Posted on 01 March 2011 at 19:51h

This morning my students sat their trial papers and this afternoon I marked them. I actually marked paper 1 before the students had finished paper 2, I just wanted to wind up the History teacher who was making the usual comments like "wish all i had to do was mark them right or wrong", "all right for some you should try marking this lot". Actually he didn't say any of this but they usually do. I always mark the mc papers by stacking them all up on a cork board then pushing a drawing pin through the correct answer. It's the fastest method I've found. Paper 2 isn't quite that quick (but don't tell the History teachers) this year was extra fast though since I had already done the whole paper when I made the exam answer section for this site. I gave my students May 2010 time zone 1. I tell my students which paper they are going to get so they don't do it by accident whilst revising. One thing that I noticed when adding up all the marks is what a big difference a high IA score can make (I always add in their IA scores to the trial exam to give a realistic grade). With a score in the 40's its possible to do quite badly on all the other papers and still pass.