GCSEs 2018 (5 & a puppy, but no kittens)

[Stickerrocks]

Here we go again.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/secondary/3177476-GCSEs-2018-4-already

Place marking for tomorrow.

DS1 had to pick his A levels last night in case he doesn't get the grades and stays on at his current school.
Because he is doing further maths, the school singly suggest that he picks 4.
We've put this off for months as DS doesn't know what he wants. Finally it came down to choosing between History, economics and physics.
History is something he really enjoys but it's essay based, like economics. There's no way he can successfully do 2 essay based subjects with dysgraphia there's no way he can contemplate doing an essay based subject at university with dysgraphia. So he had to give it up last night and take physics instead, even though he really struggles to learn from the teacher he currently has and who teaches 6th form.
He's quite low about it. Giving up a subject he enjoys for a subject with a teacher that he struggles with feels wrong.
Everyone tells you when you get the learning disability diagnosis that it won't hold you back or stop you doing things, but that's simply not true. There's only so far you can get with intelligence, effort and the workarounds and DS has had to make a grown up decision that he's reached that point

This will be interesting, I think:

@BBCTomFeilden

Tomorrow on #r4today: Researchers suggest that genes may play a bigger roll in educational attainment that what sort of school you go to. But also that selective schools are taking more pupils with higher polygenetic scores

I had to Google what polygenetic means. It means a trait that both parents genes contribute to eg eye colour.
I guess what they are implying is that intelligence is inherited and both parents contribute. It's part of that old nature Vs nurture debate.

mmzz
I'm here and thanks stickerocks for new thread

Thanks for the new thread Stickkerocks

mmzz polygenetics is interesting as when people use to say to me where does DS get his maths ability from I use to say he had a double wammy (very scientific terminology!) as DH is good at maths and I have a relation who's very good (I being the carrier) maybe my response wasn't so silly after all!

Morning all, thanks for new thread. No kittens but a big ginger cat here

mmzz Intelligence I believe is inherited, but if you are raised in a home with no books and educational attainment is not valued added to attending a mediocre school, I wonder what chance there is without nurturing that ability. Thanks for the heads up for the radio 4 programme.

Thanks for the new thread stickerrocks

Drummersmum - DD doesn’t know what she wants to do.

Interesting mmzz obviously DC gets intelligence from me and strops from DH

mmzz ditto re foregoing essay subjects. DS loves History and RS but not considering A level. Initially he didn't pick history for GCSE either but switched at the last minute and so glad he did - been very hard but he s loved it. Hopefully he can keep the interest up outside lessons and we'll try and help in this. I may ask history teacher if he can be included in related sixth form extra curricular stuff/societies and talks etc. as he and history teacher get on well.

mmzz I took maths, physics & economics. I wasn't allowed to take further maths, as I went to a boys school and they felt my head would explode if I filled it with things other than fluffy kittens and embroidery! I went on to take maths further, rather than further maths and proved them very wrong! The combination does work well, but with the benefit of hindsight I would now swap physics for history simply because I love politics and such like, but haven't even thought about physics since the day I sat my last exam.

DS also said studying a subject in current exam system can take all pleasure out of it so sometimes better not taking it. Hence also glad he didn’t do drama gcse and music exams and just does those things for pleasure - though those things probably easier to keep up outside of lessons than history etc

I've been trying to console DS that giving up studying History at school, does not mean having to give up his interest in history. He got the passion for it from DH, who has a mini-library of history books at home. From where I am sitting now, I can see books titled: 1001 Battles, Europe Since Napoleon, Life and Death of the Spanish Republic, Waterloo, Hitler and Stalin ... to name only a few.
DS can decide which bits of history he is interested in, and read around it for pleasure. If it happens to overlap with DH, then so much the better. If he does it at school, he will have to study topics that he isn't inspired to know the history of (eg women's rights!).
Anyway, that's how I am trying to get DS to look at it, but all he is thinking about right now is cursing his disability. He'd have really struggled with all the essays and it would have been difficult to do well at A level History, especially if he has economics to do too.

