Aberdare Community School — A bilingual GCSE PE book built around AO command words and the learning pit

The brief

Aberdare Community School came to us wanting a single GCSE PE book that did more than hold notes — somewhere students could see the assessment objectives, the command words behind exam questions, and their own progress across the year, all in one place.
The school teaches through both English and Welsh, so the presentation guide needed to sit comfortably in both languages — dates in Welsh on the top line, the usual rules about capital letters, cursive writing, blue or black ink.

What we designed

Working with the PE department, we built a 69-page A4+ book that follows a GCSE PE student from the start of the course through to revision.
• A bilingual presentation guide on the inside cover — date in Welsh, title centred and underlined, cursive writing, diagrams in pencil — so the rules are the same whether the lesson is taught in English or Welsh.
• An Assessment Objectives spread laying out AO1, AO2 and AO3 alongside the command words that go with each — define, identify, outline, describe for AO1; explain, justify, compare, contrast for AO2; analyse, evaluate, discuss, assess for AO3 — with the meaning of each word written out.
• A "How do I get there?" DIRT spread built around the school's own feedback codes — Tweakit, Flipit, Readit, Mopit, Talkit — paired with an "I commit to…" column so students respond in writing, not just by ticking.
• A "What went well? / Even better if!" reflection spread, and termly tracker boxes for autumn, spring and summer covering aspirational marks, results, and the difference from the previous term.
• A full GCSE PE topic checklist — Health Training & Exercise, Exercise Physiology, Movement Analysis, Psychology of Sport & PA, Socio-Cultural Issues — with Talk 30/60/90 columns for spaced retrieval.
• A learning-pit spread (Facing a Challenge through to Successful Learning) and a study-strategies spread covering retrieval, spacing, interleaving, elaboration, dual coding and concrete examples — so the metacognition sits inside the book, not on a separate handout.

The finished book

200 A4+ copies landed at Aberdare for the start of the September 2020 term