Year 8 revision

[disorganisedmummy]

Hi, I'm after some advice please. My son is in Year 8 at a non selective Indy. He's very happy but has always struggled with homework and revision. It maybe to do with him having Aspergers but it also may be a 12 year old boy thing. He is in top sets for french,Spanish and science and middle sets for all other subjects. Languages are supposed to be a strength of his but he cannot seem to grasp french verbs and didn't do that well on a recent test and has to re sit it. He seems unable to organise himself. I'm trying everything I can to help him and we have had some words about knuckling down and not faffing about. I've looked on bbc bitesize but it's too general for what we need.

Does anyone have any tips or resources that work well? Thanks

[randomsabreuse]

What is the issue with French verbs - tenses, conjugation, the 13 common verbs that take être. Is the issue that most of the endings sound the same but are spelt differently?

Basically there are 3 types of verb - er, ir and re, plus lots of irregular ones. The irregular ones just have to be memorized but stick well because they are used most often.

Old fashioned route would be physical flash cards but there should be an app - learned French way too long ago to have used anything but pen and paper.

I do like Duolinguo app generally but it's not great for focussing on grammar on its own - more general revision/vocabulary which may or may not tally with what is being learned in school.

[TeenTimesTwo]

It may be because my DD1 has dyspraxia, and DD2 some SpLD, but I don't think it is reasonable to expect all y8s to be able to organise their own revisions. Some will be capable, but many won't.

In your position I would go through with him what he needs to know (so I understand) and then work out how to revise with him.
For French verbs I would think this would be learning off by heart 'je vais, tu vas, il va, elle va ….' and then repeated repetition daily. Plus both French->English and English-> French randomly 'how do you say 'they have'? what does 'nous allons' mean?'.

Other vocab I would do by cards with English on one side and French on the other. Plus you have to check spellings not just knowing the word.

If you do revision with him, you know he has tried. If it doesn't work you try a different method next time. Only once you have found methods that work do you then step back and get him to self organise more, because then you know he can do it if he puts the time in.

[PinkSunflower]

I don’t know if you are already aware of it but there is program called study stack where you can make your own revision resources and then use the stack you’ve made in different ways to study it. There are also a number of public stacks that you can look at, save and use. My son enjoys learning vocab this way because of the variations available so it doesn’t feel as repetitive. Separately but maybe of relevance because of changes in the new GCSE that became apparent this August some friends who are language teachers have decided that to help children get to grips with the tenses they are initially teaching the je form of each tense / verb type and once that has been fully consolidated they are moving on from there.

[disorganisedmummy]

Thanks all, those are all great ideas. Languages are kind of my thing and I did v well at gcse with French and Italian but I'm in my early forties so we learned verbs and vocab by rote and by writing it down. Ds finds writing difficult at the best of times. It may be the way verbs are conjugated that is not going in so I'll check with him. Has anyone found any of the revision books any good,the ones that have exercises in??