Lesson video

Hi, my name is Ms. Speakman, we're in less than 13 or 14.

And in today's lesson, we'll be looking at exam question practise.

Which I think is really good way of not only getting ourselves prepared for an exam, at the GCSE, but also to revise key content too.

So what we're going to do is have specific focus on answering exam questions from the unit and will be inclusive of different examination boards as much as possible.

So I'll highlight certain points where these questions might work for different exam boards and where perhaps, maybe you might need to get further advice from your teacher.

You need to make sure, please, you've got a couple of things ready for our lesson.

So pen or pencil, piece of paper and exercise book, and a different colour pen for corrections, but also making sure that we've got a nice, clear working space.

So TV, music off, phone to one side if we're not using it for the lesson, and then also making sure we've got a nice, clear working space.

So nice, quiet space, free from any distractions so we're able to concentrate.

So when we can concentrate, that's when we learn best.

If you need to pause the video now and go get any of those things or get yourself sorted, then please do so now and then unpause when you're ready to move on.

Okay, brilliant.

Hopefully now you've got everything and you're ready.

Then what we're going to start off with are what we call low value questions.

All exam board specifications have these low value questions.

It doesn't mean that they're less important, it just means that they're worth less marks in the exam.

I always say to my students, that they're actually super important because you want to try and get these questions right early on because every mark counts.

Sometimes I have seen students before we've missed out on a particular grade because of one or two questions where they got it incorrect and that was the lower value questions.

So we want to make sure we're getting every mark we can.

AQA have one mark and two mark questions, Eduqas and WJEC have two more questions and Edexcel and OCR have three mark questions.

If any of those things don't make sense to you there, then it's a really good idea to ask your teacher which exam board you are with, so that all of this makes a bit more sense.

If you're not able to do that straight away, then after the lesson, you can ask them what are exam board you are sitting.

But even if these questions fit with one exam board more than the other, revising the content will still be really important.

But of course, then it makes more sense when you've asked your teacher which exam board you're for then to be able to say, "Oh, okay, now this makes sense.

"I'm doing these sorts of questions, "which is helpful for me when I'm starting "to revise for my own exam." So we're going to get started with some low value questions first or some practise.

I'm going to give you like a question and there'd be four options, and I want you to either point to you're screen or say out loud, which one you think is the correct answer.

I'm going to give you a countdown from three.

And I said, this time there will be four options, if you fortunately seen my videos before, usually I give you two options, this time there are four.

This sort of mirrors the one mark question in AQA, gives you a definition or gives you a key word, and then you have to choose the correct answer.

But of course, we'll also do some practises with some lower value questions that fit more with Eduqas, WJEC, Edexcel and OCR.

So, are we ready to get started or not? I think we are, let's go.

What does the word Tawhid mean? Is it Oneness of God, Angels, Prophethood or Holy books? Three, two, one, good, you should have put Oneness of God, well done if you did.

What does the word risalah? Is it Oneness of God, Angels, Prophethood or Holy books? Three, two, one, brilliant it is Prophethood, well done.

Which angel revealed the Qur'an to Muhammad? Is it Maalik, Israfil, Jibril, Azrael? Three, two, one, Jibril, well done if you've got that.

Which angel is responsible for blowing a trumpet to signal the day of judgement ? Maalik, Israfil, Jibril, Azrael? Three, two, one, brilliant, Israfil.

Well done if you've got all of those correct.

So, so impressed because of course that is going over some really key knowledge.

So as I said, those low value questions, we've just done this multiple choice ones fit best with AQA.

These next ones that we're going to do fit better with Edexcel and OCR, but may also be very useful for Eduqas and WJEC.

What I'd like you to do is to spend about three minutes on each of these types of questions.

That's because you usually in an exam, you get about a minute per mark, so when I asked you to do like three holy books, that probably means that it's worth three marks.

Then you'd have to then give three things, and therefore that will take you about three minutes.

So as I said, spend about three minutes on this and I want you to write down please three holy books in Islam, other than the Qur'an, which means you can't name the Qur'an.

Pause the video now please, and write down three holy books other than the Qur'an.

Okay, brilliant, so hopefully written down three.

I would accept any of the following.

The Sahifah, which is the scrolls of Ibrahim, The Tawrat which is the Torah, the Zabur which is the Psalms, the Injil which is the Gospels.

If you'd written, even in English or the Arabic is absolutely fine, but I wouldn't accept Bible, because Bible is not the word that a Muslim would use for the compilation of the original message of the Gospels, and you would not accept Hadith.

