I've posted this i Education but thought it may be relevant here too :)
DS1 has his prelims for his National 5s spread over the first 2 weeks of December.
He has basically 4 weeks available to study and also some time during the 2 weeks that the exams are on.
I have no idea how much study he should be doing tbh but we are trying to fill in his study diary.
He needs to go to a selection camp (Sat/Sun) next weekend for a trip next summer. He also has an opportunity to go to a camp in 3 weeks time (Friday night to Sunday) which he'd like to go to.
What do you think? Should he not go so as to give him more opportunity for study or would the weekend down time be more valuable especially as it's the mocks and not the real thing.
This is my first child doing exams so I really have no clue and I did my exams over 30 years ago.
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National 5 prelims v's camps
myotherusernameisbetter · 01/11/2015 20:55
thanks kua, I didn't think about that :)
We were thinking about 40 mins to an hour a day during the week and maybe double that each day at the weekend. That would be for the next 4 weeks (obviously with 2 weekends missing but 2 in service days over that time too) and then 2 hours per subject during the exam leave apart from English which is on the first day so extra put in on the weekend before and Maths on the 2nd day where he will do an hour on the afternoon/evening of the first day as well as study prior to that.
We've slotted in the extra study during the exam leave based on doing an hour for the subject the night before the exam.
I have no idea whether that is too little or too much 
he is doing 7 with only one less academic subject (Art)
Forgot about the homework - ds is including that in his two hours 
-although to be fair, some of the teachers now seem to be setting "revision" type homework. His English teacher has them reading "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest", 20-40 pages a night.
He won't let us contribute to his study programme as he's a pretty good self-starter. As all the teachers last week at the S4 Parents night said to continue doing what we were doing which is nothing, we don't even see his homework , it's difficult for us to say we need to interfere now 
Ds refused to do DoE Silver (having completed his Bronze last year) as he said he wouldn't have time if he wants to continue his two sports. I forgot that he actually does one of them 2/3 nights during the week, as well as a game on Sundays.
However, he put himself forward to be a Sports Ambassador for his school in response to me saying he needed to be thinking of additional responsibility for his university application.
If your ds is doing a little every night now in advance of the prelims and continues doing so after the prelims he'll have a good foundation for the actual Nat 5s
Ds has to produce a portfolio for his Nat 5 PE (I think it's either 40 or 60% of his final result) but his "exam" is an appraisal of his performance at an agreed sporting event, by a teacher who knows the sport involved.
His new PE teacher was concerned that he is choosing to do a team sport, "What happens if he had a bad day or if the team are no good that day?" and wanted him up do something like life saving which is nice and clearly defined. We had to tell him that we've never seen ds have a bad day at his sport and even if the team is playing badly, he still shines. The teacher then admitted he knew nothing about the sport; just as well it's not him that will be going the assessment them (It'll be the teacher who had been supplementing his coaching him since S1 ds has been playing since P1)
I agree with MrsJayy - your ds needs to have some down time - his studying will be the better for it. If he is borderline aspergers, then having these weekends timetabled in - and the encouragement to study hard before and after to "fit" them in - will suit him.
We're lucky that ds' school has a pool 
Ds still hasn't fully gone through puberty. He's had a proto-moustache now for a couple of years 
and his voice hasn't broken yet. He's only 5'6" so far - he's not going to make 6 foot We do get the teenage strops though!
He also spends more time than we'd like on his XBox One (got Halo 5 last week 
) but he does seem to do his homework and revision first.
Apparently it's just a pass with the nabs. But I think they can resit if they need to.
My friends son is going through the same melt downs and we're both about it as they've always been fine at school.
Ds occasionally mentions the nabs he has taken/passed - but tbh, we got more info from his teachers
Is your school doing any "supported study" sessions? Ds had just come from school late, after going to one for Computing Science (he did text us to let us know).
I never see ds' homework (or homework diary for that matter!) so no idea if it's marked or not. But he got "1" across the board for his homework in the interim report we got prior to the Parents' Night, so I'm not too worried. It also had him down as 1 or 2 (ie A) for both Target and Working grades for all subjects.
He has a day's outing next week to do a field trip (on Rivers) which will form part of his Geography National 5.
It's all getting much closer!
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