This page lists what we actually have for AQA GCSE Art and Design, 8201 to 8206. It is built from the live activities, so it is accurate on the day you read it.
Six codes, one rulebook
A department entering students for Photography and a department entering students for Textile Design are working to the same four assessment objectives, in the same words, with the same weighting.
AQA publishes six codes, 8201 Art craft and design, 8202 Fine art, 8203 Graphic communication, 8204 Textile design, 8205 Three-dimensional design and 8206 Photography, and the difference between them is what students make rather than how it is judged.
All eleven activities here are about the judging. Four take an objective each: developing ideas through investigation of sources, refining work by experimenting with media and techniques, recording ideas and observations, and presenting a personal and meaningful response. Two more take the formal elements and the drawing and recording that AO3 actually means.
That is why this page does not need to ask which title you teach.
Annotation is scored, and students treat it as decoration
The single most common preventable loss of marks in this subject is written annotation.
Students write captions. "I used charcoal for this one." A moderator wants to see thinking: why that material, what it did that another would not, what the source contributed, what happens next and why.
One activity is on exactly this, and it is the one to set first for almost any class. It is called what it is: annotation is scored, not optional.
The critical analysis of artists activity sits alongside it, because the second most common loss is writing a biography of an artist instead of analysing what their work does.
How a portfolio is actually marked
Departments know how moderation works. Students very often do not, and it changes their behaviour when they find out.
One activity covers the marking and moderation process and the record form behind it. Knowing that a moderator sees the whole journey rather than the final piece is the sort of thing that makes a student photograph their failed experiments rather than throw them away.
Two more cover the sustained project: how to structure one so the development is visible, and what a project without visible development looks like from the outside.
The externally set assignment
Component 2 gives students a starting point and then a period of supervised time in which the final piece is made.
Three activities go at it. Choosing and preparing for a starting point, which is a genuine decision and often a rushed one. Structuring a sustained project, which is the preparation period. Using supervised time effectively, which is the part where a student who has planned finishes and a student who has not does not.
None of it improves anyone's drawing. All of it is the difference between a good idea that arrives complete and a good idea that runs out of time.
Using them
The three activities embedded further down are playable here without an account.
The lists below group by classroom use, worked out from what each activity contains. For how each is meant to be run, see ready-to-run revision activities. To put several in front of one class in order, build a sprint and share one link. Everything else, by subject and board, is on the revision pages.
Edexcel GCSE Art and Design covers the other board, whose assessment objectives are worded differently enough to be worth reading side by side if you are choosing between specifications.
What this page does not do
It does not teach anybody to make anything. No technique, no media, no composition.
It does not look at your students' work, which is what all the judgement in this subject actually rests on.
It is not a substitute for a good exemplar folder, which remains the best teaching tool this subject has.
It does not track anything, so there is no completion list to check.