MIGRAIN index and January assessment revision

As we reach the end of the Autumn term, you need to create a new MIGRAIN index and start revising for your January assessment.

The index, as you know, is a critical way of making sure you are keeping on top of the workload and not missing any topics or concepts. Your December index should have the following work in it:

1) Introduction to Media: 10 questions
2) Semiotics blog tasks - English analysis and Icon, Index, Symbol
3) Language: Reading an image - media codes

4) Media consumption audit

5) Reception theory - advert analyses
6) Genre: Factsheets and genre study questions
7) Narrative: Factsheet questions

8) Audience: classification - psychographics presentation notes

9) October assessment learner response
10) Audience theory 1 - Hypodermic needle/Two-step flow/U&G
11) Audience theory 2 - The effects debate - Bandura, Cohen 
12) Industries: Ownership and Control
13) Industries: Hesmondhalgh - The Cultural Industries

14) Industries: Public Service Broadcasting

15) Industries: Regulation

Remember, your index needs to link to YOUR blogpost for each piece of work. If you've missed anything, catch up with it over Christmas and make sure the index is up-to-date before you come back in January.

January assessment details

You will already have your exam timetable for the January assessments. This assessment will focus particularly on what you have studied in the second half of the Autumn term - so largely audience and industries. In addition, look over your learner response for the assessment in October. That feedback will be important in identifying how you can improve in the upcoming assessment.

Christmas homework: revise for January assessment

Your Christmas homework is simple: revise everything you've learned so far in Media this year for your January assessment.

In addition, there are plenty of resources out there to further help you prepare for your January assessment. For example, we strongly recommend you get hold of some of the books on our A Level Media reading list - including Media Magazine, Media Theory for A Level and the AQA textbooks which cover all the key concepts and some of the Close-Study Products. 

You will obviously be looking over your MIGRAIN index as outlined above. However, there is plenty more out there. Anything you read in our Media Magazine archive will help to give you a wider perspective on media debates and every issue has several articles which focus on interesting examples, theories and debates that will help you in a Media exam. You'll find our Media Magazine archive here. 

Remember: these resources are all for you - the more you use them, the better you will do!

Have a great Christmas break - you've earned it!