Unit 6

Lesson 1

• In your house, read the text below and figure out the title of the unit : 1 word, 5 letters (EXAMS)

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, JK Rowling, ch. 15, The Hogwarts High Inquisitor, pp. 310-1

“So top grade’s O for ‘Outstanding,’” she was saying, “and then there’s A —”
“No, E,” George corrected her, “E for ‘Exceeds Expectations.’ […]”
[…] Hermione, […] plowed on, “So after E, it’s A for ‘Acceptable,’ and that’s the last pass grade, isn’t it?”
 “Yep,” said Fred, dunking an entire roll in his soup, transferring it to his mouth, and swallowing it whole.
“Then you get P for ‘Poor’ ” — Ron raised both his arms in mock celebration — “and D for ‘Dreadful.’ ”
“And then T,” George reminded him.
“T?” asked Hermione, looking appalled. “Even lower than a D? What on earth does that stand for?”
“ ‘Troll,’ ” said George promptly.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, JK Rowling, ch. 31, O.W.Ls, pp. 708-24

They received their examination schedules and details of the procedure for O.W.L.s during their next Transfiguration lesson.

“As you can see,” Professor McGonagall told the class while they copied down the dates and times of their exams from the blackboard, “your O.W.L.s are spread over two successive weeks. You will sit the theory exams in the mornings and the practice in the afternoons. Your practical Astronomy examination will, of course, take place at night. […] Now, I must warn you that the most stringent Anti-Cheating Charms have been applied to your examination papers. Auto-Answer Quills are banned from the examination hall, as are Remembralls, Detachable Cribbing Cuffs, and Self-Correcting Ink. Every year, I am afraid to say, seems to harbour at least one student who thinks that he or she can get around the Wizarding Examinations Authority’s rules. I can only hope that it is nobody in Gryffindor. Our new — headmistress […] has asked the Heads of House to tell their students that cheating will be punished most severely — because, of course, your examination results will reflect upon the headmistress’s new regime at the school. . . .”

Professor McGonagall gave a tiny sigh. Harry saw the nostrils of her sharp nose flare.

“However, that is no reason not to do your very best. You have your own futures to think about.”

“Please, Professor,” said Hermione, her hand in the air, “when will we find out our results?”

“An owl will be sent to you some time in July,” said Professor McGonagall.

[…]Their first exam, Theory of Charms, was scheduled for Monday morning. Harry agreed to test Hermione after lunch on Sunday but regretted it almost at once. She was very agitated and kept snatching the book back from him to check that she had gotten the answer completely right, finally hitting him hard on the nose with the sharp edge of Achievements in Charming.

“Why don’t you just do it yourself?” he said firmly, handing the book back to her, his eyes watering.

Meanwhile Ron was reading two years of Charms notes with his fingers in his ears, his lips moving soundlessly; Seamus was lying flat on his back on the floor, reciting the definition of a Substantive Charm, while Dean checked it against The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 5; and Parvati and Lavender, who were practicing basic locomotion charms, were making their pencil cases race each other around the edge of the table.

[…]None of the fifth years talked very much at breakfast next day either. Parvati was practicing incantations under her breath while the salt cellar in front of her twitched, Hermione was rereading Achievement in Charming so fast that her eyes appeared blurred, and Neville kept dropping his knife and fork and knocking over the marmalade.

Once breakfast was over, the fifth and seventh years milled around in the entrance hall while the other students went off to lessons. Then, at half-past nine, they were called forward class by class to reenter the Great Hall […]. The four House tables had been removed and replaced instead with many tables for one, all facing the staff-table end of the Hall where Professor McGonagall stood facing them. When they were all seated and quiet she said, “You may begin,” and turned over an enormous hourglass on the desk beside her, on which were also spare quills, ink bottles, and rolls of parchment.

Harry turned over his paper, his heart thumping hard. . . . Three rows to his right and four seats ahead, Hermione was already scribbling. . . . He lowered his eyes to the first question: a) Give the incantation, and b) describe the wand movement required to make objects fly. . . .

Harry had a fleeting memory of a club soaring high into the air and landing loudly on the thick skull of a troll. . . . Smiling slightly, he bent over the paper and began to write. . . .

[…]There was no time to relax that night — they went straight to the common room after dinner and submerged themselves in studying for Transfiguration next day. Harry went to bed, his head buzzing with complex spell models and theories.

He forgot the definition of a Switching Spell during his written exam next morning, but thought his practical could have been a lot worse. At least he managed to vanish the whole of his iguana, whereas poor Hannah Abbott lost her head completely at the next table and somehow managed to multiply her ferret into a flock of flamingos, causing the examination to be halted for ten minutes while the birds were captured and carried out of the Hall.

They had their Herbology exam on Wednesday (other than a small bite from a Fanged Geranium, Harry felt he had done reasonably well) and then, on Thursday, Defense Against the Dark Arts. Here, for the first time, Harry felt sure he had passed. He had no problem with any of the written questions and took particular pleasure, during the practical examination, in performing all the counterjinxes and defensive spells right in front of Umbridge, who was watching coolly from near the doors into the entrance hall.

[…]

Hermione’s bad mood persisted for most of the weekend, though Harry and Ron found it quite easy to ignore as they spent most of Saturday and Sunday studying for Potions on Monday, the exam to which Harry was looking forward least and which he was sure would be the one that would be the downfall of his ambitions to become an Auror. Sure enough, he found the written exam difficult, though he thought he might have got full marks on the question about Polyjuice Potion: He could describe its effects extremely accurately, having taken it illegally in his second year.

