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RTÉ News
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- RTÉ News
Leaving Certificate Spanish exam tips with Katie Lenehan
Katie Lenehan is a Leaving Certificate French and Spanish teacher in The Dublin Academy of Education, and has been a media contributor for both subjects for the past number of years - including RTÉ Study Hub. She shares exam tips, study advice and sample answers on Instagram @mslenslanguages and TikTok @mslenslanguages1. Watch her Study Hub video up top and read on for more top tips. Tips for the Spanish exam Don't rush your comprehensions as they amount to 30% of your final grade. Make sure you understand what each question means in all of the comprehensions to avoid losing unnecessary marks. Spend 30 minutes total on your opinion piece. Divide that into 10 minutes of planning, 15 minutes of writing and 5 minutes of proof reading. When planning, make sure you don't overcomplicate your answer, and ensure that you don't contradict yourself by using arguments that don't support your initial opinion. In Section C, pay very close attention to the verbs in both the question and your answer. When revising, ensure that you learn the endings for each tense but also when each tense equates to in English so you can accurately translate in the exam. Read everything written on the two pages in the dialogue construction before writing a single word down. Often there are many clues provided in the question, and you will also figure out who you're talking to, who you're meant to be in the question, and how the other person addresses you. This will ensure you don't lose makes for adjective agreement and register (formal/ informal). Use the first playing of the track in the aural to listen and write down any buzz words in the columns on the side of the page. Use the pauses in the second playing to write your answers, and then use the third playing of the track to proofread your answers and fill in any gaps you may have. Timings for Spanish 220 Marks in 150 minutes Use the first 10 minutes to scan the paper and pick your opinion title piece Section A Journalistic Text - 25 mins Short Comps - 10 mins Section B Questions 1-4 - 25 mins Opinion Piece - 30 mins (10 to plan, 15 to write and 5 to proofread) Section C Dialogue Construction - 25 mins Diary/ Note - 20 Mins Then give yourself 5 mins to check on everything.
RTÉ News
06-06-2025
- Science
- RTÉ News
Leaving Cert Reaction: How did Ordinary Level Leaving Cert Maths add up?
Jean Kelly from Dublin's Institute of Education is here to share her thoughts on the 2025 Leaving Cert Ordinary Level Maths Paper 1 exam. She is contributor to RTÉ Study Hub, and we have her expert tips from the show to help you prepare for Paper 2. This content is from their Leaving Cert Analysis series. You can watch Jean's video up top and read on for more insights. Jean says: "This paper had everything thrown in or at least as much of the syllabus as they could possibly fit in to just 10 questions. Students would have been surprised by the sudden jumps between topics. A question could start in algebra in Part A, move to calculus in Part B and rates of change in part C. Many might find this lack of uniformity gave them a bit of whiplash as they had to quickly adapt to new areas of the course on the fly. "However, parts of the paper were lovely; not inaccessible at all, but you really needed to think. Questions had wordy window dressing to mask simple techniques that students would have already known. If you read carefully and pieced out the relevant material, you were flying, but you needed to know your concepts to make that call." "Students really did need to read the question over and over to get a sense of what they are asking. Each part of a question might have a new story element to be disentangled from central mathematics, so questions often didn't build on each other. As a result, some students will have found the more purely mathematical questions easier and so may have preferred the traditionally harder Part Bs to the Part As. One shock will be the appearance of Area, Volume and Nets of a 3D object in Q10 Section B as this is usually preserved for Paper 2. "There were lots of opportunities to get marks and secure their grades, but it was definitely exam that, at first glance, might have fallen outside of some students' comfort zones."
RTÉ News
06-06-2025
- General
- RTÉ News
Leaving Cert Reaction: Louise Boylan looks at Maths Higher Level Paper 1
RTÉ Study Hub regular Louise Boylan, maths teacher at The Institute of Education, gives her expert opinion on the Leaving Cert Maths Higher Level Paper 1 exam - shared from their Leaving Cert Analysis series. Key Points A paper with an off-putting appearance but many manageable elements. Continues the trend of pulling material from unexamined areas of the Project Maths Course. Download the Leaving Cert Higher Level Paper 1 exam paper here. Louise says: "Students likely won't feel triumphant as they leave the exam hall, but they shouldn't feel defeated. While there was a lot that was out of the box – logic puzzle style questions, material that hasn't appeared since the course's overhaul – there was much that would be welcome. Algebraic skills, Rates of Change, Differential Calculus, and Sequence and Series would all have fallen into the familiar. Yet the elements of the paper that will stand out to everyone will be those more novel aspects, the things that past papers won't have shown them. Within a number of questions there was something challenging. The 2nd part of Q2, the middle of Q4 and the end of Q5 all added stings to otherwise approachable questions. However, if students could take a moment to breathe and look past their initial reactions, they will see that the question setter has given some helpful hints. Question 4 (b) told you the theorem and expression to use and 5 (c) bolded the font of one line to draw the student's attention to it. Later in the paper, Question 7's wall of text will have caused some to pause, but once that was parsed, the underlying Sequences and Series were familiar. While Question 8 straddled a wide range of topics, Question 9 was neatly in line with previous work. The concluding Question 10 may have more resembled an aptitude test rather than an application of learned methods. This was a challenging paper but challenging for everyone sitting it as the question setter continues the trend of drawing from all corners of the course. As such there was material examined on the paper that simply wasn't present in past exams and some students will rightly feel that they were pushed beyond their comfort zone. However, with much that will earn them marks, they shouldn't focus solely on the negative – the marking will reflect the challenge.
