

I was having a conversation recently that drifted into how I got into this side of tutoring and coaching, and being an external examiner and helping students with strategy and technique rather than subject content, and it got me thinking about the moments that have led me here. Because wherever I try to explain this to someone, I find it easiest to just tell them about the moments I realised these things were so important. The things like exam technique, strategic ways to tackle open assignments, essay topic vs focus, active revision - all the things that mean subject knowledge actually converts into marks and grades and the results that match students’ abilities and effort.

 And afterwards, like you do, I was reflecting on these things and thought you might find them helpful as well. Either to help build that awareness and understanding of how all this works, or maybe to help see where this is or isn’t happening for your teen to better be able to support them, or just for a bit of a behind the scenes snoop into the life of a teacher or examiner - and even me as a student.

I’m going to give you the top 3 summary here on this episode, and then I’m going to share one of the moments in more detail and the other two also in future episodes. And I have a little request at the end as well. That will help me to help you and your teen. 

So, my top 3 moments that totally changed the way I look at study and assessment, the way I teach, and my focus outside of teaching in training and coaching students for success are: and this is in chronological order, because I think it adds to the way these things have unfolded and built for me:

1) Back in 2010 - my first ever external exam marker training in the UK.

2) the ‘Miss, This is Gold’ moment in a Y11 lesson in Sydney.

And 3) My NAPLAN Writing Test exam marking - as a non-English teacher, and I will also tie in the Y12 Writing test marking here - again as an examiner, and as someone who is not a natural writer - especially as a student - myself.

Okay, so first moment that changed the way I look at study and assessment was my first ever external exam marker training.

This was my fourth year of teaching, and just for context as to why this was such a big deal, I had a fair bit of experience under my belt by this time.

Not a lot of years, but I’d done a fair bit in those 4 years.

I was a head of department, I was a coursework marker, I’d done coursework moderation, I’d been a head of faculty for one year, a prac teacher mentor with Southampton Uni and I’d won a UK national Teaching Award and been rated outstanding in an Ofsted inspection. 

I should mention this was back in the UK. It was literally the summer before I left for Australia. And I had applied to become an external exam marker because I’d been curious about how exam marking and external exams worked right from my first year of teaching. Because at the end of that first year of teaching, I had students in my GCSE class getting grades lower than expected in their final exams, and students getting grades higher than expected in their final exams. And you know, that happens, it was my first year, I was seeing this stuff for the first time. I was processing and digesting it. I was reporting back on it. You always have to write up a report in England on the results  and what you’ll take forward from them ,etc. And then of course, the same thing happened the next year. 

So I’m seeing this stuff happen. I’m doing everything I can to get my students the best marks and results possible, and I’m reporting and reflecting etc, and I’m getting curious about what happens behind the curtain. I literally had this vision in my head of the Wizard of Oz. The original, you know with this big curtain and big machinery behind it - the machinery being the whole examination system. How the papers are written, how they get marked, who decides on what gets asked or covered on the papers, how decisions are made about what gets a mark, what doesn’t. All the things you know I love to talk about and share today.

Anyway, fast forward - third year of teaching. This year I had taken on the role of Head of Faculty. Not actually my favourite thing. I traded that to become head of department instead when that opportunity arose the year after,- but you know, you get ushered into and made to think you should be seeking out and taking on more roles of responsibility as a new and enthusiastic teacher. And you know me, always one to follow the rules. So, that’s what I did. And another year of exam results, GCSE results. Another cohort of students through. I’m really into everything by now. I’d won my national teaching award the previous year - in my second year - I was also one of those teachers that was just involved with and helping out with or setting up clubs and extracurriculars, and allsorts. 
I ran a trampoline club, helped out with Duke of Edinburgh, had a pen pal correspondence club going with a school in Madagascar, co-ran the cheerleading and streetdance groups. Oh, and I got involved with the uni in the nearest city and became a trainee teacher professional mentor. I seriously don’t know how I did it, but I loved it and of course - that helps. And I was in a school where we had a really good crew of young and energetic and GOOD teachers and so it was a great environment to be in. 

Anyway… 

I got to my fourth year of teaching, was head of department for Geography. Yes, Geography has it’s own department in the UK - it’s a major subject, not so much like here in Australia, but that’s a conversation for another day,  and that was going great, and so to satisfy my curiosity, to tie in with my role as a head of department AND to give myself some extra pocket money for that summer - I applied to become an external exam marker for the AQA exam board for the GCSE exams. 

