Any KS4 EnglishTeachers?

[Minx179]

My son is in KS4, he sat his mocks last year.

Going through his books I found his mock exam and marks but no grade

for the poetry section - 12 points
for the famous person I admire - 8 points

Can you tell me what GCSE grade this would equate to?

He was predicted a GCSE D on his end of year report, no change from the report earlier on in the year!

Thank you

Which exam board?

AQA - lower tier paper

If the 'Famous person' piece was for writing to describe, 8 points is v low. It's marked out of 27.

BelligerentGhoul - I know it's going to be low. The question is how low? U,G,F

I worked out last year all his GCSE grades are well overpredicted and are probably unobtainable, and I feel sorry for his current teacher, because the head et al are telling me there is no prob, so his teacher can't exactly go and contradict them.

It depends how it was marked. They get up to 18 for content and then up to 9 for Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar. But some teachers only give content mark sometimes, in which case 8 is about an E. If it is for content and SPAG it is much lower - probably F-ish.

BelligerentGhoul. Thanks for your input.

Theres not much of a clue as to how it was marked. The only comment is:
'Leave yourself enough time for this.
Because there aren't any paragraphs, I can't give you more than a 5+3=8.

11 lines in total. Writing is awful. Spelling is accurate. There are a couple of commas and full stops.
In my opinion the content is basic for example

I admire him because when I play my brothers guitar sometimes, I always have some ACDC playing, but I also don't listen to the guitars, I always listen too Angus'. (this text takes up 4 of the 11 lines)

He should have 4 pieces, not two - there are two papers, each with two sections. The marks you mention would be an F and an E for those sections, overall on the marks a low E. Could he have done better on Paper One (Media and Non-Fiction plus writing to persuade/argue/advise)?

If not, perhaps he has a good coursework folder and does badly in exam conditions? When did he do thse 'mocks'? Most schools do mocks in the final year, with year 10 exams before that. Did he get a report with details of how he's doing?

Tanga Thanks.

Easy answers first.

We don't get a report as such, just a sheet with predicted grades; as I said earlier this was a D in Feb and a D end of Jul. At parents evening in Feb I spoke to his teacher re my concerns and was told to get him to read more! As he already spends a lot of time reading a wide variety of books; he understands the majority of what he reads, though he doesn't always understand the underlying meaning). I'm not sure how this was supposed to help.

I have never seen his course work, or heard much mention of it; though ds says he is doing 'ok at the moment'. He only had homework twice for English last year (yr 10), so we rarely get to see the work he is doing in class. But this concerns me as the school applied for a statement for him at the end of Jul 09; stating they could not meet his needs. So how ok is ok?

I was informed he didn't have any exams in year 10, though I know a number of his peers sat them in other subjects. Apparently he has formal mocks in Oct, and sits an exam in Nov.

He does perform worse in exam situations but not enough that it would have a significant impact in English, imo. The school have applied for extra time.

Unfortunatley he's not any better at persuading/arguing/advising in writing either.

Sorry for long post. Thanks both of you, you've been more helpful than you realise.

We find that our pupils who do the persuade question do better on paper One because it's easier to learn a few rules for it.

Paragraphing is an easy thing for him to work on at home with you, perhaps. Even if it's fairly sporadic and random, it's better than no paragraphing at all!

Can you recommend any books/websites where I can find these rules and/or how to teach him the basics of how to paragraph? Thanks

Have a look at BBC Bitesize.

Also there is one called, I think, Skoolzone.

If you have an email address I probably have a couple of help sheets I can send you.

email [email protected]

Thank you for not making me feel like a PITA, which is what I always come away from school feeling when I ask similar questions.

Bump this for me on Monday and I'll try and sort some stuff out for you!

"Can you recommend any books/websites where I can find these rules and/or how to teach him the basics of how to paragraph?"

