Glossary of key terms – Explain

Stage 6 CAFS – this resource supports students to build their understanding of the glossary word explain.

One in a series of CAFS glossary related resources.

The glossary of key terms sets out how students need to respond to an HSC question using their knowledge of the content. This resource supports students to build their understanding of the glossary words and uses sample responses with guided support to show the language of the glossary of key terms to respond effectively to marking criteria.

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Watch 'Glossary of key terms – Explain' (31:02).

Exploring the glossary term 'explain'

Kate Rayner

Hi, everyone. Thanks for accessing this HSC hub, community and family studies support resource. I'm Kate Rayner, the Curriculum Support Advisor in the PDHPE Secondary Education team. This resource is a part of a slide of videos focused on building understanding around the New South Wales Education Standards Authority, glossary of key words. This resource aims to take a deeper look at the glossary words and how they can be explicitly taught in the subject of community and family studies. It focuses on the key words most commonly used in HSC examinations. The CAFS glossary of key words resources can be accessed and watched in any order. Each resource is designed to build an understanding of a single glossary word, and it does this by breaking that word down, understanding how it can be represented in a marking criteria and then using students' sample responses to demonstrate the language of the word.

Each resource models a step by step approach to building understanding. It shows teachers a way the glossary words can be explicitly taught. Teachers may decide they want to use parts of this resource with students as a guided model with a series of classroom activities, allowing students to demonstrate their understanding of each glossary word and the language of the glossary word in responses. This resource uses student sample responses or paragraphs to model the language of the glossary word, and we'll do so in the context of Community and family studies core content only. It's important to note though, that the glossary of keywords can be directly transferred to the option content as well.

Glossary of key words, what do they mean? And how do I support my students to use them? The purpose behind the glossary is to help students better prepare for the HSC. By showing them that certain key words are used similarly in examination questions across different subjects they're studying. In classrooms teachers of different subjects could use the glossary to help students to better understand what the exam question in their subject requires. Students should recognise the consistent approach of teachers of different subjects and get cues to how to approach exam questions. When using keywords to construct questions tasks and marking criteria, it's helpful to us what the use of the word in a particular question requires students to do. Key words are best discussed with students in the context of questions, content and task they're working on rather than in isolation. Teachers must ensure that they do not use them in ways that conflict with their particular meaning within subjects. For example, a word like evaluate requires a different kind of response in mathematics to that from history. Account for in history requires a different response to that in CAFS. It's important to know where the similarities are and where the differences are, and talking to teachers across different KLA faculties will help to do this.

It's important to explain to students what the glossary of key words are and why we need to respond to them. We can say the glossary of keywords is a set of verbs. And we know a verb is a doing word, like skipping or hopping. So, if I asked your students to do something like hop and then gave them the success criteria for it, such as move up and down off the ground continuously and on one foot. What would it look like? How confident do you think they would be to start hopping? How confident would you be to make a judgment on how well they achieved it? Do you think any of them would have skipped? Probably not. And that's because they know what hopping looks like and you gave them the success criteria to achieve it. The glossary words can be seen in the exact same way.

Stage four and five in the prelim course are for students to learn what the verb looks like and build understanding of criteria to achieve success when responding to them. The same way they could achieve success when they responded to the doing word hop. Therefore, the glossary of key words is asking students to do something with the content. The content, the information that's learned dictated by the syllabus doesn't change. How it's represented on paper does. It's important to know that the complexity of these words changes. It starts with something simple like identify, which involves recall. Moving in complexity to a word like explain where students use the skill of identifying multiple concepts and show the effect of these concepts on each other. To analyse where students are using the skill of identifying concepts, creating a relationship or effect between concepts and then thinking critically to demonstrate the impact of that relationship. So when teaching these words, we can't just apply the glossary word as it sits with the content in the syllabus. Students should not be rote learning responses. Teaching and learning activities are needed that offer the opportunity to think critically about the content, to enable opinions to be formed and judgements to be made or to problem solve so that students would be thinking about impact of actions. This learning and thinking will help students apply these glossary words to any content.

In this CAFS glossary of keywords resource we'll take a deeper look at the word explain, and it's variations of how and why. This next section will model a step by step approach to building understanding for these words, and will show you a way these glossary words can be explicitly taught. This section is designed to be delivered direct to students. However, teachers may choose to use this for their own learning or teachers may consider showing the video direct to their class as they unpack these glossary words together.

