Year 12 #2: Carols, commutes & a few stocking fillers

[Stickerrocks]

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/further_education/3410431-year-12-1-gcses-are-sooo-last-year

DS has signed up for a week long coding and electronics course at SOuthampton uni in the summer. Should give him a taste of uni life and also different options in IT and related subjects. Really pleased he s up for it. Really don’t mind if he picks apprenticeship over uni but want him to understand what both mean so he can pick what’s best for him.

Well done TheFirst's DS2! A great achievement at the very top grade - he deserves a celebration!

Oratory Uni course sounds fun - is it a residential one?

DS1 and I went through a list of MOOC and decided on one that he liked the look of. A short course (16 hours) run over 8 weeks. He is not doing an EPQ after all and this is one way of extending his learning beyond the curriculum. Hope he sticks with it!

Brilliant news on the grade 8 & the coding course. Strangely, DD won't look at anything at Soton!

Oh wow @TheFirstOHN ! Will you let him know his Mumsnet foster Mums are very proud!

@Oratory1 - DS1 is doing something similar at Manchester on chemistry. He's adamant that will get there and back on his own and I'm not to interfere.

In other big news DD had her first date at the weekend (Year 10). Was 'ok' but not great. I think she's relieved to have got that rite of passage out the way - as are DH and me! The first of many dates I fully expect!

Oh and yes jewels are vapes. One of DS2 year (Year 9!) just got suspended for selling them at school

Wow all these new experiences 😀

TheFirst that’s brilliant - well done to him!

All those UCAS points he has just gained!

Well done TheFirst'sDS! Great result.

Pretty chuffed here, DD, has had her results back from first lot of mocks for AS this summer. A and 2x borderline A/B. That is comfortably where she needs to be for the courses she is looking at. :)

Thank you all for the kind words about DS2's exam result. I'm so pleased for him.

PandaG that sounds excellent for this stage in Y12.

Oratory1 DS2 loved Southampton when we visited.

Congrats to all with new jobs, DC getting grade 8s and any other achievements I've missed!
Masterclass booked for April in physiology and behavioural sciences/neuroscience at Cambridge. All going well having carved up a locust, fish head and a lung in biology which dgd enjoyed with much glee! A* in all maths tests and assessments and same for psychology. Mental health much much better now only doing 3 instead of 4 and voluntary work going well.
Same about socialising with dgd , large social group at school but out of school old friendship group going strong even though in different schools/ colleges and they manage to meet at least once in half terms.

Glad everyone doing great and keeping well. Sorry I haven't been on a lot but have been trying to concentrate on helping dgs which is proving to be very very difficult as he's not cooperating very well. But I am persistent and he is caving in on several sides! (And improving). He has 2 interviews with colleges and he must try and get at least minimum grades in engineering and mechanics. No hope of him passing maths and English and will definitely have to re sit them. Think it has now hit him that slacking does not pay! But I am grateful he is finally listening though it is very late in the day ( sigh).
Good luck to all with ventures and will come on again. Sorry if I've missed stuff but I do lurk often as I love to hear of all your successes and adventures and miss you all. Health is still a problem or I would be on every day!

Sostenueto with you in his corner, I'm sure dgs will do OK. Sounds like dgd is going from strength to strength!
Congrats to PandaG dd, too.
DS has AS mocks this week - not too bad a start with philosophy and psychology today, he thinks.

Good luck to DS loose and hi! (Waves frantically)

Well done to thefirst's ds. Also to all the other recent successes.

Sost all the best to you. I hope you are being well looked after. And to dgs for his GCSEs. I have a colleague whose ds is unlikely to pass and it's such a poor system for those students.

Oratory do you have a link to the coding summer school? Or any others you looked at?

Dd has one mock next week for further maths AS. She's doing ok but getting tired again and has lost more hair. We might have to go back to the gp soon.

Waves back to Sos!
Don't despair too much about GCSE resits - the alternative functional skills qualification is very good alongside vocational courses so it is a back-up option if dgs needs one later on.

