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Original poster

Year 8 parent's evening.

29 replies

seeker · 13/03/2009 08:24

Ok - dd's parent's evening last night - hugely complimentary, hard working focussed, interested, pleasure to teach all the usual guff. All 6s and 7s apart from 5b for German and Spanish, both of which she started last year , and 5c for Latin, which she started this year.

Apart from ICT. 4b. Dd has said the teacher doesn't give them all the information they need for the tasks they are given, and when asked for more info, just says the same thing again and walks away. Last night the teacher said "I had no idea you were finding it difficult - why didn't you say?" Would you have though that a 4b would have been a bit of a clue to a teacher that a child was struggling?

She made dd promise to find her and ask for help if she needs it - is there anything else that she/we/dd should be doing?

OP posts:
scienceteacher · 13/03/2009 19:19

I am not too familiar with ICT in the lower school, although have covered many ICT lessons as a supply teacher and I am familiar with the curriculum at our school.

I would say that where most pupils fall short is in spending a lot of time of the presentation of their pieces (eg spending half the lesson on Wordart and weird fonts from the internet, rather than the content).

The other thing is not using the specialised parts of the software. For example, a lot of pupils will make pretty tables in Excel, where in reality they could have done the same thing in Word. If they are using Excel, they should be using formulas, cell references across sheets, sorting etc. With Powerpoint, they should be creating Master slides and other automated features, hyperlinks, speaker notes etc.

One of the principles behind ICT is the suitability of the presentation style for the purpose of the document - and they should be evaluating what they do along the way, and critique good and bad points, and say how they could be improved.

ICT is an easy enough subject for a clever student, but it is a hard subject to do really well in. It is easy to get a C, but not many people get As.

Original poster
seeker · 13/03/2009 13:56

That's a good idea - she's got a cousin in the same year who is a kind and helpful person.

The thing that puzzles me is that she is, I would have said, very capable on the computer - she uses powerpoint,and excell and lots of other things that are a closed book to me, and is always helping her little brother with things. So I'm not really clear what the problem is.

Don't know about whether she's got access to the same programs at home - i assume so but perhaps I'm wrong. I'll ask.

OP posts:
christywhisty · 13/03/2009 12:16

Does she have access to the same programmes at home. I found by far the best way of learning IT is just playing around.
Also from what my ds is doing a lot of IT work is actually the planning, preperation and research as well. At ds's school they like to tie it into other subjects.

I had dd's parent evening at primary on wednesday and ds's yr8 before half term and it was really odd because both their teachers said exactly the same thing about them(had a very weird sense of dejavue), that they were both very gifted in this area (probably neglegent parenting as they spend far too much time on pc
But also they were very good at explaining to other dcs in the class how to do things in a nice uncondescending way . May be your dd can find a friend to sit down and help her, it might just need someone who explains it slightly differently.

bagsforlife · 13/03/2009 08:51

Sounds fab!!! Re. ICT, my impression is that grammar schools don't take ICT that seriously, hence laidback attitude of teacher. Sounds like the teacher has got the measure of the situation now though and will help her a bit more. I wouldn't worry.

We've got Parents' eve next week....ugh.

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