Help with Nat 5 English Texts please!

[NotiaScotia]

Can someone please help me out with some queries on Nat 5 English? My DD is in S4 and has recently studied Ian Crichton Smith’s short stories. They studied the Merchant of Venice and some Romantic poetry in S3. They’re currently doing World War 1 poetry including Dulce et Decorum Est.

I’ve been on the SQA site and looked for the set texts but can only see Scottish Set Texts. I can see how Crichton Smith fits under the ‘Prose’ section but am struggling to find what other set texts there are to choose from.

I asked my DD what they’re doing for the exam and she wasn’t entirely sure. So I thought I’d email the school for clarification. I got a reply saying that they are doing: Scottish Text: Ian Crichton Smith short stories; Critical Essay: Keats poetry, The Merchant of Venice, Dulce et Decorum Est (1 of which they’ll do in the exam) When I told my DD that the Merchant of Venice and Keats could come up in the exam they were surprised and said ‘I thought that they were just stuff we studied in S3 and had nothing to do with Nat 5’. I sense they’re not really grasping what the exam will entail

They’ve already completed their ‘creative portfolio’ - I’m not sure what this entailed? Is this something that goes towards the final exam? I understand the RUAE elements. I also know she’s got to submit a persuasive essay too.

I’m not from Scotland and am unfamiliar with the exam system. I did GCSEs where English Literature and English Language were two separate exams.

I was actually a bit annoyed today because my DD came back from school saying Mrs X (her English teacher) said she got a ‘panicky email’ from your Mum about the exam and that DD should learn to ‘communicate’ with her Mum better! I’m not impressed by that comment - my DD clearly didn’t have a proper understanding of the content and I just sent a very simple query asking for clarification on the texts. I resent the fact that a teacher has made my DD feel embarrassed about her Mum’s attempt to help them 😡. I almost told my DD to tell her teacher that she’d followed her advice and communicated her comment back to me and that I wasn’t very impressed but I resisted

Anyway if your child is doing Nat 5 English this year or you’ve been through the process recently I’d be interested to hear what your child studied. I’ve been on BBC Bite Size and find that enormously useful but any other suggestions for websites and resources would be helpful too.

The folio is 30 marks and the exam is 70 marks.

The folio is 2 essays of 1,000 words in two different genre. You say she’s competed her creative one and now she’s working on her discursive essay.

Scottish text - this exam is worth 20 marks and takes 1.5 hours.

The pieces are set by SQA.

There will be an extract from the work they have studied and questions about that, worth 12 marks. Then another question worth 8 marks about Comparing the chosen extract with the rest of the body of work. Our school call it the Commonality question . Should take 45 mins of the 1.5hours.

Other paper - You already know about reading for UAE.

They also do a critical essay, which is an extended piece on another genre.

Hope I’ve got all that right, I’m not a teacher just another S4 parent.

@Lidlfix is an English teacher. She's very good at offering reassuring and helpful advice

I am of course assuming that she's not your dd's teacher

DS did nat 5 English last year.

He did Macbeth in the drama section, Jackie Kaye poetry and something else which I can't remember...

I think the difference between now and "my day" is the phrasing of the questions. It might talk about a character experiencing conflict, or a text which explores cultural identity or something. It's not a specific "analyse the role of the witches in Macbeth with reference to specific passages" question. Gives the teachers a lot more flexibility over what to teach.

Almost Olga apart from timings in paper 2 Critical Reading which is 1 hour 30 mins but takes in Scottish Text and Critical Essay, we always recommend that candidates divide the time equally as both carry 20 marks. But we know fine well they race through the Scottish Text to have more time for the essay. Component marks this year suggest that marking in this paper is getting stricter.

Prettybird - definitely not me I haven't taught Iain Crichton Smith stories for a few years - it was still 6 then and I had a bilevel class and it nearly broke my wee Nat 5s. Also I am a big soft lump of a people pleaser who'd be worrying about my communication skills if the pupils were unsure of the course content

Some schools (especially in my beloved subject which we know they will be continuing in) will start courses in S3 to prevent a sprint to the prelim. So OP's DD should probably keep her S3 texts knowledge up. In reality most candidates have decided what is their preference fairly early doors and Nat 5 Critical Essay questions are very open and can be applied to many texts.

BBCbitesize has great Nat 5 English resources . SQA website has 5 years of Past Papers now do DD can see the Scottish Text (though they were revised and reduced) and Critical Essay questions. I always direct pupils and parents to the Understanding Standards section of SQA too - it is not just for teachers . Pupils can see very full marking commentaries- very helpful for Folio.

As Prettybird says I am around these parts often and happy to help. Best get in before I hit thethough. One more week, one more week and breathe ...

