New Year 12 starters parent support thread (snappy title eh?)

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

here we are.

The student society at DS's sixth form buy them off pupils who are leaving or dropping maths and sell them in for £30, which is a bit cheaper.

ITCould I feel the same way, BTEC - great to be out of the way before main exams at the end BUT everything counts from day one, no time to settle in and find your feet. Eeek!

I've done a degree level qualification in maths and not needed a £60 calculator . I actually took my ex-h's calculator that he used for his A levels a million years ago as back up in case the batteries failed in the one I had for the exams!

Ive got a maths degree too, and did it on a normal Casio, the one I bought to start year 7 when I was 11. I've only ever seen a graphical calculator twice, and that was on teaching practise where the school had a set of 15 of them to save taking classes to computer rooms to look at the shapes of graphs.

Surely you aren't allowed a graphics calculator in maths exams though. We weren't when we were at school.

DS breaks calculators regularly so I'm not buying him anything better than the standard Casio scientific ones you get everywhere for a tenner.

Some graphical calculator are allowed as long as they don't do algebra, differentiation or integration. I don't understand why schools would say they're required though, they're really not necessary for most A level students.

We don't pay for books

ignores fees

I think one of the reasons the OU brought in exams for all it's maths modules bastards was because of graphical calculators and the like. You could basically do a lot of your homework using one, although they are quite complex to understand in the first place! You can't use them in the exams so need to properly know what you are doing.

I think fee paying and books would be taking the piss a bit exit! although check the small print, I bet they've added them in somehow

EllenJane that's great - you must be feeling proud and optimistic.

I haven't bought DS1 a graphical calculator yet. I don't think he's even allowed a calculator for C1 anyway.

Although he still hasn't had his Maths entry test back, my inside source in the Maths dept told me today that they have set the 'pass' mark and it's lower than what DS1 got. So not only will he will be allowed to carry on with Maths, he won't have to re-sit the entry test. I'm v.relieved for him, but can't say anything to him until he is told officially.

TheSecond so you've had a week's worry over the maths for nothing?

£60 for a calculator
DD is home! Yay! Was supposed to be celebrating her 18th this weekend as her birthday is Wednesday but she wants to celebrate next weekend 🎈 She's now revising for R.S cannot believe they have exams this earlier anyone else's dcs have any tests ?

TheSecond so you've had a week's worry over the maths for nothing?

Yep.

No tests here so far. This is probably a good thing.

Dd has had a maths test, which she was rather blasé about. She got the results back yesterday and only made one mistake so she was reasonably pleased with that.

I gave my year 12 class a maths test last Monday and gave them the results back on Tuesday. They all had things to work on but they all "passed" so they don't need to resit it. I'm happy with that, it can't be said of the other 2 classes we've got in year 12, so it looks like I've got the most conscientious/brightest class (their marks at GCSE range from a high B to a very high A* so some of them have obviously worked really hard to master the algebra we tested them on)

DS has a maths text next week, but it's not on any new material - they've only had two days of lessons. - it's on GcSE content just to check they know it all. They can move a few to single maths if they don't do well, but DS is feeling pretty confident.

Does seem early for tests on new material

No tests here. First English essay came back with an A- which dd was very pleased with.

DD has her first essay to do. Friday was a busy day for work she's using her frees very wisely doing as much work in them as possible however the same cannot be said for her friends

DS has two tests next week. Biology and Chemistry.

Also has a Geography field trip/residential Thursday and Friday. No slacking for him.

DS2 has just done an English and maths online assessment so far, but that just seemed to be for the college's benefit to see where they might need to provide support. It seems like they don't quite trust the GCSE results, maybe?

I can't believe they require a graphical calculator! DS1 managed to get A* in maths and FM with a £10 calculator. They can help with graph sketching, I suppose, but surely they need to be able to sketch graphs from first principles to properly understand them? DS1 says you could use them in some exams if certain features were disabled but not at all in STEP and for his maths degree he's been told a calculator won't be necessary (or allowed in exams.)

Mwahahahahahaaaaa, DS's school have set up a big co-ordinated homework website/calendar/notifications online thingy and he was claiming to have no homework but it emailed me to let me know what he had to do coming up over the next week. I think it's going to be a lot more popular with me than him .

I can put letters after my name for maths using a £6.99 calculator from Smiths. Sketching graphs is really important, one of the most important real world uses of maths in a lot of subjects surely? I used to check I'd got my homework right online with one of the free websites that you could plug your equation into and it would bring up the graph, didn't show the working so useless for anything else, promise!

Show my homework, MrSlant? It doesn't seem to take long for the DC to work out how to get around it. I think they enter when they've done the h/w themselves rather than the teacher recording when it's been handed in.

Yes but they can't deny it needs doing in the first place According to him there was none to be done, according to my sore arse there was quite a lot to be done today. If I could get it handed in whilst I watched online that would be another thing altogether!

Geography field trips have improved a lot since my day. We got a trip on a bus to East Kilbride shopping centre and then to look st Motherwell post-Ravenscraig. That is not something to get excited about.

We went to Skipton.