Whereas the Hadith is an important book, a compilation of the words and sayings of Muhammad, it's not a revealed text from Allah, it's not a holy book, which is why.

Give yourself three marks if you've three of those correct, obviously two for two marks, one for one mark, zero for zero.

But hopefully, you haven't got zero.

It's okay if we have, because what we can do is go, okay, here are the answers.

I'm going to go away and revise holy books, that's one of the ones I need to go over.

So, next question.

Name three angels in Islam.

Again, you have three minutes, 'cause it's worth three marks, so a minute per mark.

Pause the video please, name three angels in Islam.

Okay, brilliant, so I would accept any of the following, Jibril, Raqib, Atid, Israfil, Azrael, Maalik, Mikail.

Now, usually we talk about Raqib, Atid being together, don't we? But because they are two separate angels, they would each carry a mark themselves.

If you put Gabriel instead of Jibril, I think you'd probably get that, but let's try and get these Arabic names really, really clear please.

Because of course, when we talk about Islam, Muslims would use those terms other than the English, they probably what is the Arabic term.

So let's try and get the Arabic terms down.

So three marks if you've got three, two for two, one for one, zero for zero, and then of course, if you did lose any marks in any of those questions that we've done so far, then make sure that those things you go over yourself in your own revision.

Are you ready for the next question? Name three prophets in Islam.

So we'd spend about three minutes on this again, three minutes per mark, pause the video now, three prophets.

Are we ready to go through the answers? I would accept Muhammad, Ibraham, Abraham, Musa, Moses, Dawud, David, Isa, Jesus.

Again, I would accept either the Arabic or the English here, and again, it would be three marks for three, two for two, one for one, zero for zero.

I would hope at least that people had got Muhammad, if they found it difficult to think of others.

But of course, again, if this is something that you think, I wasn't quite sure on that or put name down and it wasn't quite right, then you know, okay, prophets is something I'm going to go back over when I go through my revision.

So are we ready for another question? This time, you thought I was going to give you another low value question.

Nope, We're going up now to some longer questions.

So we're going to explain to the six articles of faith.

And so an explain question will be slightly different for each exam board.

So it's a really good idea for explain questions at the very least that you ask your teacher which exam board you are sitting.

The question up there best fits with AQA and Edexcel, 'cause you might see longer explain questions for Eduqas and WJEC and it might look a little bit different for OCR.

So this one best fits with AQA and Edexcel, but it doesn't mean that the material isn't important and doesn't mean that we're at least going to have part of an answer, which would be really good for Eduqas and WJEC.

So hopefully you remember what the six articles of faith are.

Can you remember which denomination has the six articles of faith? Say out loud or say in your head, Sunni Islam has the six articles of faith, the six most important beliefs within that denomination.

You will need to make sure that you include the names of two articles of faith in your answer, an explanation of what they're and their importance and around four sentences would probably be enough here to be able to get the marks for this in exam.

So for example AQA, this would be worth four marks.

Around four sentences would probably be enough to get you four marks, as long as you fully explained the importance and the name of that article of faith.

I would start off with and I would write down, in a moment, we're going to go through the whole structure.

I would make sure you've got some sentence starters, just if you need them, if you don't need them, that's fine.

But you can start off with one article of faith is, and then your second set of sentences would be another article of faith is, just to make sure that you're focusing on the question itself.

It can be really easy sometimes to start writing something and then in an exam especially when you're rushing and thinking, oh, I want to get my example, I'm scared, I'm nervous, et cetera and then to not write, quite answer the question.

A good sentence starter like, one article of faith is might seem really simple, but it's a really good way of keeping on track.

Then of course, once you've got your one article of faith is and you've said what it is, you then explain it.

So you say like, this is the belief that, and it would be really important to include information from the lesson on the six articles of faith.

If you've not watched my lesson on where we talk about that, then of course, hopefully you've discussed with your teacher or at least have covered it at some point so far.

So what I'm going to ask you to do is pause the video on the next slide to complete your task.

I'm going to give you a full structure for this question to help you answer this.

So even if you're unsure, then you have got something to work with.

So you will need to include the names of two articles of faith in Islam, an explanation of what they are and why they're important.

And around four sentences would probably be enough.

You do want to be starting off with, and these are your sentence starters.

One article of faith is, another article of faith is, then explain it, this is the belief that.

Make sure you're including detail, but it shouldn't be really, really long because with these sorts of questions, explain questions, especially for AQA and Edexcel, they're not meant to be really, really long, around four sentences, four or five sentences is enough to get you four marks.

