Andrew Doneghan is Head of Geography at Harton Technology College. He regularly uses Exampro Geography – “once a fortnight but around exam time this increases significantly”. Here are Andrew’s reasons for using Exampro.
How does Exampro save you time?
It saves me finding and photocopying questions and papers. It also saves time marking and is very straightforward to use.
What is your favourite thing about Exampro?
The ability to produce tailor-made papers. It’s invaluable in the run up to exams and for tracking students for ongoing assessment.
Does Exampro benefit geography teachers?
Yes, it supports me through the AQA specifications, it provides an insight into what is expected of students along with common errors, and it helps exam practice.
Stephen Schwab, Geography teaching and learning consultant
Here are the benefits of using Exampro, according to Stephen:
- The questions are set in real time which is very good practice for the students.
- There is good support to get into the package and keep going. I was on in seconds.
- It is a very good revision aid and tool, and can be both in school and at home (both electronically and as a hard copy).
- It helps with continuous assessment, both in class or at home, and allows for teacher, peer or self-assessment, so it is supporting AfL.
- Exampro helps with exam preparation as there is a good range of questions with a good range of skills tested. This is very useful for the end of year exams.
Teresa Gold is Head of ICT at Waingels College in Reading. She uses the Exampro ICT and Computing Package, which includes GCSE ICT, A-level ICT and A-level Computing, “at least twice a week”.
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Does Exampro save you time?
Yes! I can easily search and select questions/answers based on new learning or revision; I no longer need paper copies of papers/mark schemes; and I can create banks of resources quickly to support schemes of work. All of these would take considerably longer and be more laborious without Exampro.
Do you find it easy to use?
Yes – the tutorial information is straightforward, it’s easy to drag and drop questions, and the ability to export to Word or PDF is great.
What is your favourite thing about Exampro?
It’s a really effective way of designing a lesson resource to support a new lesson, revision, or set homework or individual activities. Exampro can be used for discussion, tests or independent work – all of which are linked to the specification and the topics.
“We all love it – I have heard my colleagues say this! It is great value for money and it’s just brilliant!”
Marcus Cherrill at I Can Teach
Exampro GCSE ICT forms part of an extensive and developing suite of products that provide access to past paper questions from AQA exam board subjects both at GCSE and A-Level. The interface is user-friendly and navigation is intuitive, allowing quick access to relevant exam questions and further support material.
The product offers an excellent opportunity to develop and enhance assessment for learning practice within the curriculum. The product provides high quality at an affordable price for a department on a tight budget.
Exampro does exactly what you want it to do. It is great for long term strategic planning for summative and formative assessment, great for starters and plenaries to assess progress, great for students to annotate as they learn and great for last minute lesson ideas and homework tasks.
“Teachers will love the simplicity of Exampro. It’s easy to use, easy to maintain and easy on the eye and the finances.”
Review by the Association for Language Learning (ALL) – published in Languages Today
Hanna Sail, Teacher of Spanish and French
Alderley Edge School for Girls
Exampro is an online resource from AQA that provides easy to find past exam questions for A-level and GCSE French, German and Spanish.
As well as being easy to navigate, Exampro gets a big thumbs up for having everything in the right place with just one simple click. If there is a question style or topic you want to find a past paper question on, you just find it in the search bar and the results are displayed.
You’ll also find tabs with the mark scheme, examiners’ remarks, notes and an accompanying listening file. You can also save the questions in your own folders, which I found particularly useful with students who struggled with the grammar section in Unit 3 of the A-level paper.
There is also a reference material tab, including the essay mark schemes, planning sheets and specifications. The questions can be printed off individually, used interactively in full screen mode during classes or exported to your computer for use at a later date.
“A definite time saver, Exampro provides everything you need, in terms of past papers and examination technique. Each purchase also supports three concurrent users.”
Bertram Richter is Head of Languages at Tile Hill Wood School and Language College in Coventry. He uses the Exampro GCSE Languages pack, which includes French, German and Spanish, every week. Here are his reasons for using Exampro.
How does Exampro benefit teachers?
It saves you time, it makes sure the students have targeted exam practice and it ensures that your department do more listening and reading related to exams.
“My favourite thing about Exampro is being able to say to a class ‘…and this is how this topic has been tested in exams so far’.”
How well does it support you through the AQA specifications?
Perfectly, as we can now make sure students are familiar with all topics and exercise types.
How useful do you find the examiner comments?
Extremely! Something I have never used before now but I like sharing them with my classes.
How useful do you find Exampro in the run up to exams?
It’s an essential part of my exam prep! It also saves trawling through our old paper index as we can tailor exam revision to our students’ needs.
Erkan Saricoban teaches maths at Atlantic International School in Russia. He frequently uses Exampro GCSE Mathematics in his classes, as well as Testbase KS1-KS3 Mathematics. We asked him a few questions to get some feedback from an international school.
Are you glad you bought Exampro?
Yes – it makes my job easy! It’s good for ongoing assessment as I can check the solutions to the questions easily.
How does Exampro benefit teachers?
Teachers can prepare and check exam papers in minutes! It’s easy to use and of course it saves me time!
Do you find the examiner comments useful?
Yes! With the help of the examiner comments, I can understand the common mistakes and remove misconceptions.
How well does it support you through the AQA specifications?
It’s really helpful. With the help of the mark scheme, I can objectively assess my students’ progress.
Lyndsay Horner teaches A-level PE at Xaverian College in Manchester and uses Exampro three times a week during the year to make progress tests, and every day during exam time. Here are her reasons for using Exampro.
How does Exampro save you time?
It’s very useful to be able to drag and drop questions by subject order into a printable document. It saves me hours!
Do you find the examiner comments useful?
Yes and the students find these useful as well – looking at the common pitfalls and what students generally do well.
