OCR A2 Economics Unit F585 June 2013 | AQA A2 BUSS4 | AQA AS Applied BS03 | IB B&M Royal Danish Bearings | OCR AS Business F292 | OCR A2 Business F297 | OCR AS Applied F242 | OCR A2 Applied F247
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What is evaluation?
I cant take credit for this fantastic, student friendly explanation of what evaluation is. It was sent to me by David Thresher, Trinity School, Croydon. Certainly worth reading!
read more...»Making the most of Edexcel ResultsPlus- updated for Jan 2013
Read on to find out how to print out individual grade reports for all your students using the complete results spreadsheet you can download from ResultsPlus
Evaluation in 2 words
It all started when one of my A2 students asked me today: “How do you get full marks for evaluation?” in relation to a BUSS3 Question 4 (the 34 marker)
It can be summed up in 2 words:
RELATIVE SIGNIFICANCE
(Just a note that the examples
given are BUSS3 related but could be applied to any evaluation question in
BUSS1 or 2 also)
Extending student reading with the Institute of Directors
The Institute of Directors produces a regular magazine for its members, which includes lots of articles and snippets that students might enjoy. Great reading for all students, particularly those taking A2 modules
that require them to get a feel for decision-making, and involved in
that all-important independent research. Just take a look at the items highlighted on the cover of the November edition: Turn Your Business into a Great Brand, The Collaboration Game - are your teamwork skills up to the job?, Setting up in Brazil, Why we need more Engineers in Government, and the key-note article is an interview with Sir Stuart Rose about strategy, self-doubt and why business must embrace change. There are also articles on apprenticeship schemes, the Guardian Small Business Network, the effects of the US election result for business, start-up funding for young entrepreneurs and the secrets of success of winners of the 2012 Directors of the Year, as well as lots of mini interviews and items that give a feel for every aspect of running a business.
There’s More Than One Right Answer: Ownership
This mini case study activity deals with the subject matter of ownership status but is more focussed on developing students skills at writing answers for Business Studies and demonstrating that business is not an exact science.
New to AQA - What a day!!
On Wednesday, Michelle and I travelled down to London in preparation for Thursdays CPD event, new to AQA.
BUSS4 in June 2012: An Examiner’s Perspective
Many teaching collagues who read the Business Studies Blog prepared their students for the AQA BUSS4 exam in June 2012. We’ve been sent this perspective from a BUSS4 examiner who has kindly agreed to pass on feedback about his/her experience of marking BUSS4 this summer. For obvious reasons, the examiner has asked to remain anonymous.
read more...»Plan your BUSS4 Essay!
How and why to plan your essays in BUSS4
read more...»BUSS4 Section B - Prepare for Hybrid Essay Questions
I’ve been taking a close look through our AQA BUSS4 Topic Tracker to get a feel for how the Section B essay titles have been selected and structured in recent papers (and since the current spec was introduced). There is a clear progression in the style of the Section B essays and I suspect this has important implications for students refining their exam technique. I’ve jotted down a few thoughts about this below.
read more...»Four ways to make your BUSS3 exam answers stand out
Every student sitting BUSS3 gets to answer the same four questions based on the same case study. Everyone gets the same time allocation. When the examiner starts marking scripts many answers will be similar; relatively few will stand out in terms of the quality of analysis and evaluation. So how can you make yours one of the stand-out scripts?
read more...»AQA A3 Business BUSS3 Online Revision Clinic - 12 June 2012
The tutor2u Business Studies team will be available on Tuesday 12 June 2012 to provide personalised revision support for students taking the AQA BUSS3 exam on 14 June. Our free online revision clinic will start at 9 p.m. and last for an hour. Students who wish to add their questions during the clinic need to login using their FB, Twitter or OpenID account.
read more...»A2 Evaluation - Read the Question!
Along with ‘show your working’, I vividly remember my own teachers writing ‘RTQ’ or ‘Read the question!’ on my work in red ink.
This simple and important advice is often overlooked of course. It is more important than ever in A2 essay questions in Economics and in Business Studies.
read more...»BUSS4 Exam Technique - Sniper or Machine Gunner?
One of the major difficulties with the BUSS4 paper is managing time effectively. Students- understandably under pressure- regularly neglect to take the time to understand the question before they start writing. They are unsure how best to address the essay and so try to reproduce their text book, hoping that some of their knowledge will hit the target. Another error from those who have learned the syllabus, and/or built up a vast portfolio of information on the research theme, often feel obliged to ‘show off’ in the exam room. Rather than scoring highly, however, their essays tend to read like a list of bullet points, interspersed with ‘stories’ about businesses they have studied.
read more...»BUSS4 - Keep Calm and Carry On…
Preparing for the BUSS4 exam involves getting yourself right mentally. Many students underestimate the influence that attitude has in determining how well they perform. They focus on learning terminology and concepts and on building a research file but don’t spend enough time getting their psychological approach right. Here are some thoughts on how you can into the right frame of mind to do your best in BUSS4.
read more...»BUSS4 Exam Technique: Decisions, Decisions…How to Choose an Essay
BUSS4 students have a difficult decision when choosing which essay to answer from the two options in Section A (research theme) and the three in Section B. I have devised a list of questions that students can use to help with this difficult decision:
read more...»BUSS2 Exam Technique: Analysis – Limited, Reasonable or Good?