If of course you are expecting a longer type of explain question for another exam board then of course, ask your teacher for what this would look like or what else you would need.

So I'd like you to pause the video here, please, and have a go at writing an answer to explain two of the six articles of faith, unpause when you are ready.

So if you can see the slide, I'm assuming you already for corrections.

Please have a different coloured pen out ready for corrections.

If you are not ready, then you can rewind the video and then continue with your question, but let's now go through the answers.

So I've chosen Tawhid and holy books.

Now, of course there are six articles of faith, so I've missed out four here.

This is just a model for you to see the sort of level of detail you would need and how the length you would need to be able to get four marks if it was an AQA format question.

One article of faith is Tawhid.

This is the belief that there's only one God, and this is the most important belief in Islam.

Another article of faith is holy books.

This is a belief that there are books that have been revealed to prophets to guide how to live, the most important is the Qur'an.

And I see here, I've actually got six sentences, but they're very short sentences.

I've explained clearly what's the article of faith is, and then I've explained why it's important and what it is.

So what I'd like you to do is just go through your answer and decide whether you think it would be worth four marks.

You can do this by saying well, if at first you've talked about the beliefs and the six article faith, you've got two of those and that's at least two marks.

Then do you feel like you've fully explained it? If you have, you'd be able to give yourself an extra two marks.

Well done for having a go at that.

I know that was pretty tricky, 'cause it means you have to, first of all, think about the six articles of faith, what they are, and then you have to try and write, fully explain that in an exam sort of structure, so well done.

What we're now going to move on to, sort of a slightly longer question, which now means we have to include scripture verses, are you ready? Let's say we're going to now looking at a longer explain question.

You can see up here, it says, explain two you beliefs about predestination, al-Qadr, refer to scripture or sacred writings in your answer.

So it's a different style of explain question, 'cause this one's specifically asked for a scripture verse.

Again, explain questions will be slightly different for each exam board, so it's best to ask your teacher which exam board you're sitting.

This question best fit with AQA and Edexcel, both of which ask for explain questions.

In Eduqas and WJEC you're more likely to see an explain question being eight marks, we might need to include a bit more detail.

And in OCR you see three mark and six mark explain questions.

This would probably fit better with a six mark question for OCR.

With this sort of question, you need to explain a couple of things.

So briefly stating what the denomination believes about predestination, so Sunni and Shia, an inclusion of a script or verse, specifically needed for a mark in the exam.

I'm going to give you one so that you've got one.

An explanation of how that verse shows that belief in predestination and for the paragraph that you use without the verse, a detailed explanation of the belief.

It can be a really good idea to include two verses, just in case one, you don't get quite right or one you don't use correctly, then perhaps if you've got to sort like a safety net.

So I always say to my students put in at least two, because then you know that you've covered things, but don't spend loads of loads of quotations, geez, of course, that will just waste time.

So what we're going to do is, I'm going to disappear, then I'm going to give you a structure to use in a moment to help you write an answer to this question.

So we're ready? What we're going to do is I'm going to get you to pause the video on the next slide to complete the task I'm going to give you a nice sort of structured tease for this question so that you can write a really, really good answer.

So you can see here is I've given you the sentence starters and I've given you the Qur'an verse that I'd like you to use in order to talk about Sunni Muslim beliefs.

So Sunni Muslims believe the Qur'an supports this when it says "He creates what He wills, "and Allah is over all things competent." This shows and Shia Muslims believe, and this is because.

What I'd like you to do please is to pause the video now, use these sentence starters to write a really, really good answer for predestination.

Explaining two beliefs that predestination and then unpause when you are ready to move on to look at corrections.

If you can see the slide I'm assuming that you are ready for your corrections.

So please make sure you've got a different coloured pen out ready for corrections.

If you're not quite ready, then rewind the video and then carry on with your question and then return to us when you're ready for correcting.

So here is my model answer now.

Of course it doesn't have to be word to word like mine, but it's showing you sort of the amount you'd have to write and what you sort of need to include.

So I've got here, Sunni Muslims believe that is omnipotent and has full knowledge so is in charge of all actions and knows everything before the creation of the world.

The Qur'an supports this when it says, "He creates what he wills, "and Allah is over all things competent." This shows the belief that Sunni Muslims have that Allah has written down the destiny of all humans from his full knowledge, but humans have still freely made these choices.

Shi'a Muslims belief that humans have complete free will.

This is because they believe Allah is just, and so has willed that humans have been created with complete freedom.

