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English Language iGCSE Summary
Exam Board
Cambridge
Start Date
August 2024
Exam Date
November 2025 (A), June 2026 (P)
Child (Age at exam date)
Agatha (15) Peggy (14)
Result
?
Study Method
Self study
I’ll write up how we are going to self-study for English Language shortly, after I’ve completed my 2024-25 planning.
Learning resources
Copywork
We’ve started to do copywork for the first time this year. As part of my research on how to approach English Language IGCSE, it frequently came up as a recommendation. I know of several home ed families who use it and so I chatted with them about the benefits they’d seen. I got a resounding thumbs up that it was worthwhile doing so we’ve now added it into our daily routine. It takes 5 to 15 minutes every day and the girls can do it independently so it’s easy to slot in.
We’ve gone with resources from Copywork Cave who do a collection of Christian and non-Christian texts (make sure to choose correctly between the UK and US English versions).
Their resources cover three different age brackets; we’ve gone with the 10-14 years range. The collection we’ve started with includes poems by William Butler Yeats, letters by Leonardo da Vinci, extracts from Treasure Island by Robert Louise Stevenson, excerpts from Hamlet and excerpts from a speech by Martin Luther King.
I love the conversations these excerpts are starting. It’s already become a lot more than just practicing handwriting, grammar and punctuation!
Improving vocabulary
We’re working through this series of books, taking one word a week. The girls have a pretty good range of vocab already but it doesn’t hurt to try and expand that a little more!
