A level maths question for Noblegiraffe

[longingforsomesleep]

Rather than hijack Jella's thread I thought I'd start another one to pick your brains Noblegiraffe - if that's OK!

As I said on Jella's thread, DS2 started C1 part way through year 10 (having got an A at GCSE maths in November of year 10). He got an E for C1 at the end of year 10; resat it this summer and got a C.

He is adamant that he's going to finish the AS as he thinks it would be a waste of the time he's spent on C1 not to. He's also adamant he's not going to do A2 maths (so the pressure is on to make sure his other AS choices - Eng Lit, Geog and Biology - are the right ones!).

I'm anxious about the maths. Everything else seems to come to him fairly easily but not maths. He will have all of year 12 to do C2 and DM, and says he's going to resit C1 (am not a fan of resits and tend to agree with school advice that resits are often taken at the expense of other exams).

I know DM is easy but has high grade boundaries. Can you tell me about C2? Is it much harder than C1? If it is I'm not sure how well he will cope.

I think the best person to ask would be his maths teacher. Ask 'is he capable of AS, and what sort of grade would he be looking at?'

How did he get his C in C1? Did they spend the whole of Y11 working on it in lessons? I'm fairly appalled, tbh, that they started him on it in Y10 and he hadn't even got an A*.

My experience would be that students who do ok on C1 might drop a bit on C2, but not completely bomb out. However, my students would have done C1 in January, and then C2 and S1 in June, so have less teaching time on C2. As your DS will be able to spend more time on C2 as he only has two modules to worry about, it should be ok.
C2 is more difficult than C1, but by the time students get to it, they have got over the shock of the jump to A-level and be getting more into the swing of things with how to study and so on so they cope better. That said, some bits of it (trig graphs and proofs for OCR, don't know if other exam boards are the same) are tough. One good thing about C2 is that they are allowed a calculator. So many students lose marks in C1 because of arithmetic errors, especially with fiddly fractions.

Decision maths is quite nice, if he can master all the algorithms the exam is ok because each question tells you what to do ('using the X algorithm, show Y'). Students tend to struggle if they are faced with a question and the first thing they have to do is figure out what method they need to use.

Obviously I don't know how they will be teaching it, but I think he should start the year with C2, give it all a good go, then do Decision, then come back to C2. It usually seems much easier second time around.

If the school has a login for mymaths, there are interactive lessons for all AS level modules on there. He could even get started early

Well his maths teacher predicted him an A and when we spoke to him at parents' eve he said he was sure he would be fine. His school do Edexcel maths and DS said he was fine with all the practice papers but he thought the exam itself was 'a bit weird'. I think he was left to drift last year. All of top set maths did the GCSE at the start of year 10, then did C1. Most, provided they had at least a D in C1, then went on to complete the AS in year 11.

Those that had to repeat C1 were I think pretty much left to 'revise' on their own during lessons (only three 40 minute lessons a week). I know ds had people in his class towards the end of the year who had given up on C1 (either by their own choice or at the suggestion of the school) and were revising other subjects during maths lessons.

Not only did he not get an A* at GCSE, at the start of year 10 his first report said he was working at level B. Miraculously, after half a term of practice (extra lessons were available during the October half term but he couldn't go) he managed to get an A. I did suggest to him at various points during the end of year 9/early year 10 that we ask if he could move down to the middle set who did the GCSE at the end of year 10. But of course he viewed that as a retrograde step and wouldn't agree.

This is an "outstanding" grammar school by the way .....

Thanks for all your advice. I will ask about mymaths - presumably it's not exam board specific?

Could I ask a question to Noblegiraffe? It requires a specialist insight. My DS got a B in mock Maths exam because of silly mistakes and what I would describe as "black-outs". All of this mistakes were in long multi-step problems. DS would calculate that something is 7, but then substitute 5 instead of 7 and get the wrong answer. There were many multiplication tables errors even in the calculator paper. Sometimes in the middle of a long problem he would just have a total memory black out - loose track, start again with some random error and get to a wrong answer.

The teacher looked at the paper and told me it is not down to a particular area of math knowledge, but just silly mistakes. I explain this by panic - the black-outs etc. But I would appreciate your opinion as to what is the problem and how to tackle it.

What and how to practice not loose track in the middle of a long problem?

Marking place...are you going to be permanently on call, noblegiraffe?

longing, it sounds like your school is doing a great job in turning otherwise able mathematicians off maths. If your DS had been left to complete his GCSE in the normal time, he would probably have come out with an A* and you'd be having no worries at all about him doing A-level. I know the other thread paints A-level as really hard, but your DS got an E on first attempt of C1 two years early, and then a C with apparently very little extra help. That's a lot better than many manage!

I think that with proper teaching for the rest of his AS he will be fine. He clearly has mathematical ability if he could handle C1, I think he has just been badly served by his school, which has rattled your confidence. Maybe when he gets to Christmas his could discuss with his teacher whether it would be worth resitting C1 based on his progress and target grade. His teacher could probably also help with revision - after all, technically he should be sitting C1 in Y12 anyway so there should be time.

Mymaths isn't exam board specific, it's got everything on there and you can restrict by exam board to get the right stuff, but the school will have had to buy a password. Most schools do, but if your school left your DS to his own devices to revise, then perhaps not. CGP do excellent revision guides and workbooks for each module.

That's really encouraging Noble - thank you. After I last posted I remembered that he'd had a supply teacher for a large part of last year as well.

Hismum blackouts sound a bit alarming - is it just maths or does he have these in other subjects? You say he panics, does he struggle for time?

Making silly mistakes is very common - and very annoying for a maths teacher to see! If he is getting the method right for multi-stage problems and just making copying errors then he should still be picking up some method marks.
If he knows that he is prone to making silly mistakes, then he needs to build in a method of checking into his working. They can be hard to spot with an eyeball check. First check should be 'does my answer look right?', e.g. Has he worked out the ladder is 500m long or the angle which looks small in the diagram is 150 degrees? Better would be to check his answer in the original question (so if he has worked out x=5, does putting x=5 in the original equation balance? Or if the question was 'what is 30% of 50?' and he gets 15, is 15/50 x 100 30?). Sometimes that's a bit tricky so he could just quickly do the question again and see if he gets the same answer.

It's unforgivable to make arithmetic errors in the calculator paper! He knows he makes silly mistakes with mental arithmetic so he should use his calculator for all calculations where he has it available.

Finally, if he makes lots of times tables errors, does he actually know them? He may well be out of practice, there are lots of games on the internet he could use. If he goes to maths games on www.mangahigh.com Sundae times is good for times tables, Bidmas Blaster for general mental arithmetic.

cestlesautres, if you've got a secondary maths query, I'll give it a shot!

Noble, thanks, I really don't mean to abuse your time:). In quite a few problems in the calculator paper he typed the wrong numbers in the calculator or pushed the wrong buttons - the numbers on paper are correct, but the calculated answer is out of the blue. DS says his hands are trembling in exams because of nerves and he probably looses control basically. He has ASD, ADHD and a couple of other conditions, so when he is anxious, it really affects him. I agree with you that the only way is more practice to be over-prepared and very confident.

Do you know of any resources that practice problems of increasing level of difficulty - like from foundation GCSE to AS levels in one string?

He has blackouts in all subjects when he is very stressed.

I'm not sure really what to advise with exam nerves, usually kids these days are so over examined that when it comes to them they tend to be a bit blasé. Would something like Rescue Remedy and some breathing exercises at the start of the exam and when he feels the panic rising help? Being overprepared and confident is good, but having some tactics if something in the exam throws him would be worthwhile. If he struggles with a question and goes blank, could he go onto another question and go back to it? If he knows he tends to type in the wrong numbers perhaps a highlighter and highlighting the relevant numbers on the paper then double checking against his calculator might work. If he presses the up arrow on his calculator it show him the calculation he just entered, so he can double check.
It sounds like he needs to work on coping in exams as much as his subject knowledge, perhaps the school SENCO could help with resources or suggestions?

Not sure of any resources that increase in difficulty from foundation to AS, Kangaroo maths has excellent graded resources for KS4, the making the grade tests get progressively harder, you could possibly amend them yourself to make one resource? The A grade homework sheets actually cover more than just A grade questions and each question has what grade it is next to it. If you wanted to go lower than a D, then the ?Convinced? Resources linked to at the top of the page cover the lower grades (grade C is level 7, grade D is level 6 and so on). On the left there is a link to KS5 resources, so you could get some AS level stuff there.

Many thanks, this is so helpful. So much depends on the Senco isn't it...

Some of this booklet might be useful to go through with your DS, it mentions panicking and going blank and ways to minimise stressing.

www.anxietybc.com/sites/default/files/Test_Anxiety_Booklet.pdf

Indeed, thi is very helpful, :)