Word explain or it's variations, is the most commonly used glossary word seen in the CAFS in PDHPE examinations. The reasons for these is that everyone has an entry point to answer questions with these glossary words. It can be accessed by students who may find the course difficult, but because of its definition, relate cause and effect. Students who were showing characteristics of band six aren't limited by it, and they have the option to show deep critical thinking and offer a really broad range of effects there's no limit. So, because of this, explain is seen as a middle order glossary word. It's more difficult than just a recall of content or developing a set of characteristics and features. Explain is seen as the middle step to the higher order glossary words such as analyse and even evaluate. Because the relationship that we're showing when we explain allows an attachment point for implications or judgments to be drawn out.

When we get questions like these, we simply just need to think about what's the relationship between the two ideas. How do we recognise the two ideas or the cause and effect though? The cause is the fact that will initiate change or make things happen or why something's happened, for example a policy, a support network, a methodology, an ethical behaviour. It's usually the adopt point or a dash point from the syllabus. We then provide detailed content knowledge of these through a wide variety of characteristics and features. The effect part of the question is the part of the question that will cause a variable in response or change something. Visually you might see it as it could be placed on a continuum such as equity. So something could be highly equitable or highly inequitable or somewhere in between depending on circumstance, or wellbeing to ill being or needs met to not met or reliable and valid to reliable and invalid. The question will tell you, it's the variation that allows for a broad range of effects to be shown. To link the cause and effect, unpack the effect by describing it with a wide variety of characteristics and features. To create a clear link or relationship, you need to show how the two sets of characteristics and features relate to each other. These statements of effect will be validated by examples. Stronger responses will show both positive and negative effect or the extent of the effect. This deep content knowledge and the link to the components is important, because it allows for the broad range of effects to be shown. If there's less detail there'll be confusion about the validity of effect, and it won't be a clear link that's needed like you'll see on the next slide. Sometimes students go straight to the effects because they assume that the cause or the simple content knowledge is obvious. However, it's so important that the whole definition is addressed.

I've used the online program Wordle to create the visual representation you can see on screen. The visual represents a summary of the language from the marking criteria. For the top marks of all the questions that use the glossary words explain or its variations from the last four years of New South Wales HSC CAFS examinations. The words that show the characteristics from the top marks of the marking criteria were directly copied and pasted from the NESA examination pack into Wordle. For every time a word is repeated the word within the Wordle increases in size. Therefore, the larger the word, the more common it was seen in the marking criteria. From the image on screen it can be seen that the words ‘detailed’, ‘clear’, ‘link’, ‘relevant’, ‘examples’ are the most common words. However, in order to clarify the message here I also want to alert you to the subtle differences in how marking criteria for the same or similar glossary words are worded, influencing the size of the words in this Wordle. This marking criteria for HSC markers to be able to differentiate responses, and therefore there will be slight variations in wording. In the marking criteria there was a variation on how the connective idea was written. So, you'll see words smaller in size, but they all variations of the same meaning. And if I tallied those together, these words would be shown together as the largest represented. They're words like ‘relationship’, shown in red and ‘explanation’ seen towards the bottom of the screen in dark blue and clear and link as one of the largest words represented. These languages interchanged even within one examination paper, showing that these words despite having the same meaning have the same expectation. Interestingly, there's only been one use of the word, ‘why’. However, there's been an over representation of the words ‘how’ and ‘explain’ in HSC examination papers.

When I look at this image, there's three ideas that are really jumping out to me. The first is a word ‘detailed’, seen in the largest light blue text. This word, detailed, in marking criteria attaches to two different phases, influencing its size in the Wordle. The first detailed information, to show content knowledge but also to the word explanation, to form the phrase detailed explanation. For either phrase, this indicates the expectation to show a wide variety of specific characteristics and features to show content knowledge or to create a relationship is highly important. The second idea relates to students showing ‘clear’ links seen in the largest red texts. All the variations of the word link, such as ‘relationship’ or ‘explanation’ as I've just said. This just means that students have to show how the two ideas connect and that the connective language is highly important. The characteristics and features around the connective language need to respond or make reference to each other. The relationship will usually show the cause and effect of the two ideas. The broader the effect, or the ability to show a number of relationships will reflect in the detail.

