I'm not asking for help with anything specific, more some advice I suppose...
It's quite a mouthful but, I'll do my best to explain.
I'm in Year 9 and I'm about to move up to a sixth form college. This college can't accomodate me doing my chosen subjects for GCSE or my reserves. So, the vice principal sugggested that I do HISTORY GCSE in a different way.
He suggested that I be assigned a History teacher, get given the resources and work independently in an A-level class or the library. Do you think that I would get the same out of it? Would this mean I got a grade that is not as good as I would have got?
I spoke to my current History teacher and she felt that I wouldn't learn exam techniques or learn the same way if I wasn't in a standard classroom situation. Yet, the vice prinicipal thinks I can do it and can do it well. I'm really torn and I suppose I'm just looking for an opinion. I know essentially it's a decision I've got to make but I could really use some advice.
Full Version: Gcse History
GCSE History has two elements.
1. Learning the FACTS - ie understanding the events ... WHAT happened. This is fairly basic as long as you have a brain and are able to read a textbook and extract meaning from it. If you are the kind of person who needs the teacher to explain everything to you, then you will find this very hard.
2. Learning the skills - there are about a dozen different types of answer/essay to do, and you need to learn how to do them all and practice them. Although there is advice for this on the www.johndclare.net website, you really ought to have a teacher to explain this to you, although you will be able to get advice from me on this forum. Most of all, you MUST have a teacher who will be able to mark and then debrief you on your practice essays (we don't do that on the forum). If the school isn't giving you a teacher to do these things, then I would think seriously befire you embark on the course. However, once you have assimilated the essay-writing skills, it's just a matter of applying different content to the frames you have learned and - if you're able - then it should be no big deal.
Above all, how self-motivating are you? If you're the kind of person who only works when made to by the teacher, perhaps this is not for you.
A couple of years ago, I heard of a couple of (medically ill) pupils who did GCSE History from home, without help from anybody but their mothers, using nothing but the www.johndclare.net website. One got a grade A, and the other got a grade A*.
So it is more than possible.
1. Learning the FACTS - ie understanding the events ... WHAT happened. This is fairly basic as long as you have a brain and are able to read a textbook and extract meaning from it. If you are the kind of person who needs the teacher to explain everything to you, then you will find this very hard.
2. Learning the skills - there are about a dozen different types of answer/essay to do, and you need to learn how to do them all and practice them. Although there is advice for this on the www.johndclare.net website, you really ought to have a teacher to explain this to you, although you will be able to get advice from me on this forum. Most of all, you MUST have a teacher who will be able to mark and then debrief you on your practice essays (we don't do that on the forum). If the school isn't giving you a teacher to do these things, then I would think seriously befire you embark on the course. However, once you have assimilated the essay-writing skills, it's just a matter of applying different content to the frames you have learned and - if you're able - then it should be no big deal.
Above all, how self-motivating are you? If you're the kind of person who only works when made to by the teacher, perhaps this is not for you.
A couple of years ago, I heard of a couple of (medically ill) pupils who did GCSE History from home, without help from anybody but their mothers, using nothing but the www.johndclare.net website. One got a grade A, and the other got a grade A*.
So it is more than possible.
Thank you, Ive made the decision that I'm going to just go for it and I'm going to dedicate myself 100%. (and it's reasurring to know that SchoolHistory is here)! 
Best of luck (and we are!)
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