Resources for teaching new texts available on Teach Cambridge

Lydia Ridding, English Subject Advisor

If you have joined one of our subject webinars or attended a teacher network meeting in your local area, you will almost certainly have heard us talking about Teach Cambridge. This is the secure area of the OCR website specifically designed to hold all the resources for planning, teaching and assessment you will need for delivering one of our qualifications.

Why use Teach Cambridge?

Launched in January 2023, Teach Cambridge holds the most up to date resources, so no old ‘legacy’ files are kept there, which you may come across if you do a normal web search. You can easily access and navigate several subjects at once, making life easier for those who are teaching both GCSE and A Level English courses. It is specifically designed as a secure online space for teachers; students will not be able to access materials you would like to save for mocks.

With the new academic year about to start, this could be the perfect time to get everyone in the English department signed up and making the most of the relevant content on Teach Cambridge.

How do I sign up?

For those of you who have been teaching an OCR English qualification for some time, you may have noticed that some of the teaching and learning resources you used to find on the website have now moved to Teach Cambridge.

First things first! You can sign in on the Teach Cambridge landing page if you already have a Teach Cambridge login (note that this is different from other OCR logins you may have used in the past).

If you have never logged in before, please contact the exams officer or exams department in your school or college and they will be able to help you. If you don’t currently teach an OCR qualification but you are thinking of joining us, there is also the option to sign up for a trial period of two weeks.

If you are an exams officer who is new to Teach Cambridge, you can find all the details on our website.

Spotlight on Leave Taking

We’re excited to share with you our resources for Winsome Pinnock’s Leave Taking, our new modern drama text for GCSE English Literature (for first assessment summer 2024).

In Teach Cambridge, either use the search box and enter ‘Leave Taking’ or search via the GCSE English Literature subject page and you will find the following:

• Teacher guide: includes a synopsis, themes, contexts and approaches to teaching Leave Taking as a GCSE text
• Assessment overview: this presentation provides a recap on the format and requirements for the Leave Taking exam questions
• Specimen questions
• Candidate style answers
• CPD materials – a 50-minute-long recording of our ‘Thinking of Teaching Leave Taking?’ webinar where one of our subject advisors walks teachers through the process of choosing the new play and explores strategies for teaching, learning and assessment.

More resources for our new texts

We are continuing to develop additional resources for our new texts across the curriculum.

For our A Level English Literature qualification we already have resources for these novels on Teach Cambridge:

• Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo
• The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon
  
• Passing by Nella Larsen
• Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
  

From September look out for resources on drama text Barber Shop Chronicles by Inua Ellams for our A Level English Language and Literature.

New exam materials for the summer 2023 series

Another great reason to make sure you access Teach Cambridge is that all summer 2023 examination materials will solely be published here, rather than on Interchange.

So, log in to Teach Cambridge from results day onwards to access:

• question papers
• mark schemes
• examiner reports
• moderator reports
• candidate exemplars.

And finally…

We have already received positive feedback from teachers about Teach Cambridge, but we would love to know what you think. Please get in touch (details below) if there are resources you would like to see added, or if there are ways we can improve Teach Cambridge.

Stay connected

Share your thoughts in the comments below. If you have any questions, you can email us at ocrenglish@ocr.org.uk, call us on 01223 553998 or tweet us @OCR_English. You can also sign up to subject updates to keep up-to-date with the latest news, updates and resources.

About the author

Prior to joining OCR in June 2023, Lydia spent 20 years working in a range of sixth form colleges across the country, teaching A Level and GCSE qualifications in English. She was a coursework moderator with OCR for a number of years and has an MA in Victorian Studies from Birkbeck University.