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Secondary education

Connect with other parents whose children are starting secondary school on this forum.

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Original poster

English Literature - Working at Grade 1 in year 10 - is this ok?

89 replies

Lougle · 17/12/2021 13:22

DD2 had her year 10 mocks in November. Her report came out last week. She's working at level 1 for English Literature (level 3 for English Language).

Nobody has told me (and the teacher is off sick so no email reply) whether this is ok because she'll improve over time and pass, or if it's worrying.

At this stage, all I care about is her getting a 4, so I suppose my question is whether a typical student would improve 3 grades by GCSE exam time from now?

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Fruitloopcowabunga · 19/12/2021 20:59

This is heartbreaking, DS has ASD and is just the same - he has a good vocabulary, reads for pleasure (fiction and non-fiction) but he just can't get his head round the exam questions. We've got him some 1:1 tuition where the tutor is coaching him through exam questions but I really don't know if it's going to do the trick (he's Year 11 so not much time). It's so frustrating because he CAN write perfectly well when he's answering questions in history for instance but the English papers are a nightmare. Another thing that may help is extra time on these papers - your daughter's school should be offering an assessment to see whether she qualifies for this.

Imitatingdory · 19/12/2021 20:48

You may as well ask the school and point out as things stand DD is going to pull down their progress 8 score because of the 110 in Y6 SATS. If they won’t commission an assessment Parents in Need can sometimes help fund assessments.

Original poster

Lougle · 19/12/2021 20:33

I think school have pegged her at average/low average ability, so aren't looking for explanations when she performs badly.

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Original poster

Lougle · 19/12/2021 20:32

I agree @Imitatingdory but we can't afford an EP assessment and I'm pretty sure school wouldn't commission one because they'd have to pay.

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Imitatingdory · 19/12/2021 20:06

An EP assessment may help, especially if, as is often the case, it highlights hidden needs/areas of weakness.

Original poster

Lougle · 18/12/2021 19:59

@MrsHamlet I'll PM you, thank you.

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MrsHamlet · 18/12/2021 19:45

Do you have the work? I'll happily cast an eye over it if you can take a photo.

Original poster

Lougle · 18/12/2021 16:07

@MrsHamlet

Without seeing what she wrote I would say the issues are a combination of some or all of these:

she didn't write much
she didn't use quotations to back up her points
she didn't answer the question set
she didn't write about the methods the writer used
she didn't make links to the context.

I teach and examine AQA.

Quite possibly. I don't think she's had any feedback. One example I do know from food tech, which shows how she thinks, though. She was asked to 'describe the features of a fridge.' She described our fridge at home. They were looking for the key features of fridges in general, e.g. ventilation, etc. Fortunately she got a 5 despite that.

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Original poster

Lougle · 18/12/2021 16:04

@Imitatingdory

Has DD2 ever had an Ed Pysch assessment?

No. It took me 3 schools and home ed to get to the point that someone recognised that she had a problem. First school, she fell apart between year R and year 1 because the classrooms looked different/different curriculum. School couldn't see why she was getting physically ill due to it.

Second school, she did ok between year 1 (when she joined) and year 2, but fell apart in year 2. SALT assessment said 'she has the following traits (list of ASD symptoms) but she's doing ok so no help needed. She fell apart completely so I withdrew her to HE while I came up with a plan.

HE between April in year 2 and September. I used Montessori style materials to improve her maths and Language for Thinking (a comprehension/inference) to improve her inference.

School 3 I found in late September (year 3). She did well for the first 2 years, with support. But they do 2 years per class and she fell apart again in year 5. At that point the HT said 'we have a problem'.

Diagnosed ASD in Year 7. She has general measures such as sitting near the teacher so they can keep an eye on her (she's too shy to ask for help if she's struggling). But nothing extra. I've managed to get her some exam concessions and after I complained last week I've got a meeting in January with the year 10 SLT link.

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Original poster

Lougle · 18/12/2021 15:53

@MistakenHoliday

Could you ask school to print out her lesson PPTs for her to have in class and take home? I do this for a number of students with ASD and it really helps with processing and organisation.