So if you're going through, you get one more for including the verse straight away which I gave you, so yay, you've already got a mark.

A mark for being able to talk about the belief and then mark for explaining.

If you were to go through and look at it and see, if there's anything you need to add or correct, that's fine if you need to do that because this as helpful for us to be improving.

So please pause the video now if you need to make any corrections and then unpause, and we'll be ready to move on to the last style of question or exam practise.

So that's it, we're going to move onto the longer style of questions.

So this will be question which is usually worth a substantial amount of the marks within the exam.

For Muslims, following example of Muhammad is more important than following the teachings of the Qur'an.

Now, the longer questions, they will be either worth 12 or 15 marks, or either have the command word evaluate or discuss after the statement that they want you to evaluate what to discuss.

So again, it's really important to ask your teacher which exam board you're sitting so you know which style of question you should be expecting, so evaluate or discuss.

The question above probably best fits with AQA or Edexcel, but I haven't put a command word on that on purpose, just so I can get us to start thinking about how would we go about answering it? You will see the command would evaluate for AQA and Edexcel and you'll see the command word, discuss for Eduqas, WJEC and OCR.

But essentially they're asking for very similar things.

They're asking for you, to have arguments for and against the statement, to include as much evidence as possible, to have what we call logical chains of reasoning, which means to be able to give a point, explain it, link it to another point, go into depth about it.

And then also to have what we call a justified conclusion, a conclusion that is evaluative, that discusses, that doesn't just say, I believe this, or I think this, that actually says which side of the argument is the strongest and why.

So what I want us to do first of all, is you've got this question, I'll just quickly flip back to it.

For Muslims, following the example of Muhammad is more important than following the teachings of the Qur'an.

Shall we just pause them and write that down first of all please? 'cause if I'm going to ask you to do agree and disagree, then perhaps it's a good idea to have this down so you can keep referring back to it.

So all I want you to do is to write down that please.

So pause and write this down.

So hopefully you've written that down, 'cause now we're going to do this.

I want to spend about four minutes on this.

I don't want to be writing out paragraphs just yet, we're just going to be starting to get the stuff together to be able to write paragraphs.

So I want you to write some bullet points as to why Muslim agree with that statement.

So just any reasons you can think of why a Muslim might agree with that.

And if you could think of any quotations and stuff as well, that would be absolutely brilliant.

So pause the video now, and I want you to write some bullet points as to why I'm Muslim might agree with the statement.

Hopefully you've written down some things, even if you're not sure if it's quite right.

What I'm going to do is give you some of my examples.

It might be the case that you've written down something that I haven't, which is absolutely fine.

These sorts of questions really need you to bring in all sorts of different knowledge from all sorts of different areas.

And the better answers are the ones that come up with things that perhaps, maybe other people haven't.

So I'm going to disappear so I can show you mine.

So I've got in my agree table.

Muhammad is the perfect example of a human life.

Mohammad followed the Qur'an in his life.

As Allah's prophet, he would have to follow and interpret the Qur'an correctly.

He's the seal of the prophets.

And sometimes the Qur'an doesn't quite address issues.

Mohammad clarified matters in the Hadith or the Sunnah.

So perhaps maybe you can say, as a person, he is a better way of being able to show what following Qur'an looks like, that he would have been able to interpret the Qur'an correctly.

So if people struggled with themselves, following the teachings of the Qur'an, they can look up Muhammad's words and sayings that as seal of the prophets, it's important to follow his example, that sometimes the Qur'an doesn't quite address issues.

So for example, it says to pray, but doesn't say exactly how to pray.

It says to pray, but it doesn't give the details of how you actually should carry that out in practise.

So perhaps maybe following the teachings of Muhammad, the example of Muhammad is more important teachings than the Qur'an.

That might be the agreed side, but what I want you to do to pause the video now, and if there's anything you need to add or want to add to your bullet points, then please do that.

And then unpause when you're ready to move on.

So next thing is, I want you to bullet point some reasons to why Muslims might disagree with the statement.

Again, spend about four minutes on this, writing down your ideas as to why Muslim might disagree with following the example of Muhammad is more important than the teachings of the Qur'an.

Hopefully you've got some ideas down.

Let's have a look at my table.

So I've got, Hadith and Sunnah are important texts, but they're not holy texts, they've not been divinely revealed.

So even if we say the Hadith and Sunnah are helpful, it still doesn't mean that it's more important than the Qur'an.

The Qur'an is the direct unchanged word of Allah, Allah has complete authority.