[…]Harry was determined to perform well in Tuesday’s Care of Magical Creatures exam so as not to let Hagrid down. The practical examination took place in the afternoon on the lawn on the edge of the Forbidden Forest, where students were required to correctly identify the knarl hidden among a dozen hedgehogs (the trick was to offer them all milk in turn: knarls, highly suspicious creatures whose quills had many magical properties, generally went berserk at what they saw as an attempt to poison them); then demonstrate correct handling of a bowtruckle, feed and clean a fire-crab without sustaining serious burns, and choose, from a wide selection of food, the diet they would give a sick unicorn. […]

The Astronomy theory exam on Wednesday morning went well enough; Harry was not convinced he had got the names of all of Jupiter’s moons right, but was at least confident that none of them was inhabited by mice. They had to wait until evening for their practical Astronomy; the afternoon was devoted instead to Divination.

Even by Harry’s low standards in Divination, the exam went very badly. He might as well have tried to see moving pictures in the desktop as in the stubbornly blank crystal ball; he lost his head completely during tea-leaf reading, saying it looked to him as though Professor Marchbanks would shortly be meeting a round, dark, soggy stranger, and rounded off the whole fiasco by mixing up the life and head lines on her palm and informing her that she ought to have died the previous Tuesday. […]

The fifth years entered the Great Hall at two o’clock and took their places in front of their overturned examination papers. Harry felt exhausted. He just wanted this to be over so that he could go and sleep.

• Now, try to figure out the timetable for their OWLs. 

What is the grading system?

Vocabulary Treasure Hunt: Each house is in charge of one category:

England - nouns

Wales - adjectives

Scotland - verbs

Northern Ireland - expressions relating to the unit (don't write words you already know well like books, teachers)

• Copy the CORRECTION in your copybook. 

Lesson 2

• Look at the picture and describe it. 

• Fill in the table in your copybook

Assignment: With what you have written in your table, write a short description of the picture (100 words maximum).

Lesson 3

Correction picture

This picture is a photograph. We neither know the author nor the date. There is no other indication but the photograph of a woman and a pile of books. 

The picture is divided into two parts: the background which is blurry and the foreground which is clear. In the centre of the picture, there is a woman with her head resting on a pile of open books. There is a large number of books on the table and behind her, in the background there are bookshelves. The woman is wearing a blue cardigan and her hair is in a bun. Her glasses are now on her forehead which is on the table. She looks to be sleeping. In her right hand, she is holding a pencil.

There are several reasons why the photographer decided to take this shot. The woman can be sleeping because she was overtired: the number of books could be an indication of what she has to learn for a test or an exam or her research. We know she was taking notes a few minutes before because she is still holding her pencil in her hand. 

She is probably studying in a library because of the bookshelves behind her. Furthermore, she must have been studying for a long time because there are at least 12 open books in front of her. 

Her hair is in a bun to allow her to see the words and the pages clearly without having her hair in her vision. 

All those details indicate that she could be sleeping. But the glasses on her forehead complicate matters: either she put them on her forehead before because she is short-sighted and doesn’t need them to read or she knew she was going to lay her head on the desk. If she knew, then she didn’t fall asleep out of exhaustion but she decided to lay her head down. Maybe she is banging her head on the desk out of exasperation and stress. She might feel despair or be depressed when she considers the amount of work she still has to do. 

Either way, she is clearly revising for something and whether it was from stress, despair or exhaustion, she needed a break. 

To conclude, this picture represents what someone goes through when revising and the negative effects of learning a lot at once. 

• In your copybook, copy the text and translate the words underlined. Then, answer the following questions:

What is your opinion on exams? -> use bullet points

Fill the table with different arguments (in favour and against exams)

Assignment 2: Explain why you think exams are a good thing and why you think it is a bad thing (50 words maximum). 

Lesson 4

• Have a look at the document below with the three pictures and the three texts. Pick one picture and one text: for the picture, write a list of advice linked to the picture and for the text, draw the corresponding picture. You can do it in pairs if you want. 
• Divide your house in three: two groups picks 2 pictures (one each) and try to write a paragraph explaining them and giving some advice. The last group draws the picture corresponding to one of the texts below. You need to work together to be able to construct the text and the picture in the same vein. 

-> To help you: read the worksheet underneath the document and the paragraphs 55-56 / 48-49-50-51 in your grammar book. Do the exercises. 

This is the whole document. Read it, and look for the words you don't know. What is your opinion?

Lesson 5

• Watch the video: and take notes (note: the pituitary gland is also known as the hypophysis and can produce different hormones : some that can stimulate the suprarenal glands and others that can activate ovaries and testis, as you already know from your science class...). 

• Is too much stress a good or a bad thing? Make a list of all the different arguments (in favour or against) in your copybook
  

Assignment 3: Now, in groups or alone, create a video and argue that stress can be a good and a bad thing.

If you work in group: one will be arguing stress is a good thing, the other that it is a bad thing. List your arguments before hand and try answering each other. 

If you work alone: sit at a table and switch sides to argue the different positions (or ask a sibling, a parent, a neighbour, to help you)

• Here is a video about global warming. The content is not important. Just look at what is done and how they create the debate using just one person.

• Once it has been done, define different topics you have breached during your debate (try filing your arguments under the same theme), make a list of the most decisive argument (the best) so that a compromise can be written which will act as a conclusion. 

Lesson 6

• FINAL TASK: Situation: Exams are coming at the end of the year. In groups of 3, create the perfect working environment to be able to succeed (timetable, should and shouldn't do) as a short leaflet that you could give to your parents/friends/siblings.