Paper 2 - Questions 2 and 5

I recently covered the topic of prisons with my GCSE English group. This theme covered two sessions all leading up to a question 5 response based on the quote 'prisons in the UK are too soft;they are no longer a deterrent'.


As part of the two lessons, the students took part in a variety of activities leading up to developing exam techniques for both question 2 and 5. Activities included:

• Debating the quote as a starter activity to promote debate and discussion.
• Showing YouTube clips based on prisons in the UK, prisons in America and prisons in Norway. This was also followed by discussion and identifying differences between them.
• Reading two different extracts - one based on prison life in America and the other in Norway. There are a variety of sources available online that can be used for this task. Again I really like to focus on talking about the texts that we read - opinions, viewpoints and ideas from the reader's perspective in response to the writer's perspective.
• Small group activity based on the extracts - what is the viewpoint of the writer in source A and B? How do you know? Groups then shared their ideas and evidence.
• DAFOREST technique spotting 2 minute challenge - starter activity for the second lesson.
• Quick recap of how to answer question 2, paper 2. Focus on identifying explicit differences and what we infer from them. I then posed a question 2 on the whiteboard for students to tackle. The group chose a timer of their choice and I gave them 10 minutes to write a response to the task - write a summary of the differences between prison life in source A and B.
• Final activity was returning back to the starter quote about prisons being too soft. I asked the group to write an article arguing for or against the statement. I handed out a planning sheet encouraging them to think about using language techniques throughout, organising their ideas and making sure that they use language to really demonstrate their viewpoints.
• While they were writing, I went round the room with a post-it note for each learner and if I spotted something they were missing I gave them individualised prompts such as 'try to use a semi-colon in your next paragraph' or 'can you include a short simple sentence for effect?'