SOTON This is the generic page (which DD refuses to look at, as it's too close to home).

Will do kick - we found a few I ll post in a bit. A lot were cyber security or ‘building a robot’ which he says he s not interested in but we did find some good ones as well as the Soton one but where the dates didn’t work - I ll put them all up in a bit.

Soton would work for DS, city but not too big or overwhelming/expensive, approx an hour and a half from home, Russell group and good rep for CS. They also do a maths with computer science course which appeals. Would be an aspirational choice though as requirements for all the top cs courses are A*AA. Evem if he made the grades the course would be mainly full of natural mathematicians like a lot of your dc and which he is not. A good taster in the summer though.

Great to hear from you Sos

Sos - I assume that DGS will be taking the Foundation paper and I would therefore concentrate any help/revision targeted to merely that and not to even attempt the harder stuff. A friend's DS was allowed to start college doing further level 2 courses and even though he failed his English retake at college was allowed to progress to level 3 courses on the basis he did so well in his level 2 BTECs. There is a route for everyone.

Her goes:-

SOTON course:-
www.taster.ecs.soton.ac.uk/electronic-and-computer-science-taster-course

Other week long uni courses CS and STEM (Headstart run by EDT):-
www.etrust.org.uk/headstart/courses

Small piece trust mainly physics and engineering but with one CS:-
www.smallpeicetrust.org.uk/course-category/momentum/

Smallpeice trust Cybersecrity:-
www.smallpeicetrust.org.uk/course-category/cyberfirst/

Easter course at aston uni (but was outside DS holiday dates):-
www.unitasterdays.com/eventDetails.aspx?ID=57407

One day free tasters in maths or cs (and lots of other subjects) at London Universitys
london.ac.uk/taster-course-search/taser_course_subject/73/taser_course_subject/753?search=&page=2

One day Oxford Uni session for folk doing further maths but not sure what to do next:-
www.cs.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/open_days/open_days.html#Further_Maths_What_Next

We also found work experience options at Vodoafone, Ernst and Young, Diamand Light Source and Rutherford Labs but they will be hugely competitive so hope of getting them is slim.

There are also paid for Coding courses but a lot are either aimed at younger children or adult beginners or are horrendously expensive. There are lots of on line coding courses though DS is going to spend some time on over the holidays. The difficulty was finding the right level, not too expensive and at a time that didn't clash with anything else.

He was tempted by the debate chamber maths courses that look great but was in danger of overloading the summer especially as he usually finishes each term exhausted and wants to get some paid work in too. I think it may be a case of getting some useful stuff in this summer though with the promise of a long complete break next year after exams.

Thanks to all for best wishes

Its nice to hear from you, Sost.

What I could do with is a crystal ball. I could use it to answer questions such as:
Is DS1 doing ok? Should I be worried about his (lack of) essay writing ability?
Is DS2 doing ok? Am I putting too much pressure on him or not enough? Is he struggling with some things or does it just feel like he's struggling because he isn't DS1??
Will DS1 get grades that might get him an Oxbridge place, and therefore should we be encouraging him to go to the open days etc?

Know the feeling Whistl but If it’s any small consolation I guess we could say no news is good news ie uncertainty may be better than the certainty that they are unhappy/struggling

I feel you, whistl, those are exactly the answers I'd like too, with both my DSs. Uncertainty and a very nebulous future - extremely challenging when I'm such a control freak! I was the pregnant woman who needed to know the gender of her baby so that I could start planning!

DS2 choosing his GCSE options (Year 9) and we are struggling to find enough subjects! He is just not as academic as DS1 who was invited to do triple science, extra languages; it seemed every teacher was trying to get him to do their course. Poor DS2 has got nothing to this end; even worse, teachers were expecting him to be just like his brother and were disappointed when he wasn't (DS2 was aware). Bless him, he is gorgeous and charming but absolutely useless with school.

Sost DS1 is dissecting a fish (gills) and has told me to buy a fish. Any advice on what sort of fish I should be buying? Do all fish have the same gill structure? Do I just buy the top half?