Having marked quite a few BUSS2 responses, it seems students have begun to get the message about application but are falling short on analysis. Frequently, they identify a relevant point but just describe it, failing to explain how or why their point is addressing the question. In the majority of questions, it is essential to explain how the course of action being described might affect business results.
read more...»Exam technique: Adding context to exam answers
A selection of headlines in the last 24 hours of this blog entry helps make this simple point - use real life business examples to help develop the strength and depth of business exam answers….
read more...»Exam technique: Can you compete under pressure?
The BBC has a study under way to analyse the psychology of pressure, which will offer “...a new look at why some people are particularly prone to pressure, while others cope rather well.” Not surprisingly, with a launch at this time of year, the introduction to it focuses on exam pressure, and relates it to the pressure faced by athletes and others who have to perform to their best at a set time and under set conditions. The comparison is a good one; facing your A level exams means that all of the work you have done in the last two years comes down to how well you can perform in just two hours or so in the exam room.
read more...»Evaluation - Making a ‘judge’ment
Here is a little exercise I have done with my AS Business groups this week. When trying to help with the longer essay questions, split the class into groups and and have them practice how to make a judgement for each essay question. I am using this for the OCR F292 Case Study of TSL. You can have one person in each group as the prosecution stating why they have made one certain judgement and then have another person acting as the defence stating why they think it should be a different outcome. The teacher can role play as ‘The Judge’ for the first exercise show the class what is expected.
read more...»Developing Exam Skills: AQA GCSE Business: Kingfisher Caravan Parks Ltd
This is the first in a series of practice 9-mark questions for AQA GCSE Business Studies Unit 2. This one is on Kingfisher Caravan Parks Ltd.
read more...»Support for Teachers Delivering AQA GCSE Business Studies: The 9 Mark Question
One of the key themes that teachers mentioned at the recent AQA GCSE Revision Conference in Stratford last week was the 9 mark question(s) and how students really feared them.
read more...»Developing Exam Skills: AQA GCSE Business Studies: Definitions and Accessing the Higher Marks
I wrote a blog recently based on ways for students to tackle the 9 mark questions in the AQA GCSE Business Exam. My blog was based around information from the Unit 1 Examiners report.
read more...»Developing Exam Skills: AQA GCSE Business Studies: Application
One area that students struggle with time and time again is the key skill of application and this was highlighted in the examiners report from the last Unit 2 exam sat in June.
read more...»Developing Exam Skills: BUSS2: Lessons Learnt from January
As BUSS2 approaches fast, what can we learn from Januarys exam?
read more...»BUSS4: The Seven Point Scale for Perfect Paragraphs
This is an idea I’ve developed following the recent tutor2u BUSS4 revision workshops for marking and feeding back to students when building essay skills. Like many of my A2 Business-teaching counterparts, I spent a large proportion of the Easter break marking BUSS4 mock essays. In a bid to help my students develop their paragraph writing skills, I made a note of the common areas for improvement and summarised them into seven key points for writing the ‘perfect’ paragraph:
read more...»Developing Exam Skills: Analysis: The Snoozatron
This is a ‘cracking’ little video that I used with my students to talk about analysis.
read more...»Effective evaluation for A2 business: the “halo effect”
The most important skill that candidates need to show off in their AS/A2 exams is an ability to effectively evaluate. Evaluation statements put candidates in the top mark band on most of the bigger questions.
For this reason, I’m always on the lookout for ways in which the quality of evaluation in student responses can be improved. When I was reading at the weekend I came across a new term (for me, anyway) that I thought would be worth adding to my list of tips – a so-called ‘halo effect’.
read more...»Developing Exam Skills: It depends on how you use “it depends”
“It depends on”. Three little words that allow students to reach higher levels of evaluation. However, the extent to which the use of these 3 words allows a student to achieve higher levels of evaluation really depends on how they use it.
read more...»Developing Exam Skills: Answer what you are asked!
I’ve blogged about this before but it is worth mentioning again as we approach what I like to call, the ‘business end’ of the academic year - exam season.
read more...»Evaluation in business essays? Its just like going on a date…
Maybe Paul McKenna should park his recent focus on helping people using neuro-linguistic programming and turn his hand instead to being a business studies teacher?
In a recent interview on the Steve Wright Show (BBC Radio 2) McKenna explained the concept of evaluation, first making reference to some well known entrepreneurs and then using the example of being asked out on a date…
read more...»