The third key idea for me relates to the largest font size one in dark blue and the other in light blue, ‘relevant’, ‘examples’. Links or the relationship will be clear if they're backed up and supported by content, knowledge and examples. The examples will only be relevant if they link directly back to the content and are highly specific in nature. The smaller language around these words is interesting because this shows where in the syllabus the explain questions have come from to date. For example on screen, you'll see words like ‘support’, ‘relationships’, ‘advocacy’, ‘biological’, ‘confidentiality’, ‘carers’, ‘dependence’, ‘rights’, ‘diversity’, ‘group’, ‘legal’, ‘research’, indicating that questions using these glossary words are being used to address content from all three cores from the syllabus. You'll also notice language from each of the three options, words like ‘emerging’ ‘technology’, ‘individuals’, ‘work’, ‘structure’, ‘wellbeing’, ‘family’, ‘society’, ‘community’ and ‘organisations’. This represents the content from three options, Family and societal interactions, Social impact of technology and Individuals and work. Meaning you're going to see these words explain how and why from short answer, all the way through to the extended responses.

Just remember though, if you can show you have the skills of recall to identify and the skills to develop a description of content by providing the characteristics and features then the skill to link concepts. Stronger students will support their responses with forward thinking of the effect of that relationship. Stronger students will also naturally demonstrate positive and negative effects.

In our next section we'll use a set of classroom activities which can be used in a range of ways as individual tasks for students to work through. These are also available as Word docs for download on the HSC hub. Teachers may choose to use this section for their own learning or use the activities with the class. In this instance, teachers may consider showing the video direct to their classes as they unpack the glossary words and work through each activity together.

The following slides share three samples, there is a full script, a half script and a single paragraph that responds directly to explain and how questions. These can be printed and worked on individually or pulled apart as a class. However, due to the broad nature of the content where examples are different to what you might've seen in class, seek clarification from your teacher. When reading through these, see if you can identify and highlight to create a visual of the language within the text that shows the formation of the relationship or the connection between the two ideas of the question. Write these words on a poster and create a word bank for yourself, or if you're in class create a word bank for your classroom. Note the relationship language is different to the content specific language. When you're reading and pulling apart these samples to find that relationship language, note where it sits in the paragraph. How is the cause and the effect shown? How can you tell what the cause is and what the effect is from the question? Where does the relationship language sit in a sentence? How does the content sit around that relationship language? Are there positives and negative effects of the relationship or just a broad range of effects? All of these things are important to consider when you're responding to questions like this. If you can see how these are modelled in a sample, you can take this modelling and apply it to all your future responses.

[Slide reads: In order to conduct research effectively a researcher must select or choose and then implement the most reliable and valid methods of collecting data. The researcher would have to know the focus of research and whether they are seeking to find qualitative or quantitative data, this will directly impact on the type of methodology you would select and utilise. If the focus of research was seeking to find qualitative data, to find the thoughts, values and opinions of the targets sample group, then the researcher would require a methodology, like an interview or case study that allowed the sample time and space to not only answer to share this type of data, but also the opportunity to bond with the sample to create trust so the sample feels safe to answer with integrity. If the researcher was collecting quantitative data, the researcher would need to select and utilise a tool like a questionnaire as the closed ended questions and therefore nature of the responses enables the primary data to be collected, tabulated, graphed and compared ensuring the researcher can test what they are meaning to test.

Understanding the type of data needed to be collected would be essential for the researcher when selecting and utilising the most appropriate research method. If the data needed was to established whether this type of study has been conducted before and the results of those studies to monitor changes, the researcher would seek out secondary data and could only use a literature review to conduct this type of research. If the researcher used any of the other methodologies to collect this type of data, the tool would not be collecting data on what it needed to collect to ensure validity for the researcher to move forward and the data collected would not be considered reliable.]

Use the sample paragraph from call one research methodology to find the relationship language for the question. How does a researcher select and utilise appropriate research methods to conduct effective research? Eight marks.

How did you go? On screen you'll see the exact same half script as the previous slide. I'll draw your attention to the dark red writing. This is all the language that shows a connection between the cause and the effect of the question. This is language such as, ‘must choose and then implement’, ‘this will directly impact’, ‘would require’, ‘would need to select and utilise’, ‘would be essential’ and ‘could only use’. The glossary word explain in this question is asking for a relationship. And what we're seeing in the language that I just drew out, is the creation of a connection of how the method of selecting and utilising appropriate research methods will affect conducting effective research. This is a really difficult area of content to respond to and requires a holistic understanding of how to conduct effective research. Selecting and utilising appropriate methods requires a central knowledge of the fundamentals of research. So therefore, we're creating cross-links between the five methods and the seven fundamentals. This question is asking for the relationship between the reasoning behind how the researcher selects and utilises appropriate methods and its relation to effective research. Effective research is based around the data collection that is reliable and valid. So, these themes should be coming through when validating the selection of methods. Because effective versus ineffective research is very influenced by the selection of the most appropriate research methods, there are such a large number of effects that can come through. So, a stronger response will show a wider variety of effects.

