Parents evening on Wednesday - help please

[HappySonHappyMum]

My DD is in Yr10 and is struggling with Chemistry at the moment. It is pretty clear that her teacher just doesn't like her that much - she has favourites and my DD isn't one of them. She is not a difficult student is predicted 6s and 7s in her GCSEs and is a prefect and doesn't have issues in any other lessons. I have emailed her and she has assured me the there are 'no issues'. My DD can put aside the way her teacher treats her but the way she teaches is the thing that is really causing the problem. She basically gets the kids to read what they are meant to learn and then copy it down. My DD struggles to retain what she is being taught - this is the real issue. How can I approach this? How can I ask her to try and get the information over in other ways without sounding awful and making things even more difficult in lessons for my DD than they are already??

I would ask how the lessons are taught in class to confirm your DD's account. Or if your DD has friends in the same class ask them how they are taught.

Ds2 is in year 9, they have the chemistry lesson on the board, the teacher talks them through it, they get asked questions, the get to ask questions then things are written down in their books.

As for retaining, what methods work for her? Class should be about understanding what you are taught, flashcards, quizes, mindmaps, notes are about testing your retention. In year 10 she should be making revision cards in a way she can understand and revise from.

I am only a parent with a child who underwent GCSEs last year so I am not in a classroom (well not in secondary) so this is how I see it.

Is this the way science is taught in secondary now? My DS is in Y7 and they do hardly any experiments. I remember every single chemistry lesson from first lesson of first year, we got out the bunsen burners etc and learned through conducting experiments and analysing the results. It all stuck. We remembered it and it made sense because we did it.

There's a ridiculous amount of content to get through in gcse science these days. Ask the school if there's any chance they can set up a sub to mygcsescience, it's a great tool for going over and checking content

Put on one side all issues about whether she and your daughter like each other or not. That should be irrelevant (although I think most kids concentrate better if they feel the teacher likes them).

The issue to discuss at parents' evening is:
"My daughter is finding it very difficult to retain what she's learning. She's not good at just reading and learning, or even learning from writing things down. What can you suggest that might help?"

It could be that some of the difficulty with retaining things is that she's not had enough explanation of why they are as they are. If you can give the teacher specific examples, that's more helpful than saying "she says you don't explain things". Try "she was trying to learn the properties of metals and non-metals, but she didn't understand all the terms and found it hard to relate them to real things".

I wonder if the teacher is not really a chemistry specialist, and so is over-reliant on provided resources. Unfortunately, science teachers tend to be in short supply.

I would also echo Juniper's suggestion of verifying how things are taught, too. Sometimes "she just tells us to read what's on the board and then copy it down" can be what they say when actually there was quite a bit of explanation, but because they don't like the teacher much, they've drifted off and not listened! Even the best students do that sometimes.

I think some of the problem may be that she is in one of top sets. The teacher seems to think that because the kids are 'clever' in this set she does't have to explain as much as she should. @lanthanum I think that this approach might be good - I don't want the teacher to feel I'm attacking her so I will get some examples from my DD to make my point. The teacher suggests pupil led revision sessions during lunch breaks but this is awkward as the students leading the sessions are the favourites that seem to report back to the teacher.

I think some of the problem may be that she is in one of top sets

Quite possibly; DD had this problem in Maths. Nice to have been promoted early on (grammar school, she had joined very late in year 7 and initially been put in a lower set), but by part way through year 10 realised that she wasn't really enjoying, or keeping up with, the lightning speed of the teaching and was more than happy to be 'demoted' again to a slower pace (and a teacher who had a bit more patience. She got a 7, which we were all happy with).

Would BBC Bitesize help? It is differentiated by exam board and syllabus.

Definitely check that your Dds account is accurate.

Are they doing much retrieval of previous lessons? