Year 12 / 6th form support thread

[minesawine]

The term is about to start and I though it would be good to have a support group to help us on our 6th form journey.

May the year be drama-free and our DC's study hard and without complaint

So - half term (for most!) - how's everyone doing?

Ds has had his first report, just numbers for effort, how he's doing, meeting deadlines, etc - mostly good. Effort for physics was low (although other numbers for physics fine), which reflects his earlier blip and also reflects the fact that physics starts his day 3/5 days, and thus has been more susceptible to train problems (storm damage; randomly announcing his train was going fast to Guildford; etc)!

There'll be another report in December which will give "an anticipated final grade and a currently working at grade" for each subject.

Anyway, no further grumbles re physics and he seems to be happy with everything. Getting homework done on time and so on, doing well in tests. Loves one of his maths teachers, but all his teachers seem good.

He's become far more sociable than previously, is staying in touch with friends from his old school which is really nice, and has just acquired a girlfriend which I'm hoping will be a good thing (less time for moping?).

Next interesting thing coming up at college is the UKMT senior maths challenge next week - this will be his fourth year of doing it, and he's been through to the kangaroo one year and BMO the next two years, so hopefully won't do badly this year!

Hope everyone else is doing well too.
Piggy have you got your UCAS form in yet?

ds is in the maths challenge too.

He has a part time job over the half term. Loves his A Level subjects and is getting good marks. All good so far. He is on an Access course at a local university and is guaranteed an offer two grades below the norm! So he is really lucky.

I'm enjoying the peace before the UCAS / application / exams treadmill.

I wish we had a report. I'm not seeing much evidence of any work, and could do with either reassurance or confirmation of fears!

Is your dc at school or college?

My ds is at a big sixth form college and gets 5 of these reviews this year, I'm impressed!

DS appears to have settled in really well and says he's really enjoying sixth form (at same school as he's always been at). He's enthusing in a way he never did when forced to do so many subjects he really didn't like for GCSE (Triple Science being the main culprit!).

He seems to be working much harder too (with the amount of homework ramped up markedly after the first month, as some PPs predicted!). I guess that he is now studying subjects he really likes makes a massive difference to motivation.

Remaining a bit cautious until we get his first HTR (in early November) but hoping that he's well and truly 'turned a corner'. Certainly looking that way at the moment.

He's already starting to think about unis, although we've not yet actively considered open day visits.

We are also seeing a much better work attitude and lots of homework. DS is thinking he might do AS biology rather than A level - claims it is because it is harder to get good grades if doing 4 A levels, but I think it might be because he doesn't like the teacher! Does anybody have opinions about whether it is better to do 3 or 4 if you aspire to medicine at Cambridge. I think that if you have to get A, A, A, you have scope for one to go badly if you are doing 4, other side is that if you are focusing on 3, you have a better chance of doing well. I will try to prevent him from making a decision before he has a report or a parents evening.

If you are doing 4, a Cambridge offer might well be for all 4, so wouldn't offer that scope for one to dip.

I guess he would just need to check that not doing biology A level wouldn't rule out anywhere he'd be interested in.

Do the parents of people doing maths challenge know that you can get paper from last year on line - good for a warm up if DC is willing to give up 90 mins at half term!

www.ukmt.org.uk/pdfs/archive/SMC2016_paper.pdf

DS got his first report. Good participation in class but shit organisation, timekeeping and handing in homework. Feels like de javu all over again. Predicted A and B grades, which is promising. To be honest I have pretty much left him to get on with things apart form the occasional encouragement shouting about why he was on the PlayStation and not doing homework.

It is hard trying to get him to focus on the next stages, he still doesn't have a clue about what to do apart from saying "I wanna go to Uni". I despair

5 reviews Atia! DD is at a 6th form college, I have just checked, and it looked like I have to wait for a progress report towards the end of this term.

Thanks for the maths paper Monkey. Very useful.

You can buy 5 more for £2.50 - shop.ukmt.org.uk/downloads/senior-maths-challenge-past-papers

Actually you can get a few more too from www.ukmt-resources.org.uk/index-tr.html but they're not in the usual format - have the answers interspersed.

What are his other subjects Monkey? Not many places insist on Biology A Level but he may have to attend extra lectures if he hadn't done the whole course. (And dd would say, but why wouldn't you do biology if medicine is you passion?!)

Half term here too, DD1 diligently doing her homework. She's doing well - currently working at BBB (no mark for EPQ as it's very early days) and ahead of target. She's still as self-motivated as ever and (yay!) it's rubbed off on DD2 whose homework and independent learning has improved out of all recognition. She's now also ahead of target in half her subjects and at in the others. The only thing is she wants to do A- level French and our 6th form doesn't offer it - but it's her strongest subject by a mile despite being the new GCSE with much more content and grammar.