Probably rather late for this, but the best way to learn things that are, in the end, as much about style as anything else, is to read good prose. Lots of it. If you've read a mixture of styles and genres, but with some vague quality filter to pitch it towards "better" writing, then you'll acquire a sense for how prose ought to be. There's a tendency these days in everything other than dense literary writing for paragraphs to be short, in the manner of journalism, rather than long, in the manner of Gibbon (some of his span pages).

You can say "a paragraph contains one self-contained idea" (which is the basic argument here) all you like, but that's rather begging the question of whether your child actually understands the idea of self-contained ideas!

Minx - I really feel for you. My boy is much younger (Y5) but like yours is absolutely unable to write at all despite being a total total bookworm.

So, you are right, for some reason not all children learn to write by reading. Also my boy pretty much knows what the basic rules are for punctuation - he just can't use them in context.

(Give him a worksheet on it and he'd get 100%)

DS is doing better now that school have got him on a computer rather than writing by hand. Has your boy tried this?

I don't know what to advise, but I think you really need to be kicking up a fuss big time with your SENCO.

With regards to my other child school kept telling me she was absolutely fine and making good progress - which again I knew to be absolutely untrue. At the end of KS1 she got a 1 or a W (The 1 has been disputed by the Ed Psych). Yet they keep insisting she is fine and making good progress. They also insisted at every opportunity that she was on target to get a 2. Despite it being internally assessed - so they actually gave her the 1!

We were very lucky and managed to move school, where they are as concerned as we are. So a bit late in his school career for you to do so - but don't, don't let the school continue to fob you off.

I've uploaded the work here, incase it helps.

this

Compare Poems

and

Person I admire

BUMP

Okay.

I'm a SAHM who was a secondary English teacher for 10 years. I haven't taught AQA for a few years, as we did WJEC at our school. Anyway, I'm very familiar with the texts and am a GCSE examiner.

The poetry comparison is very basic and he doesn't appear to have a particularly sound grasp of what the poems are about. He does make some comparisons, but these aren't explored. He also doesn't really compare the methods that the poets use, so he hasn't answered the question. He has made some valid points about the conversational style of 'Half-Caste', but hasn't explained the effects of it. My gut instinct is that this is an 'F', but without the mark scheme, I can't be more specific.

The writing again, is basic. He uses sentences, but doesn't vary the opening and uses 'I also' repetitively. He is using complex sentence structures implicitly, though these aren't punctuated correctly and are sometimes over complicated. I would also say this was about an F, but a high one.

Have you considered an English tutor? There are certainly ways he could be helped to structure his responses, for poetry and for writing that would help him towards a 'D'. It's not too late.

Hope this helps.

P.S. The teacher's comments are very vague and are not particularly helpful. Not sure how your DS would know how to improve - s/he needs to be more constructive and direct.

I need more choc.

Thank you for the feedback. If I knew where you lived I'd drop a big box of chocolates through your door.

You have just given me the most comprehensive feedback on a piece of English work that we have ever had. What you have said reinforces what I believe about his work. However, my concerns usually result in raised eyebrows, blank looks or 'it's not a problem' comments.

We will look into a tutor for English.

Have asked for a meeting with his English teacher to discuss. All your advice has been helpful.

Thank you for all your help everyone.

No worries Minx! I'm in Guildford. If you were anywhere local I'd offer to tutor him

It's worth contacting local schools (maybe not the one he's at if the teachers are pretty mediocre). There are often teachers willing to do after hours tuition and you know they've been CRB checked. Look to pay about £20 an hour. Failing that, there are lots of agencies around.

It's so frustrating when you feel like you're banging your head against a brick wall.

Let me know if you want me to look at anything else. Email is compingqueen at hotmail dot co dot uk.

Good luck

Thank you, I need more choc.

Unfortunately we're in Cambs. I don't think I will be contacting the local schools he's been in both of our local secondaries, currently in the 'best' school .

He already has a maths tutor so I'll probably start by asking if there's anybody she can recommend. Then check out a couple of the websites.

Thanks for the offer of looking at anything else. I think just knowing that somebody else can see what I can see, but having it set out it in academic, rather than layman terms is a bonus.

Once again thank you for your help.