Lidlfix (just realised I've been shortening your user name wrong for ages) I have had many similar conversations with my teenagers. Default for them is non-committal nonchalance. The teacher could communicate with them till they are blue in the face but that does not mean they will choose to pass any of this info on to me, Only mentioning this because a teacher/parent won't have the same problem as the rest of us.

I tend to cope by checking the SQA website which is fantastic in terms of course outlines, mark allocations, achievement stats etc as well as past papers .

As for the DC my default setting now is to push the responsibility for knowing what they are doing back to them. If they are genuinely confused then it usually turns out the whole class is and they are better placed to flag this for the teacher. Also they tend to listen to the teacher directly but not if the communication comes via me.

Thanks all and sorry not to get back to thread earlier. Am travelling at moment but will read through replies in detail tonight. Lot to take in - am glad I’m not doing the exams myself! Seems a lot of the learning is based around understanding the marking and the timings and marks given to the different questions. It’s so much more of an exercise in strategy than it was back in my day when I just learnt huge amounts of quotations and strung together essays 😊

Absolutely Notia. It is all about strategy and making sure they have a decent attempt at all the different sections.

Worth getting to grips with this at Nat 5 because it is even more the case at Higher. Mine both found quite a big jump.

@Lidlfix, can I ask you a question on their English portfolio work please?

Are pupils allowed to bring their draft essays home to work on them?

The reason I ask is ds's school says no all the work must be done in a classroom environment, but a colleagues sons school let them take them home to work on, and their tutor "helped" them with the essay??? Is that really allowed/surely that is very open abuse? What are the guidelines?

(sorry for hijacking your thread a little Notia, but I'm sure it is of interest to you too as the same subject!)

There is no set rule therefore most schools go along the path of least resistance- allow pupils to take them home.

I raise every year that I know folios are not the candidate's work but nothing is done. SQA say if the pupil ticks the box then we must accept that.

I would challenge the school as it is their policy and arguably disadvantages their pupils. They wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

That said my own DDs' school has a policy that forbids them exceeding the word limit and they would go nuts at me if I challenged it even though SQA policy is perfectly clear about allowing 10%. I would be a cringeworthy pushy parent .

But I would challenge the in school only ruling- that would be a battle I'd be happy to fight.

Thanks Lidlfix, looks like a word with the school is in order at least to give him some time away from school to go over them. I've suggested a tutor to him as he is more confident in science than English, but he isn't keen.

Our kids are allowed to bring home their portfolio work and parents are asked to help them check for “ surface errors “ but not to do a lot more than that, as the school and SQA will see it’s not their own work .

I don’t know if that’s right or not.

Hijack away BrokenWing and anyone else Could turn into a useful thread for all those questions from Nat 5 parents. Particularly ones that don’t want to constantly be contacting the school and being ‘that’ parent! My DD is doing Art and has just brought their folder of work home and it’s really quite scrappy. They were told their class is ‘really behind’ and deadlines have been brought forward and my DD asked ‘why are we so behind?’ and didn’t get a straight answer Can see I’m going to be a little more involved in my child’s education than I intended. Which is a shame because I don’t have neither the patience or the right temperament to be a good teacher

I raise every year that I know folios are not the candidate's work but nothing is done. SQA say if the pupil ticks the box then we must accept that.

Are these parents fully committing themselves to 4 years at Uni to keep this up? Also, how do the DCs become proud of their own achievements if they aren't submitting their own work?

I probably went too far the other way, but I don't think I got involved in homework (unless asked) once mine could read and write - so about P2 onwards...

Quite Wax, I agree completely. According to my DDs my red pen is mightier than any sword so the let me see their English with reluctance.

Olga your DC's school sound like they've got it right, teachers can mark fully only once so a thorough proof read of subsequent drafts at home is ideal.

Are these parents fully committing themselves to 4 years at Uni to keep this up?

It is a balance between guiding and doing for them. Ds needed a lot of support earlier this year on study techniques, study timetable and organising his notes etc. I bought him subject text books to support his study. But he now mostly does it himself, asking me to quiz him on his notes sometimes which I think it's OK.

My colleagues sons school, where they have tutors rewriting supporting their English portfolios have excellent results. They also have a very high number of students going onto uni. Notably, she has told me they also have one of the higher uni drop outs, which she believes is because the school handhold too much, yet she still did the same. She felt pressure to as it was standard practice by most parents with dc in the school.

Broken wing, what you are doing is good, it's developing his ability to get a proper study routine and how to research etc. That's different form helping them write their portfolios as per your 2nd part.