Now, I will say that Geography just happened to be a brilliant subject to become a teacher, head of dept and external examiner for because - it incorporates almost every skill. It covers written responses, both multiple choice, short response and extended response, it includes numeracy and data - whether that’s statistical calculations, data analysis or identifying and explaining patterns and relationships. It requires some scientific terminology and explanations - for things like climate change or tectonic or geology. 

It has the social aspect of humanities, with reasoning, bias, decision making. And it has source analysis, where you might have a map or photograph or other stimulus item that has to be evaluated, or compared, or connected in some way.

And so… I was accepted and went to the training for that year’s exam paper. Back then you went in person, to the exam board headquarters and you’d have both general training in terms of examiner roles, responsibilities and rules etc. But also the specifics and nitty gritty details of the actual paper you were marking. The specific questions, the wording of those questions, the marks allocated or awarded to them and of course - the mark scheme and how to apply it.

That last one was the life-changing moment. I do say life changing because it was my very first experience of this, it’s what got me HOOKED on all things exams, how they work, and how to help students navigate them and succeed in them. 

From then on, I took up as many exam, coursework and exam board opportunities as possible. And it has ultimately led me to where I am today, setting up a company and creating trainings, programs and coaching to deliver the concepts, strategies and skills to students, and share the insider info that I’m totally allowed to share with parents like I’m doing right now on this podcast, in my webinars and in my emails.

If you want to get my emails and get invites to any webinars that I run, which are only a couple of times a year, then you can get on my email list by requesting my free parent guide on the Rock Solid Study website. Again - you can get to that with the episode resources and in the show notes.

So… I’m sat in this big meeting room and we’re going through every single question, every single dot point on the marking criteria, every single MARK on the mark scheme. And to me, as someone who really wanted to see how all this works, I was loving it. It was super interesting. But there was one particular moment that really struck me and has STUCK with me ever since.

It was a question to do with industry and urban challenges and had this sketch image of a scene which students had to use and refer to help answer a question about the impacts of industrialisation and heavy industry. 

It was that classic scene of big factory chimneys with big clouds of smoke or steam - so air pollution,  the river alongside which I vividly remember had fish in it - might’ve even been a dead floating fish - or I might be making that up. There were these kinda pools of shading which was obviously supposed to be some sort of pollutants running into the water - But that was obviously alluding to water pollution, impacts on the water quality or wildlife, the river ecosystem - There were these rolling hills in the background with this lovely scenery - getting at the issue of visual pollution. Basically, in hindsight I can see it was a great example of a question that was more about exam technique than knowledge, because, let’s face it, half of the knowledge was on the image. 

But here was the one thing that struck me and has stuck with me. The question was to do with analysing the negative impacts of heavy industry, and of course, this would include pollution. 

And that was the key word here. 
Pollution.

Now because this was an extended response, there was a levelled response style of mark scheme for this question. In other words, let's say it was worth 5 or 6 marks; I can’t remember but it was something like that. And so it wasn’t 6 things = 6 marks. Or 5 impacts = 5 marks or whatever, it was about the level of detail and the connections made. And ONE of those aspects of detail was the word pollution.

In order to reach the high band of criteria, they had to state what type of pollution it was. 

I.e. water pollution, air pollution, soil pollution, noise pollution, or whatever.
Even if they said there was pollution causing the fish to die, even though that’s pretty clear that they are talking about water pollution, if they didn’t specifically say water pollution in their answer, they would be stuck at the lower band. 

This was one of the deciding discriminators on what was considered a detailed response vs an appropriate response. 

And the reason why this in particular stood out to me was because this was something that I believed every student answering that question in that kind of way would have known. If I’d been able to sit them down and say oh - i see here you’re talking about fish being poisoned, what type of pollution would that be from. I think every one of them who’d written that would know it was water pollution.

All I could think of as I sat there in that one particular question and mark scheme dissection was - no. 1 - how many students - how many of MY students have lost marks because they didn’t write water, or air, or whatever. That didn’t feel great. I actually kinda felt like a bad teacher in that I should have somehow known this and had let them down. 

Side note- this is just one of the reasons I believe every teacher should do external exam marking early on in their career - even if it's only one time - and they hate it and never want to do it again - because you learn so much from it. 
And so of course, the other thing I was sat there thinking was  - I have to get back to the classroom and tell all of my students this.

Like literally it was this urge to just rush back to school and tell every student ‘if you ever write the word pollution, absolutely make sure you write what type of pollution you’re talking about. Air pollution, water pollution, whatever - even if it seems obvious. And of course, that's what I did. Starting the very next day, with every class. Even to the Y7’s, because if they just start doing this, rehearsing this now, then it will just be automatic once they get higher up the year levels. 
And of course, this is just one specific thing that was deemed a factor in taking a response from appropriate to detailed. It’s not like, as they wrote water pollution, they automatically went up more marks. There were other parts of their response that had to match with other criteria as well. But I think that one stood out because it was a stand out example of students can TOTALLY DO THIS, they just don’t know they need to.