I don't have a kitten but do have an adolescent cat (15 months old) who often behaves like a kitten.

DS2 needs to print out several Further Maths past papers (and mark schemes) for use in Maths lessons. Each paper is 15-25 pages long, and the mark schemes are slightly longer. We printed them half size (to fit 2 pages on each page) and double sided, but even so...

TheSecondOfHerName - can he print them to file (as a PDF) and then put them on a tablet / laptop instead?
Or use the school's printers?!

No cats here, either. I'm allergic (and I prefer dogs anyway - but I don't have one of those either).

Well I can honestly say that I have no idea where dgd got her brains from. My dd is creative and did graphic design, I am also creative type rather than academic, dgds father I can't comment but not academic ( a w.....) And considering dgd not at all creative as in the arts I conclude she must have come from under a gooseberry bush

You can have my hormonal teenage pup mmzz!

Sostenueto its only a bigger % than previously thought. About girls in your day though, if you had been super-academic age 5, with the schools you went to and the social norms of the day, would you have flourished (or would you still have been directed towards nursing, secretarial work, etc with the best realistic outcome being teaching?)

mmzz Stupid question, but I thought dysgraphia was issues around handwriting? Is there more to it than that? Just wondering why your DS can't just use a laptop.

Thanks for new thread Stickerrocks! No kittens here but we do have a large fluffy tabby. Not sure I could describe him as intelligent except when it comes to hinting his food bowl needs refilling.
Poor DS is off school - he got a pounding headache and felt sick Wednesday night, slept most of yesterday and has got rid of the headache but still feels sick. It sounds suspicious but it’s been going round the school so I’m letting him sleep it off again.
Revision sessions tomorrow and second week of Easter holidays.

Dysgraphia shows up mostly in handwriting but its a neurological misfire in the brain, part of the dyslexia family. Poor spelling is another very common symptom, that luckily DS does not have.

DS does use a laptop, but all that does is save his hand from the pain and make what he writes legible. The other big symptom - difficulty thinking and writing simultaneously hasn't gone away, and he still has the coordination problems.

The upshot is that his typing speed is slower than most people's handwriting speed, especially when not copy-typing, and he struggles to remember the plan for the rest of the paragraph as he types / writes. So, its all a bit inefficient. His verbal answers are much fuller than his written answers which can be very terse.

It was frustrating for him at primary school, until the diagnosis when he was 10, especially as the year 6 class teacher / senco decided that he must just be lazy when he writes.

mmzz Thanks for info. Overlaps a lot with dyspraxia then which my DD1 has. She could type well but her brain stops when holding a pen and she massively struggles to plan and organise thoughts from her brain. I presume he's not permitted a Dictaphone / audio scribe type thing?

@TeenTimesTwo I've never looked into using a dictaphone, to be honest. He's really able at maths and enjoys it, so everyone has always assumed that he'd focus on the numeric stuff for A level and beyond. I knew he liked history and, until recently, geography too, but he's so good at maths that they always just seemed like something to do to get the Ebacc.

We never really thought it through until last night, when we had to have the what-if he doesn't get the grades he needs for the super selective conversation, that it became apparent that DS much prefers his second choice to be history at his current school than another two years of physics with his current physics teacher.

Teachers make such a difference. DH and I were talking about the subjects we enjoyed at DS's age, and we both realised that we only did really well in subjects where we liked the teacher.

Any chance of a scribe mmzz? One of my own students has one & the scribes handwriting sometimes leaves a lot to be desired!

The school were deeply unenthusiastic about providing a scribe for the mocks when we thought he'd broken his wrist. So unenthusiastic that they wanted him to write left handed instead, even in the subjects that he uses a pen for.

Last night I was saying to DS: what are you going to do with A levels in maths, further maths, economics and history? I can't see you in the arts faculty at university so you would have gone to a whole lot of trouble to get a history A level, maybe settled for a lower grade than you could have got doing something more logical, and then you won't be able to use it."
That was the argument that cinched it. I'm feeling a bit guilty today though.