Choosing and Preparing for a Starting Point

The exam starts in January

Nothing in this module will help you draw, print or photograph better. It is about the part of Component 2 that decides how well the making goes, and that part happens before the supervised hours begin. AQA issues a paper with seven starting points and you choose one. From early January there is an open preparatory period in which you research and develop ideas, and then ten hours of supervised practical time. Here is the thing to hold on to. Once the supervised time starts, your teacher can no longer help you. So the preparatory period is where the exam is really decided, and the ten hours are for making, not for deciding.

Words for Component 2

Six terms. The third is the one students most often misunderstand.

What a starting point is

The paper gives you seven starting points and you choose one. What is a starting point actually asking you to do?

• Begin a project from it and take it somewhere of your own
• Produce an accurate illustration of the thing it names
• Find an existing artwork on that theme and work in the same manner
• Choose whichever of the seven has the shortest wording

Stage to what it is for

Before, and during

The two periods are not two halves of the same thing. What you are allowed to do changes completely between them, and that is the fact the whole component turns on.

Ready to walk in

Select the TWO things that should already be settled before the supervised hours begin.

• A clear intention: what you are trying to achieve and why
• Research and developed ideas showing how you reached that intention
• The finished outcome itself, ready to be handed in
• An agreed mark from your teacher for the preparatory work

When the help stops

This is the sentence to write on the front of your sketchbook. Once the supervised time begins, your teacher cannot advise you further. Not on which idea to pursue, not on whether a piece is working, not on what to do next. That is not a technicality; it is the whole design of the component. It means every hour you spend in the supervised session still deciding is an hour taken from making, and it means the quality of your preparation sets a ceiling on what the ten hours can produce. Students who treat January as a slow start and the supervised session as the real work have it exactly the wrong way round.

Prepare in order

Put the stages of preparing for the externally set assignment into the order that works.

• Read all seven starting points before settling on any of them
• Choose the one you can take furthest and evidence most fully
• Research it, including work by others that genuinely bears on your idea
• Develop and test ideas, keeping the attempts that did not work
• Settle a clear intention and plan how the ten hours will be used
• Enter the supervised time ready to make rather than still deciding

Component 2 in a paragraph

AQA issues a paper carrying _____ starting points, and you choose one of them. From early _____ there is an open preparatory period for research and developing ideas. This is followed by _____ hours of supervised practical time, in which no further _____ input is allowed. The work is then marked by your centre in the same way as Component 1, holistically and against all four _____.

Choosing between seven

You have read all seven starting points. Two of them appeal to you equally. What should decide it?

• Which one you can develop far enough to evidence all four objectives
• Which one you like the sound of more when you read it
• Which one looks easiest to produce a finished piece from
• Which one fewer people in your class are likely to choose

A choice, thought through

The starting point below is INVENTED. It is not from any AQA paper and the real ones will be different; it is here so we can think through a choice together. Suppose one of the seven is the word Thresholds. A weak response reads it as a subject and produces careful drawings of doorways. A stronger one treats it as a beginning: what counts as a threshold, who decides where one is, what it feels like to be on either side of one. That opens research in several directions, gives you something to develop and revise, and leaves room for the intention to shift as you work, which is what the objectives are looking for evidence of. Notice how the choice was made. Not by which word sounded most appealing, but by asking which one could be taken furthest and evidenced most fully. That is the question to ask of all seven.

Which plan is not ready

Three of these students are ready to begin the supervised time. Select the ONE who is not.

• I know what I am making, why, and roughly how the ten hours will be divided.
• I have three ideas I like and I will pick one once I get into the first session.
• My research is done and my development shows how I reached this intention.
• I have tested the materials I intend to use and know how they behave.

Getting to the first hour

You have the paper in front of you and the preparatory period ahead. Work through the decisions.

• One starting point immediately appeals to you. What should you do first?
• Half way through the preparatory period an experiment fails badly. What should you do with it?
• A week before the supervised time you are still choosing between two intentions. What does that mean?
• In the first supervised session you realise you would rather do something else. What now?

Plan your preparation

Take a starting point you have been given, or invent one to practise with, and plan how you would use the preparatory period. Nobody here can see your paper, so what is being practised is the SHAPE of a plan.

• State the starting point and say what you would take it to mean
• Explain why you would choose it, in terms of how far it could be developed
• Name two directions your research would go in, and say what each would give you
• Explain what you would keep from work that did not succeed, and why
• State the intention you would want settled before the supervised time begins
• Say how you would divide the ten hours, given that no help is available during them