They put everything on Classroom so we have that. I think they discuss in class and the teacher writes up the analysis. The trouble is that DD2 doesn't understand how the text leads to that analysis. She writes it down but sometimes copies wrongly (e.g. she wrote 'cytrical' but it should have been cyclical - it didn't occur to DD2 that 'cytrical' isn't a word).

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MrsHamlet · 18/12/2021 12:08

@MistakenHoliday

Could you ask school to print out her lesson PPTs for her to have in class and take home? I do this for a number of students with ASD and it really helps with processing and organisation.

Only if they use them. I don't.

MrsHamlet · 18/12/2021 12:07

Without seeing what she wrote I would say the issues are a combination of some or all of these:

she didn't write much
she didn't use quotations to back up her points
she didn't answer the question set
she didn't write about the methods the writer used
she didn't make links to the context.

I teach and examine AQA.

Imitatingdory · 18/12/2021 12:03

Has DD2 ever had an Ed Pysch assessment?

MistakenHoliday · 18/12/2021 06:17

Could you ask school to print out her lesson PPTs for her to have in class and take home? I do this for a number of students with ASD and it really helps with processing and organisation.

GrammarTeacher · 18/12/2021 06:00

She'll need to be doing a Shakespeare plays as well as the two you mentioned.

Anyother · 17/12/2021 22:43

It's not easy, of course! And if she's 14/15 and still struggling with it - shows how difficult it is for her. I'm sorry you haven't had support from school.

Original poster

Lougle · 17/12/2021 22:05

I know. I do masses of work on it with her. I constantly explain why people do what they do and why it's expected that they do. It's not easy though.

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Anyother · 17/12/2021 21:58

If someone could help you work on her theory of mind it would help her a lot in life not just for the GCSE.

Original poster

Lougle · 17/12/2021 21:27

@Anyother

From what you're describing in the avalanche it sounds like a problem with theory of mind - which makes sense considering her autism diagnosis.

It doesn't seem to be an academic problem as such - if she managed a 110 for year 6 SATs.

I think she's actually very intelligent but she can't demonstrate it on paper. She is working hard but she's floundering. I'm finding it hard to help her because I'm not in the lesson and she's getting lost in the lesson, then her homework is often 'finish your notes from our lesson'. It's a bit better now she's using the laptop because she can copy a bit faster but I don't think she's actually learning how to analyse the text, just how to copy down what the teacher/class are saying.

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Anyother · 17/12/2021 21:23

*the avalanche story

Anyother · 17/12/2021 21:22

From what you're describing in the avalanche it sounds like a problem with theory of mind - which makes sense considering her autism diagnosis.

It doesn't seem to be an academic problem as such - if she managed a 110 for year 6 SATs.

Original poster

Lougle · 17/12/2021 21:19

Thank you @ElizabethinherGermanGarden that makes sense.

She's come a long way, really. In primary school her teacher started by letting her say everything she wanted to write, scribing it onto a whiteboard, then getting DD2 to copy it. Then she reduced it to writing the key words from what DD2 said on the board, then only the words that were tricky. From there, she moved on to giving DD2 a timer with 5 minutes for each paragraph.

They used preteaching in maths to stop her panicking and shutting down, etc.

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ElizabethinherGermanGarden · 17/12/2021 21:00

You could teach her to infer by treating it as a kind of sum: put a bit from the text on a post it note and something she knows about that thing from the real world/general knowledge on and other post it note and giving her a third post it for what she works out by adding them together. For example, the woman is skiing and feels a bit scared + people like skiing because of the adrenaline rush = she likes being a bit scared and is excited because it is edgy/frightening.

It is really difficult in English Lang for those who read on the surface, but if she works hard on her writing she may be able to bump up her marks considerably there. For Lit, there's a lot she can do by thorough revision and building her memory of the text and standard interpretations.

If she learns 'go to' effects of different techniques then she could offer reasonable interpretations as long as she thinks about whether an obvious interpretation eg that a metaphor makes you think about item a, by comparing it to item b. We usually think x about item b so if we apply that to item a it means...

RampantIvy · 17/12/2021 20:50

When DD did English lit she basically memorized everything on BBC Bitesize. It was especially useful for poetry.

Original poster

Lougle · 17/12/2021 20:41

She's doing Lord of the Flies and Jekyll and Hyde as the texts. Lord of the Flies was really hard for her.

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