Examination advice: AQA A level 2030 Tips for Geog 3 paper

The final season of the legacy AQA 2030 A2 specification is coming up this summer and this post links to a Dropbox account with some guidance for teachers and students about how to approach GEOG3, the 'essay' paper.

I recently responded to a request on the AQA A level teachers Facebook group for some advice on how to approach the Geog3 paper of the forthcoming exams for the last outing of the A2 specification. Subsequently, there has been a long list of requests coming in to share the resources I passed on (and I've got every sympathy with teachers trying to juggle legacy specs for Y13s, with new specs for Y12, and the same at GCSE - all at the same time).

There are 4 documents

I've rummaged through my folders and found some guidance that I last used with my own Y13 students and department team for the 2015 exams. They may have a glimmer of advice you may find useful.

a) powerpoint with the essay mark criteria, that then goes into how to structure the 40 marker, and what to expect/demonstrate in the 25 markers, and an 'evaluation spider' to help students pose critical questions when faced with an essay requiring an evaluation of a strategy

b) powerpoint with some advice from various examiners' meetings and from examiners' reports that I shared with department members for them to pass on to our students

c) word.doc of advice for students in approaching the 40 marker

d) word.doc of a response to a student's essay - how I ended up marking Y13 essays using the essay-criteria grid and indicating where a particular essay had hit, and indicating what it needed to do more/better to improve.

Hope these are helpful. Managed to secure the odd 'A' Grade student result but also a fair number of of B's-D's too, so all these items come with the usual 'terms and conditions' concerning reliability and accuracy for this summer's exams.

Dropbox folder of documents here