He Did It!

His 4th attempt... and he did it! Haileab sat the on-line exam twice in one day, and finally achieved a 56.4% pass mark. Here he is in our ALS teaching room where we have conducted most of our 1:1 "Power Revision" sessions. All our ALS staff were delighted.. I don't know if I was happier at Lewis Hamilton's British Grand Prix win or Haileab's success! Each attempt Haileab made ended up with a measurable increase. There are several aspects to this:

(1) We now have clear preliminary indications that "Power Revision" works... would it work with a small group of 2, 3 or 4 students? I believe it would.

(2) Another contributing factor for this success may be the fact he re-took the exam the same day. (He would not have had the same set of questions, only the same range of six subject areas.) A week ago I had a student who qualified for ALS but who decided to "go it alone" and failed at the first attempt. He re-took the test the same afternoon and passed.

Haileab received so much revision support because much of the taught classes had finished, which released timetable blocks for me to teach. (By the way, during the exams, Haileab received no support, such as reader, scribe, etc. at all.) For many reasons, "Power Revision" sessions may be more effective in a small group setting, provided the students are sitting similar subjects. Well done, Haileab! (Haileab has kindly given his permission to publish these photos, which I took today, on the web.)

End of Year Exam Frenzy!

In theory, this is a "quiet" week as classes have all ended, but for me it is more like being Lewis Hamilton waiting for the qualifying rounds at Silverstone last Saturday! Lewis went on to spectacular Formula 1 win the following day, but qualifying wasn't easy...

As I write, I have a student in the exam room, on a 3rd exam re-take. This is a mature student from an African country, who has excellent craft skills, but has weak English literacy skills I've been using a technique I call "power revision" and is multi-sensory.. at one point, I freaked out everyone in the staff room and my poor student when I pretended to get an electric shock from a fan the student was switching on. Although I am with one student, I don't use pen and paper, but a large white-board and coloured board markers, and I often act-out or dramatise scenarios the student might encounter on a construction site. (During one session, I drew on one of our college windows, that happens to face the new Wembley Stadium, to teach the concept of scale.) I also have a PC at the side, ready to do Google searches.

We revise ONLY the subjects that are exam-relevant, and at the same time, I help build and expand the student's vocabulary.

He took the exam for the 3rd time this morning, and rather like driving on a wet race track after it has been bone dry all weekend, the computerised exam threw up a massive amount of questions we had never revised. I'm hoping and praying that this afternoon, the questions will be kinder to him.. Does this experiment work? Well, here are the results so far:

1st take; 10th June 2008: 22% (3 hours 1:1 power revision; 1.5 hours general 1:1 revision)
2nd take; 30th June 2008: 37.5% (7 hours 1:1 power revision)
3rd take; 7th July 2008: 42% (5 hours 1:1 power revision + homework)
4th take; 7th July 2008 ??% (45 minutes debrief and evaluation)

Will he take poll position... watch this space!