On screen are two different coloured fonts sitting either side of that dark red writing. In these two sample paragraphs, the response focuses on the selection of the method and the subsequent paragraphs could focus around utilising the method. The characteristics and features of selecting a method is what you can see in the light pink or red writing. The light blue writing on screen is where you'll see the characteristics and features of how the selected method will lead to effective research. And the dark red writing is what creates that relationship between the two ideas. The three ideas must be sitting in the one sentence, and that's essential for this glossary word, explain. The number of dark red linking words, shows that a broad range of effects has been demonstrated. If you really analyse this response, you would see that there are positive effects leading to effective research and negative effects leading to ineffective research.

[Slide reads: The superannuation Act, 1992 aims to ensure that the Aged do not fall into poverty as their employment life ends and their retirement life begins. This act ensures that employers pay 9.5% of an employees wage (for most work patterns) into a Super fund while they are working to provide income later in retirement ensuring large portions of the aging community are living on their own funds and well beyond the Age pension which is designed to provide for only the most basic adequate standard of living needs. While this Act seemingly supports the vast majority of the population as they are employed this does not ensure equity for everyone within the group. This Act does not account for those women, who enter and exit the workforce or have large gaps away from their working life to care for children their ability to continually have superannuation payments is impossible. Women have access to significantly lower superannuation when entering retirement due to the work patterns of part time and casual work that suit their ability manage their multiple roles, this is because they are working less hours, therefore earn less and have little chance to make voluntary superannuation contributions. The professions that women enter and are seen as stereotypically ‘women’s careers’ such as beauty, hairdressing, child care, nursing and education also means that they are limited when superannuation is only 9.5% of their wage. Earning less and in part time or casual roles means that it will take longer to build the same superannuation amount as those without the parenting caring breaks and those who can regularly earn and negotiate their wages and benefits thus the Superannuation Act doesn’t play a fair role in ensuring equity for the group.]

Use the sample script below from core two groups in context, to ‘find the relationship or connected language for the question, explain how one government policy or legislation plays a role in ensuring equity for the group’. Five marks. This content is directly related to the category B group content. And so for this response, I've used the category B group the aged. However, you could respond with your knowledge of any of the category B groups you've studied, Culturally and linguistically diverse, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, Rural and remote families, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex communities, Sole parents or Homeless people.

How did you go? On screen you'll see the exact same full script as the previous slide. I'll draw your attention to the dark red writing. This dark red writing is the language that creates the relationship between the two ideas of this question. The first idea being one government policy or legislation, and the second, the role it plays in ensuring equity for the group. This dark red writing is language such as ‘ensuring’, ‘seemingly support’, ‘does not account for’ ‘therefore’, ‘also results’, ‘consequently,’ ‘meaning’. Due to the definition of the word, explain, to show cause and effect, these languages affect language. Therefore, the effect language shows results. We can say that the government policy or legislation is the cause and we need to show the effect of the role that plays in equity for the group. So, we want to ask our self the question, does this policy or legislation create equity for the group or inequity or somewhere in between? It's the somewhere in between that allows for critical thinking and the broad range of effects to be shown. You'll also notice in this response, there's light blue and light red or pink writing. The light red or pink writing relates to the cause, the government policy or legislation and the light blue relates to the effect. In all explain questions, the ability to offer rehearse content such as content knowledge of the government policy is important and provides a starting point for the attachment of showing the effect. However, there's going to be much more emphasis on the ability to show the broad range of effects. Meaning we're asking you to apply your content knowledge of the superannuation act in this case to its role in ensuring equity. Stronger responses will know specific detail of the policy or the legislation. However, even stronger responses will be able to show many effects of the policy or legislation and recognise that the group is diverse effecting equity in many different ways. Therefore, the ability to critically think and show detailed knowledge of the group and the effects on different members of the group will increase the likelihood of success in a question like this.

If we're talking colours, what you'd see visually in that respect, you'd see more light blue than pink because the one policy has many effects. A weaker response would show a large amount of rehearsed detail about the legislation and make a simple statement about ensuring equity without saying how the relationship between the two was established. So in that case colour wise, you'd see more light pink than blue.

