JESS Sixth Form Gazette April 2024
Latest news and bulletin updates in our own Sixth Form
Issue #4
Editor’s introduction-
-Ella Plank Welcome to the April edition of the sixth-form gazette. I hope you're all doing well. This month, Dubai experienced an unusual event—a very strong storm. It was a reminder of how powerful nature can be. The storm brought a lot of rain and strong winds, which was quite a sight in our usually sunny city. Despite the challenges brought by the weather, we’ve seen many inspiring efforts from our community to manage the situation and support each other. This edition of the gazette is filled with stories of resilience and community spirit. The Year 13s have no started their IB exams and stress has filled the common room. Countless hours of revision has been put into preparing for these exams so we all have faith that they will continue to exceed expectations and do well. We all wish you luck on your exams! Enjoy!
English Mock IO’s -Lea Chilcott Year 12's have recently gone through their first round of mocks for their English IO's. For the past week everywhere you looked students were memorising there lines and practising. This effort from our higher up students is inspirational towards the younger years, forming the six-forms as role models once again. The Year 12 literature classes went through a process of picking out a work in translation and then another literary work to compare and contrast against a global issue of their choosing. They started by picking their texts and questions and then narrowed it down to 40 lines per literary work on each extract they choose to focus on. The wider works were chosen shortly afterwards which the students had to reference. The IO lasted for 10 minutes with a following 5 minutes of questions and after it was completed students sighed with relief as they were happy to get it over with and won’t have to stress about it… until their real one later in Year 13! As a student who has personally done their IO, I was relieved when I got my exam over with and going last had its advantages and disadvantages as I got more time to prepare however my nerves grew as I saw everyone and tell us how it went.
For those who have still to do their Mock IO’s- here are some tips to ensure you have a smooth journey in your IO. •
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Make sure you have your question picked out early- to ensure a deep understanding of the texts you have chosen When picking out your 40 lines for each extract, try to not use all 40 lines as you will have more to tackle when questions are asked in the last 5 minutes Try to practice a few times fully to get your timing orders set out Make sure you are confident with your texts to ensure you are able to answer all questions asked to you And finally, don’t stress when doing your exam, the nerves can make you speak faster and forget your points and even make you hard to understand. So relax when you do your Mock and Real IO