Teaching Edexcel Paper 3
April 2024
It can be argued that Paper 3 of the Edexcel Geography A-Level is the best of all the geography exam papers currently sat. Why? Because, in my opinion, it is a paper that allows the student’s geographical knowledge and ability to ‘think like a geographer’ to truly shine through. This synoptic paper forces the students to draw together their knowledge from across the A-Level topics but does so in a way that is manageable and structured; as opposed to the rather daunting synoptic questions found in other exam board papers.
So, how to approach this paper and how to teach it in a way that maximises student success? For me, the key thing for teaching Paper 3 is simple: don’t overcomplicate it. It is a structured paper that builds up towards the 18 and 24 mark evaluate questions and, I find, that having gone through a few examples in class, it’s relatively simple for students to get their heads around and look forward to.
This summary document lays out what past papers have covered, what resources I have for the paper and how I will use the paper in my teaching. There are lots of different ways to approach the teaching of this paper and people successfully use a range of approaches. This blog was inspired by Paul Logue’s thread on Twitter that can be found here.
Having found this thread really useful, I thought I’d add to the conversation with my own approach that has worked for me in the past!
The context behind my approach:
I choose not to interweave the teaching of Paper 3 throughout the 2 A-Level years but instead, to introduce it after the Easter holidays of Year 13. This is when we’ve largely finished the content of the course and can focus on revision and Paper 3.
Having said this, high-quality figures and graphics are embedded into my lessons throughout the course to ensure that students have the skills required to deconstruct the figures in Paper 3. We will often spend quite a lot of time studying a figure in a lesson to build the skills of students.
Part 1: The Introduction
To get started, the introductory lesson begins by covering the logistics of the paper with students. Students have the June 2018 ASEAN paper to look at as we go through.
We discuss the following:
The structure of the paper and a quick consideration of the similarities and differences between Paper 1 and Paper 2.
The command words and what they are
A reminder of the themes of players, actions and futures
The importance of reading the booklet and how students might approach this
The topics and places that have come up previously and which papers we will work through in class vs which they are encouraged to complete at home.
A little more context on point 4
We discuss the different approaches to timings and I ask them to think about what might work for them:
Will they read the whole booklet first, highlighting key information as they go, before looking at the questions afterwards?
Or, will they skim the booklet to get a sense of its contents before getting started on the questions much more quickly and so reading it as they go?
Whilst many teachers choose to be a little more prescriptive in their advice to students about timings and how to read the booklet, personally, I don’t. Whilst in an ideal world we might want students to sit and read and digest the booklet properly for 20 minutes or so before tackling the questions, I know that when I was an A-Level student, there is no way I would have had the self-control in exam conditions to sit and read and not start considering the questions! So, I leave this up to the students. I think that either approach can work and it’s about what works for the student.
Part 2: Players, Actions, Futures
Whilst these lessons after Easter are the first time that students see an example of, and are taught about Paper 3, the themes of players, actions and futures have been mentioned and referred to throughout the teaching of the A-Level course.
So, the next part of the preparation is to reflect on these themes.
I do this very simply in a seminar style using the specification, A3 paper and a ‘We do, You do’ approach. Students, prompted and guided by questioning, think about the coasts topic and construct a spider diagram together on where these themes arise in the topic.
Although coasts is not a compulsory topic (and thus cannot form the basis of a Paper 3) I find it the most useful topic to use to scaffold this task.
Which players did they learn about and refer to when learning and coastal processes and management?
What actions were, or were not, taken by different players?
How and why do attitudes to these different actions vary?
What uncertainty is there around the future of coastal processes and coastal management?
Having built up a spider diagram for coasts together, students spend around 15 minutes beginning their own one for the globalisation topic. I can provide any additional help and guidance at this point before they are encouraged to complete these at home for each of the compulsory topics. If lesson time allows, we may complete a couple more in future lessons to ensure students recognise the importance of these themes that form the backbone of Paper 3.
Part 3: The ASEAN Practice Paper, June 2018
With the introduction complete and lots of logistical information about the paper shared with students, the next step is to get started on an example paper. Similarly to Paul Logue, I use the June 2018 ASEAN paper for this structured walk-through. As Paul discusses here, this paper explores a relatively straightforward theme that encapsulates many concepts and familiar content and ideas from across Paper 1 and 2 topics. So, it helps to build student confidence that Paper 3 is not something to be feared but rather a chance to shine!
The class are given time to read and digest both the question paper and the resource booklet before we get start a structured walk-through.
Our structured walk-through will go as follows:
Students answer the knowledge questions at the beginning of the paper- Q1, Q2 and Q2a.
We mark these using the mark schemes and discuss how the paper will always start with these sorts of questions. At this point, I explicitly look to challenge the misconception that you can’t revise for Paper 3!
We use this example answer booklet to look at example answers for these questions and consider what score the answer got and why. Students make notes in their copy of the booklet.
We turn our attention to the 8 mark ‘analyse’ questions. Page 1 of the example answer booklet has the mark scheme for each extended writing question broken down into a checklist of sorts for students. This is something I’ve found useful over the years to make it clear to students how the expectations for each question vary and what would be found in a top-quality answer.
We use this mark-scheme checklist to consider the 8-mark questions and how they should be approached before studying the example answers as we did before.
This process is repeated for all of the questions in the paper- really taking the time to consider how to approach the questions and how to be successful in achieving the highest possible mark.
Having spent ample time digesting, dissecting and considering the 2018 ASEAN paper, the next steps depend on the cohort and their needs.
Part 4: Next steps
It is likely that the next step will be to do a reduced run-through of the 2019 paper that focused on Japan. This walk-through will not be as long or as detailed and students will have a go at writing their own response to a question or two. They will be given the example answer booklet and told the scores of each response, but we won’t spend as long discussing each answer.
From here, students will complete 2 papers in full without any structured walk-through.
This is likely the 2021 paper completed at home and the 2023 paper completed in class in exam conditions. Feedback will be given to students on their responses and, time allowing, we will go through the papers together and think about how to improve their answers further.
As I said right at the start of this blog, for me, the key to Paper 3 is to keep it simple. As you can see, my approach is about practice, practice, practice and about ensuring that students have seen at least 3 examples of the paper and had it broken down into the necessary component parts.
For the resources that I use to help to do this, please click below. Please note, some of the formatting of the booklets has changed with the upload to Google Drive- hopefully this will be resolved when resources are downloaded.
Owing to the lack of example answers in the examiner’s reports of 2020 and 2021, there is not detailed example answer booklet for these papers.