For people who have been following me for a few years you may remember that back in 2019 I did the #40DayChallenge in the run up to the exams. For those who are new to my website, this involved me setting a ten mark question via twitter and instagram and then challenging people to complete it. Each morning I’d post the question, and some hints about how to answer the question. The following day (sometimes later on the same day) I’d post my attempt at answering the question.

It was a pretty simple challenge, a 10 mark question took no more than 15 minutes, but it seemed to help lots of students to get to grips with the style of writing and the level of content they would need for a 10 mark response. Plus, by the end of the challenge, they had 40 model answers to look over in their revision. If you click the link, you can see most of the responses in the #40DayChallenge.

I wondered how I was going to top that the following year, so I decided to do the #2020challenge. Turns out 2020 was more of a challenge that I ever thought it would be, and less than 48 hours after announcing the challenge, exams were called off and well…you know the rest.

Last year, exams weren’t even a consideration at the turn of the new year, so I didn’t plan to do a challenge. I did however get involved in doing the Tutor2U livestreams to help students prepared for their CAGs or TAGS or whatever you called them. 30 minutes (more often 45) of going over a topic through a range of activities – and these were great fun to do, and still are (every Wednesday 6.30pm!) If you haven’t watched any of them, you can catch up by clicking on the link – Tutor2u Livestream Archive

But with students who are sitting the 2022 sociology exams having not sat a public exam since…year 6… I thought that setting a challenge this year might be a good way of helping out with revision. As some information has been released about the content of higher tariff questions, I’m sure a lot of focus will be on that information in student’s revision, but there is still 4, 6 and 10 mark questions to prepare for and so my challenge for this year is based on those.

I’ve broken down the different challenges I’m going to do based upon the specification points that aren’t covered. E.g., doing 20 marks of questions on functions of education, differential achievement and processes in schools for education. Each week between 1st March and the first exam in May I will be targeting a different area of the specification and setting either a 4,6 and 10 mark apply and analyse (item) question (for the P1 and P3 content) or a 10 mark apply and analyse and a 10 mark outline and explain question for different options. For the theory and methods section, I’ll do 2 outline and explain each day that week, hopefully one on methods and one on either a theory or debate (e.g., sociology as a science). Probably better to explain it through showing you the first day’s challenge.

My plan is to post the question on twitter and instagram (Monday – Friday) and the response on the website (written) or as a video walkthrough on my You Tube channel. The video walkthroughs will also contain the following days questions.

Last time I was able to give feedback to some students who sent me work, but by the end, I wasn’t able to do all I was being sent. If students want to post their work on twitter with the #2022challenge or tag me @thesociologyguy, I will endeavour to look over them and give some feedback.

Hopefully, it’ll help some students who are feeling nervous about the forthcoming exams, and if students want a specific question posting, they can always tag me on twitter or through the comments section on the website.

Best of luck for the 2022 exams.

Craig