Muslims will be judged on their submission to Allah's word in the Qur'an and we've got a quotation there, "Allah judges with truth." And other prophets are also important to follow, but their teachings are found in the Qur'an.

So you can say, actually we refer to the Qur'an quite often and it's that which they are judged on.

You may have had other ideas down too, if you did, that's absolutely fine.

But if you want to pause now and add any of those that you think are useful for your answer, then please do so now.

So the next bit is I'm now going to get us to start writing paragraphs, to start writing some thoughts, writing this out in proper sentences rather than just bullet points.

So you're going to pause the video on the next slide to complete this.

So I've got my agree a bullet points here, you've got your own as well.

So I want you to use these ideas and your own to write some paragraphs for this side of the argument.

Now, said here isn't really a set structure.

Different teachers will give different advice for how you might want to structure it, but you need to be using what are called logical chains of reasoning.

So writing in full sentences, fully explaining, including quotations and teachings to support your answer considering how strong or weak a point is.

You may want to consider having arguments to agree, then counter-arguing it with a disagree point.

For now, we're just going to write the agree paragraph.

So I want to pause the video now please, and have a go at writing out your agree paragraph.

We're now going to move on to the disagree paragraph.

So please again, we're going to pause the video on the next slide to complete your task.

So using these ideas on your own to write a paragraph for this side of the argument.

Again, not a set structure, you might realise now that you want to add a little couple of things, perhaps maybe you feel like you've added too much.

This is a way for now for your disagree to think about.

How much do I actually think I can add in this time.

So I want to pause the video please and have a go now writing your disagree paragraph.

And then lastly, we're going to look at writing a good conclusion.

So you need to include a clear judgement on the statement and give at least two reasons to support this judgement.

I good conclusion doesn't start usually with the word I, that may start with something the stronger argument is, or in conclusion, otherwise it sounds very much like your own opinion, whereas really we want to be evaluative and discussive.

We want to be thinking about, within Islam, which seems to be the strongest argument.

So what I'm going to get you to do is to pause the video on the next slide to complete your tasks so that you have got a structure for writing a conclusion to finish off your answer.

So I'd like you to use this structure to write your conclusion.

Overall, the strongest argument is, this is because.

So you give reason one, explain it, but then also give reason two, two good reasons can really enhance your answer.

There is nothing wrong either with adding new ideas into a conclusion.

If there's something perhaps you didn't have time for, then it's fine to add in something.

Then once you have got that sentence stuff down, I want to pause the video, have a goat writing your conclusion please.

So hopefully you found this useful today.

I find this a little bit tricky to do, this sort of teaching where I'm here and you're there because this is the sort of thing I'd love to do where I walk around my classroom and I look at answers and I like mark them as I'm going.

And I might say, "Oh, that's really good structure." We might do a model together.

It's a lot harder when we're doing like this.

And so I really do hope that you use your teachers or people that you know can have a look at your answers to just see if they're on the right track, if that's the sort of thing they'd expect, especially also if you're on exam board, if you're not doing something like AQA and Edexcel, where these questions are better fit for those.

But I really think that it's a really good way of revising content at the very least and also a good way of thinking, how do we start to structure exam questions? Of course, trying to be as inclusive as possible in this sort of thing.

I won't catch everything and I won't be able to cover absolutely everything, but at the very least, I hope I excited you to get you on that journey of thinking, exam questions aren't all that bad, I essentially just need to know my content really well and then know the questions expect me to do, what does the wording mean? What does it look like? I think the more practise, the better.

And so at the very least, if you started here and you keep on practising , you will be absolutely fine.

So I'm going to say a huge thank you 'cause obviously there's a lot of stuff today, a lot of material, a lot of different exam structures, a lot of different ways I was asking you to write things and everything.

So, well done for completing the lesson.

And as always, I say, please do double-check with your teacher about exam boards, do double-check with them if you want them to look at something or mark something, or maybe even just say, "Look, I've done this really, "really awesome answer, can you please look at it?" That would be really, really cool.

So I want to say huge thank you.

I need you to make sure that you complete the end of lesson quiz, just to sort of see if you understood what we talked about in terms of exam, practise and exam skills.

I hope to see you again very soon.

Lesson 14 of 14 of Islamic Beliefs and Teaching's unit is going to be on something called deliberate practise.

Now what this is is deliberately practising things like keywords, definitions, quotations, because we know inclusion of keywords and quotations in our answers in our exams is essentially needed for those top marks.

And so we're going to do a whole lesson on practising those, essentially learning those key words, definitions and quotations.

So I hope to see you again soon, see you later.