And that’s exactly what this is all about. 

Knowing that small things can make a big difference.

Knowing what those things are and how to use them. 

And ALSO
Not knowing what you don’t know.

Up to that point, I didn’t REALLY know how mark schemes worked, how important the specific wording of the question is, the nitty gritty details of what makes an answer detailed, vs appropriate and how these things get decided and applied to students’ answers.

And I’d been teaching for 4 years by this point, won a national teaching award, been a head of faculty and a head of department and been successful in improving student results in the GCSE’s. 
But figuring this stuff out totally changed how I saw questions, how I built this stuff into what I taught, and of course how I prepped students for exams and their coursework.

For your teen, this don’t know what you don’t know situation might be as general as not knowing that exams aren’t just testing subject knowledge. So therefore just learning the subject content isn’t enough.

To something as specific as not knowing that a compare command means you must have both differences and similarities. Or that those differences must have a contrast trigger word in them. Like however, or whereas for it to actually get credit as a difference or contrast. I literally just had an example of this and shared it in last week’s email - a clip from one of my group coaching calls with this exact situation in a past paper chemistry exam. 

Again, I’ll pop a link to that in the resources for this episode. 

So, aside from if your teen is going to be sitting a Geograhpy exam - and look that’s just one very tiny but good exemplar example. How does this apply to you and your teen? 

Well, I think this is where you and your teen can look for your own epiphany moments. Where you or they might see this happening in their study or exams or assessments. 

It might be the positive or the negative version of this. Although, actually, there is a part of me that could argue that both of these are positive if they GIVE your teen the epiphany that this is all about much more than learning the subject content they’re taught in class. 

Because then, even on the negative experience of that, they have that awareness and can then do something about it. 

Here’s what I mean by that. 

On the negative side, here’s how I regularly see or hear about this happening:
This is when your teen has have the subject knowledge, have written what they THINK is a good answer in an exam or what they THINK is a good essay, or what they THINK is a good response or piece for whatever the task or assignment is, BUT then come out with a disappointing result, not because they don’t know the topic, but because they don’t know how to effectively answer the question, or respond to the essay title, or tackle the assignment strategically.

This was like Maxine. She’d had a round of SACs = school assessed coursework - and in her business studies exam had gotten 45% and was really upset with that result.

That was the moment she realised - in her mum, Natalie’s words ‘revising is not enough’. Because Natalie was a committed and hardworking and smart teen. 
She had done hours of revision. Made the notes, made the revision cards, knew the content. But what she didn’t know was that she also needed the skills of application.

I'll put a link to their story that they shared in the episode resources. Everything I’m sharing here will be on the episode web page at www.rocksolidstudy.com/137. 

So you can also watch how they overcame this issue and got that ‘point of need' met in a very short space of time so she was set for her next round of exams, and went to a 75% in her very next exam. Which is really the positive version then in action. The proof if you like of how this works, that it does work, and that it’s critical to success. 

One of my favourite examples of that is Campbell. Where he was doing some exam practice in a tutorial group he was in - I think it was a study group at school or it might have been with a tutoring company, I’m not too sure, but it wasn’t with me. And his mum Selina emailed to say that he’d had this moment where they’d been given a question - a practice or past exam question, and Campbell had written the shortest response out of all his classmates and got the highest mark.

That email is where I got my idea for a challenge we sometimes practice called the most marks, least words challenge. 

And more recently, I have even begun to consider as the ultimate and also most simple definition of exam technique. 

That is that ultimate exam technique is getting the maximum marks in the least words. Because that’s only really possible - minus just a fluke - when you know exactly what the question is asking and can predict from the wording of that question, exactly what the mark scheme will require and can put that across clearly and succinctly, at the level required, with the detail and information required, without writing more that you need to.

Now I’d really love to hear your real life epiphany moments.

What was a moment or task or result or something else where your teen realised, there’s more going on here, or I see what’s going on here, or even just made them stop and question - what’s going on here?

Email support@rocksolidstudy.com and tell me about it/ I love to hear your real life stories and I’ll reply personally. And if I can help in some way by sharing some information or a resource or whatever it might be, then I will. 

And a lot of my trainings and webinars and these episodes come from my real life work with students and real life conversations with parents, so it’s likely that your teen’s experience might help inform something for me to share in future that’ll be super-helpful and relevant to them.