Let's have a look at the order of the colours. There's always a dark red word between the light blue and the pink. This is the connective language or the relationship language that we talked about earlier, and you can see that it sits in the middle of the two colours. You'll see that the initial start of the sentence relates to one component and is one colour, and the ending of the sentence relates to the other component and is the other colour. There's no set order, so you don't have to have the cause first and then the effect, although that's the usual way it would occur, both can be correct. As long as you have all three aspects, the cause, the linking language and the effect in the majority of your sentences. You'll notice in this, that the first few sentences have no connective or effect language and that's because we're unpacking the characteristics and features of the government legislation. It sets up the many effect’s sentences throughout the rest of the paragraph. This highlighting shows direct relationship and is a really simple tool that you can use when practicing writing responses to ensure that you are explaining. Notice the number of dark red linking words in this response, that's supports the marker to see the depth of content knowledge and would meet the thorough knowledge and understanding characteristic of a marking criteria or the detailed explanation characteristic of a marking criteria.

[Slide reads: How can accessing formal support services influence the wellbeing of first time parents. 8 marks

Formal support services is the structured support established by professionals to support first time parents. While there is so much formal support out there, having the knowledge to find the most useful and targeted support is key for a positive influence on wellbeing. Enhancing knowledge for new parents is available in a variety of ways, online forums such as the Raising Children Network established by the Australian Government and Department of social services. It provides advice for all aged children but has a large focus on the ‘First 1000 days’ of parenting, written and supported by experts. While credible online forums, like this one, provide authentic advice and research, some websites may display conflicting information. Having to sift through large amounts of information with little support will likely result in being overwhelmed and stressed and disheartened meaning that new parents might be experiencing emotional factors of illbeing. Constant questioning and stressing why their child is crying, wondering if they had enough to eat? Exhaustive questioning about how do I get them to sleep, are all things that a new parent is experiencing and that this formal support can offer expert advice on. Having a formal support that can be accessed 24/7 throughout the night, when loneliness is amplified, with access to a directory of hotlines (counselling services) and links to local supports can result in a new parent not only experiencing piece of mind (emotional factors of wellbeing) but also conservation of energy that is essential for the care of their child and production of breast milk. The online nature of the service alleviates the need for those mothers who had caesareans to physically travel to access information supporting their physical factors of wellbeing.]

Use the sample paragraph below from core three, Parenting and caring to find the relationship with connective language for the question, “How can accessing formal support services influence the wellbeing of first-time parents?” Six marks.

How did you go? You finding it easy to find that relationship language. Let me explain what you're seeing on screen. I'm going to draw your attention to that dark red writing. That's the language that we're using to create a relationship between the two components or ideas from this question. These words are, ‘is key’, ‘can be’, ‘can result in’ and ‘alleviates the needs’. And this is all language that shows an effect. What you're seeing on screen like the last sample script is the connective language during at the relationship between the cause, the formal support network and the specific example of raising children's network seen in the pink or light red writing. And the effect, the influence of accessing the formal support on wellbeing for first time parents in blue. So we're asking ourselves the question, how does accessing a formal support service effect or influence the wellbeing or ill-being of first time parents or again, is it somewhere in between wellbeing, ill being?

You'll see the same colours that I outlined in the previous script. The pink shows the content knowledge of the formal support service and the blue shows the effect. Again, we're starting to see more blue and that's a pattern. This shows accessing one formal support has a broad range of effects on wellbeing, and that's just emphasising that, although content knowledge is really important, it's the ability to apply that content knowledge and offer a broad range of effects on wellbeing for first time parents and validate it with specific examples is seen as the more difficult skill and therefore valued more.

For this question and remember like all marking criteria seen in the earlier Wordle, the relevant examples are key to success in most questions, because they validate your statements. Here they're especially important for a question like this. As examples really have to focus on first time parents. The words or phrases that do this are, ‘first thousand days of parenting’ ‘constant questioning and stressing why the child is crying’, ‘wondering if they had enough to eat’, ‘exhaustive questioning about how do I get them to sleep’, ‘conservation of energy that is essential for the care of the child’ and ‘production of breast milk’, ‘mothers who had caesareans’. You can start to see through these examples’ links to emotional factors of wellbeing and physical factors of wellbeing. This constant referencing to the specific group’s experiences, which helps to show the effects on wellbeing. Weaker responses would not give specific examples like these and their examples would be generalised to parenting. These specific references and the number of connective language supports this response to being a detailed response. This question also requires the example of formal support services and that's seen in the dark blue writing.