How does Exampro benefit teachers?
It saves time; produces excellent documents; it’s easy to search questions and produce specific documents for individuals based on what they want to practise.
Liz Myers at PE Scholar
As an A-Level and GCSE Physical Education teacher, I have spent many hours researching, planning and creating resources to help students reach their full potential within examination courses. Many of these hours, especially around end of topics, or during revision season, is spent sifting through previous exam papers and mark schemes trying to create practice questions and papers to help prepare students for their exams. I can safely say that this is not the most enjoyable aspect of planning! It’s time consuming and often tricky jumping from paper to paper, collecting questions on topics and compiling papers, to provide a balanced spread of the specification. To my delight, Exampro have created a brilliant solution to this frequent problem.
“To my delight, Exampro have created a brilliant solution to this frequent problem.”
Exampro enables the user to create GCSE and A-level question papers easily, allowing you to search using a variety of filters including specification topic, how demanding the question is, type of question, scenarios, paper year and course type. Just like learning any new piece of software, it takes a little trial and error to begin with, whilst you become familiar with the navigation and toolbars, but with a little perseverance you’ll be creating question papers in a matter of seconds. And creating papers is just the beginning; you can also print and save papers to PDF or Word formats, including all or just a selection of your chosen items; whether that’s individual questions, mark scheme answers or guidance, examiners comments and/or your own notes.
“I highly recommend this product for use in AQA GCSE and A-level exam preparation.”
Exampro is everything you need to search, create, mark and advise students in answering exam questions that are mapped to the course specification. Exampro is an essential tool in supporting teachers and students in preparation for examinations and ultimately contributing to the fulfilment of students reaching their full potential. I highly recommend this product for use in AQA GCSE and A-level exam preparation.
A teacher’s view on using Exampro for A-level Psychology A
This article is an independent review of Exampro for Psychology A which appeared in the October issue of ATP Today, the official magazine for The Association for the Teaching of Psychology
Harriet Ennis, Teacher of Psychology
Bootham School, York
One of the things I like about the Exampro system is the ability to switch easily between question/mark scheme/examiners’ comments. You can search live in class by: content(including the new topics not previously in the spec); assessment objective; mathematical requirements and type of question (essay/research methods/multi-choice).
Since you can already bring up questions quite easily from the exam board website I was not sure I needed Exampro, but what makes the interface much smoother than using the exam board site is that you can just tab between the question, the mark scheme and the examiner’s report seamlessly.
The organisation of questions under topic headings, such as working memory model, plus the various filter options and an annotation tool, do make it rather ‘nifty’. Furthermore you have the option to create a document library that will make setting cover tasks, or homework, easy.
What I think will save time is that the legacy questions (2011 and earlier) have been remapped on the Exampro system to reflect the changes. Questions which no longer match the current specification have been removed. Some off-spec questions have been retained because they may still be useful, but these questions are marked with ‘!Off-spec’.
“I have to admit I’m very impressed with Exampro and its new updates (the question banks will be automatically updated when the specification changes, and new questions added) and I am definitely going to use it this year.”
Alisa Green is Head of Psychology at Hipperholme and Lightcliffe High School in Halifax. She advises her students to “practise as many past papers as they humanly can”, and this is where Exampro comes in!
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How do you use Exampro?
I use the questions every week as class activities and for extension work in class. I can go to the exact topic I need and the exact question, which saves me an unbelievable amount of time.
Do you find Exampro useful for assessment?
Yes – the A-level course has to be so exam-focused it is essential to know exactly what the examiners are looking for. I also use the mark schemes extensively for self-assessment.
How does Exampro benefit teachers?
I use the past questions and mark scheme in workbooks for the students and it’s invaluable to know exactly what the exam board are looking for in student responses.
What is your favourite thing about Exampro?
How it organises questions by topic within a subject and how the question is with the mark scheme and examiner’s comment.
Do you find it easy to use?
Yes – it’s incredibly easy to use! The site is very simple and straightforward.
“Exampro saves me an unbelievable amount of time and supports me very well through the AQA specifications.”
Ben Brownlee is Head of Psychology and Assistant Director of Sixth Form Studies at Durham School. He considers Exampro “essential” for ongoing assessment and particularly in the run up to exams.
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How does Exampro save you time?
It allows me to create focused homework and exam consolidation in addition to providing useful examiner information, which I use in class.
Do you find the examiner comments useful?
Yes, very much – it’s crucial as these identify key areas of weaknesses and strengths. They complement and enhance mark schemes and provide vital feedback for students.
How does Exampro benefit teachers?
It is a time-saving way of producing exam-focused consolidation. It increases exam knowledge so that students can be clear about what gains marks, how to achieve high mark bands, classic errors to avoid, etc.
Are you glad you bought it?
Very – it has saved lots of time and is also very useful CPD as I often use it as part of teacher training, standardisation, etc.
“Exampro helps expose students to the different styles of question, which is key.”
Alison Popperwell, The Coopers’ Company and Coborn School
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How the resource is used
I use this resource almost every day and have been using it for many years, in both its original and new and revised format. I mainly use it to make up tests and homework assignments for my AS and A2 classes but it is brilliant to set a student individual work, if for example they have been working on a particular topic and want to test themselves with additional material. In a matter of minutes a test can be formulated.
“This really is a package I would not want to be without!”
The best thing about this resource
The speed with which a meaningful test can be created and matched precisely to whole class or individual student needs is really what makes this so useful. It is a really easy package to use and it will only take a little time to become familiar with how to use it.
How students responded to it
Motivated and self-driven students often ask if I can make them up a test on a specific topic and this can be done in a matter of minutes, and I am not exaggerating! This is especially good around the revision time in the lead up to examinations. They can be given a print out of the answers and the examiners comments and can work with these as part of their examination preparation.