DS2 (who started 1st year at Uni last month) was showing me group conversations where some students are effectively asking others for their work so they can change the words using synonyms and submit as their own but obviously only wanting people who've got A's for theirs! and then also asking other students how to write summaries as "they've never done it before" and one student had responded saying that none of us have done it before, that they've all just started Uni and maybe they should just either listen to what the lecturer or tutor is saying or do some research. It was a bit shocking to be honest.

It's a big difference between that and someone asking for some notes they've missed or checking they've interpreted something correctly. Clearly when mummy/daddy/tutor is no longer available, they need to lean on their classmates.

DS has never been allowed to bring his folio work home- I had no idea some schools allowed it! It’s probably a good thing he isn’t as I would struggle to not scribble over it with red pen. The child writes entire paragraphs as one long run on sentence!

Mine could bring their English folios home. They both rejected parental input because they accurately assessed that we were of little assistance.

Mine both did Art and while one brought things home the other didn't. The school ran Art homework club. I am banished from commenting on or observing any artwork - I only ever tell them it looks fab as well . The problem with Art is that it is like heroin to DC with perfectionist tendencies.

Ds got me to look at his creative essay for his Higher portfolio in a late draft only because it was over 1,000 (?) words (but below 1,100). He asked me to see if there was anywhere he could cut words; I thought it would be easy but in fact once I read it, I only managed to find about 2 words to take out as the descriptive words were part and parcel of the intense and very dark story line.

I don't even know what the topic of his discursive essay was

I agree about the need for the young people to do things for themselves and how too much spoon feeding can be counter productive. A neighbour who is 1st year tutor/responsible for the 1st year cohort at Glasgow Uni for a Social Sciences subject says that the highest dropout rate is from the ex-East Ren students . She regularly gets rung and berated by parents who complain that their offspring are not being spoon fed

So the East Ren schools might get the "best" Higher results and look good on the unofficial league tables but they don't tell the whole story.

True Pb but then DSs school gets in the same ballpark figures and (unless I've missed something) doesn't go to the same lengths of spoon feeding? There are always things said that the vast majority of pupils have tutors and this simply isn't true. I think a high proportion of the parents are fairly well educated themselves so maybe help unofficially but clearly I missed doing that too . When I went to school I was youngest from a large very underprivileged family and whilst it wasn't that my DPs didn't care, they just didn't see that as their role and didn't have ambitions for us beyond "sticking in at school" and "getting a good job". None of us went to Uni but to be fair, we have all done well enough for ourselves and they were really proud that we were all had good jobs, were home owners and contributed positively to society. So, it's not been either of our experience to get involved with DC actual schoolwork unless asked.

I think where you are Wax is different to the East Ren (and East Dunbartonshire - I can say that as that's where I went to school ) situations where people move out of Glasgow to the suburbs because the "schools are better" without looking at the bigger picture: that one of the reasons that they get the "good" results is tutoring and/or the teachers spoon feed more (rather than the arguably more important ensuring resilient, well-rounded individuals) in order to get the exam results that the unofficial league tables love (which is why they are not encouraged officially - especially as some of them don't even include the virtual comparators) ; before you even get into the issue of demographics (which is where virtual comparators come in)

I suppose what I'm saying is that those schools (and parents) that spoon feed too much are not, in the long run, doing the best by their young people It's no good having a brilliant set of Highers (and Advanced Highers) is you then drop out of Uni because you don't know how to work and think for yourself It's an indictment of their teaching practices and a dreadful waste of potential

I think there will be good teachers and good teaching everywhere, but a big factor is classroom disruption i think. Schools with less disciplinary issues probably achieve better simply from the fact that teachers and pupils are able to focus better.

I think where you are Wax is different to the East Ren (and East Dunbartonshire

We are in East Ayrshire, work colleague is coincidently East Dunbartonshire, it seems to be very normal for tutors to "support" the English portfolios from an early stage. Surely it must show up to the SQA there is something not quite right in these schools if so many of the kids have almost perfect portfolios?

The on going impact is they get, and waste when they drop out, the opportunity of uni places that more independent dc from other areas are competing for.

Some kids in East Dunbartonshire/Renfrewshire might get a bit too much help Am sure that can be said about some kids in most schools
But there are some really smart kids in ED /ER schools ,less discipline and social issues and the results are fab
Some may drop out but again that goes for all schools
Lots get great results and go on to great Unis and do very well
Disclaimer moved to ED for schools All kids got great results None dropped out No regrets

Actually, thinking about it, I’m just assuming DS wasn’t allowed to bring folio work home. Maybe he was but knew better than to show it to us. He’s never even bothered to tell us when things are due. I learned the hard way that there was an oral bit to the Spanish Nat 5 after he came home and said he’d probably failed it (fortunately he hadn’t). At least I know better now for when it’s DD’s turn.