If you've watched the analyse resource, you'll notice that this is the same or similar sample response that was used there. However, the implications section of the response is missing. Showing you to explain or show a relationship or link is the previous step to analyse without going the last step to show the implications of the relationship. While this response includes high levels of detail, we've lessened the level of detail because the analyse response usually has the language extensive knowledge and understanding attached to it in the marking criteria. But remember that within the marking criteria of all top characteristics for explain questions, you still need to show a detailed explanation or a clear link. Therefore, it's important to be able to hit the top marks for this type of question, you still need the level of detail.

I'm going to give you a quick recap of some of the key points that you may have picked up throughout this video. The relationship between the two components or the cause and effect must be really clear. And that's done through offering a really strong background of characteristics and features of the two components, and they're joined by that clear relationship language such as ‘this causes’, ‘this leads to’, ‘this means’, ‘resulting in’. That was the dark red writing that we saw in the scripts. And remember where they sat, right in the middle of the sentence. So if you were going to highlight the content either side of that dark red writing, you'd see the initial start of the sentence would relate to the cause and the ends of the sentence will relate to the effect or vice versa, depending on how you put it. Remember there's no right or wrong as long as you have both. That's going to be repeated because for these glossary word we hoped to see a number of dark red linking words, to support the marker to see the depth of content knowledge and to show critical thinking that one Idea can have many different effects.

Usually and we saw it in the sample examples that for glossary word like explain, how or why the detail of content knowledge is really important. But, more so is the application of that content knowledge to show the effect of it. That's going to be the more difficult skill than just to identify and recall characteristics and features, and therefore we want to dedicate more of our response to it. That was seen in the blue content writing in your samples.

Finally, in the examples that support the relationships are equally as important as the content knowledge because they validate what your content knowledge is saying. So, hopefully by now you would have collected on post it notes or in your classroom. A word bank of the relationship language that you could apply if you were to get a similar question in the HSC examination. However, as a class think about what other language could be used. Build on your word bank with other ways of showing explain, how and or why.

[Slide reads: Extension activities

  • Use the paragraphs given as starters to create a completed response.
  • Identify the other content dot points that would be essential to the response.
  • Use the marks allocated as a guide for how many more paragraphs needed to create a completed response.
  • Use the guide of 3 lines per mark to identify the writing space.
  • Use it as an opportunity to time yourself writing the response.
  • Self or peer assess. Use a highlighter to show where you/your classmate showed relationships. Or like in these responses, highlight the cause and the effect. Use the tips as a check list. Offer feedback to a classmate.
  • Replace the glossary word explain with different glossary word. How would it change your response? How would it change the length and depth of your paragraph? How would it change your language?]

Here's some extension activities that you could complete by yourself with a friend or together as a class. Use the paragraphs that you've been given as a beginning paragraph for a whole script. For each of the questions, identify exactly where in the syllabus it comes from and then identify other students learn about dot points or ideas that could be used to create a really clear structure for your new paragraphs. Use the paragraphs that you've been given to model what the other ones might look like. Think about the marks that have been allocated to the questions. How many more paragraphs do you think would be needed to complete a response? What if the marks changed, how would that change your response? Would you need more paragraphs or less? Use the guide of three lines per mark to think about how much space you'd have to respond to questions like this. While this is not always the case but just a general guide, practice in the space that you think you would be allowed, but be sure to fill up every line, write small and go all the way to the edges. Time yourself, after planning what your next paragraph looks like, give yourself the time to write the rest of the response. Replace the word explain with other glossary words. Think about how much more would you need to write if you were to replace explain with analyse. Do you think you'd need to add more content detail? What if you were to put in the word discuss, how might this change the response? Would it change the number of paragraphs or the number of examples needed or just how you present your content? Finally, swap your response with a critical friend, use highlighters to show where you or your classmate demonstrated clear links and develop the readers understanding of the relationships. Use the tips as a checklist and offer feedback.

I hope that you've been able to build some of your understanding around the glossary words, explain how and why. And you've armed yourself with some tips and strategies that you could easily apply if you would get a question with these glossary words as the doing word in the HSC examination. Good luck.

[End of transcript]

Syllabus

Community and Family Studies Stage 6 Syllabus (2016) © NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) for and on behalf of the Crown in right of the State of New South Wales.

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