DD has settled in well to 6th form. First report is very encouraging, but its very early days, I think the teachers have appreciated there are a lot of new students, and a lot of students living away from home for the first time.
Whats has been lovely this week is how many friends from her old school DD has re-connected with, to the point shes been invited to a party tomorrow with the 6th formers at her old school.

no report yet - though dd says she's amazing & my favourite child (!). Had tests - they were kind of tricky but she got As & Bs. Has been entered into the chemistry challenge (?) which is usually only for year 13s, would be great if she manages a bronze & has been doing extra chemistry stuff with the lower school. EPQ has finally started, she has a study day for the creative writing A level on Monday. Generally busy, socialising quite a lot (ie getting drunk), costing us lots of money, had a hair cut & hasn't got a job. She says she's working hard, I say I would've preferred all As in the tests

Decorhate, he is doing maths, chemistry and physics. I think the main problem with biology is that he does not like the teacher who is one of the oldest and lacking the sense of humour many of the younger teachers seem to have.

Laniakea I have never heard of the chemistry challenge, sounds good though. Maybe you need to give DD an allowance so that she can be responsible for her own costs. I have bribed DS to join a choir - he was head chorister in a boys' choir as a treble, singing not cool enough now without a bribe, but means he can fund his social life. Is there anything you would like to encourage her to do?

Atia I only wish DS would tackle a pile of maths challenges - I will be pleased if he does one before the real thing! Good luck to your DC - a good result will be deserved with all that practice.

If your ds just wants to cut the number of subjects, then physics would be the more obvious one to drop. My dd found physics easier than Chemistry but it would have restricted where she could apply to too much. But she almost missed her place altogether by dropping a grade in her Chemistry A Level. So you do have to weigh up the options to give the best chance of the right outcome.

Chemistry is a lot more work than physics

DD had a major wobbly on joining her new school and I slipped off this thread. She now seems to be happy and totally settled. She's made friends at her new school and has kept in touch with her old friends and more, with some of them visiting her at her new school (she boards)

She hasn't had a report yet, but her school gave out target grades at the end of September and review these every month as to whether they're on course/how much the're exceeding/falling back from target. The pupils are her new school do well in exams, she's been given high target grades and supposedly is on course from what they've seen so very happy. School have allowed her to drop EPQ she's aiming to achieve diploma in violin and grade 8 in piano and music theory in next two years (she wants a musical career to all relevant).

Oh that must have been worrying ifonly - so glad things have settled down relatively quickly.

Dd1's finding it very up and down. She's really struggling with Chemistry and it's taking up well over half her time. I'm not sure (as she's a perfectionist) whether this is serious not managing or whether it's scoring slightly less than ideal.
She doesn't think the college will let her drop down to 3 subject (one being further maths) and I'm not sure if it's a good idea or not. Part of me thinks it would be good for her to have more time-and she wants to do either maths or maths with computing at university so wouldn't' restrict her there. And whether doing the extra A-level will drop her results in other subjects. Or whether she's panicking because she's no longer getting close on 100%, and she'll restrict her options too much by dropping it.

She's going to have a one-to-one with her tutor fairly shortly, and I;ve told her to talk to the tutor about the options.
Part of it is that I'm not sure whether her style doesn't work with the chemistry tutor, or whether he's not a good teacher (others have complained, but she says others seem to be flying with him. He very much lets them get on with it, and doesn't seem to tell them much except what to go away and look at). They also (I'm told) swap teachers in year 2, so if she swaps out (which she thinks they won't let her anyway) then she might get him again next year.
She's happy on Thursdays when she has all maths, but dreads the Chemistry lessons.

Oh that's a shame Witchend As previously reported here, ds has had that conversation already, will be interested to hear if she gets a similar answer. Did she get a decent review? Is it double maths and comsci she's doing with the Chem? Given that "They" say to spend as long on a subject at home as you do in school, is she spending a lot more than that on the chemistry? Or is it a large proportion of her time because she (like my son!) is not spending anywhere near 9 hours a week on maths and FM?

Sorry, lots of questions. No suggestions other than talk to her form tutor - is it worth talking to the chemistry teacher? Also the student support looks really good if she would use them.

The chemistry teacher seems to have a reputation, and is definitely unapproachable. He's said a few times things along the lines of the head of chemistry has told him to do/not to do something, but he's doing it/not doing it anyway.
The STEM chemistry sessions are up and down-seems to often consist of the 2nd year students saying they didn't understand it either (they had him last year!)

She's spending way more than 9 hours on the chemistry, probably about double that, and feeling she's rushed what she has done. Thankfully she isn't needing to spend that long on the others, but she feels she's short-changing those in order to do the chemistry.

She hasn't asked her form tutor yet-she has a session next week I think with them, so she's going to talk to them about it then. Will let you know, but she thinks that the standard answer if you're doing 4 A-levels including FM that you can only drop one after a year.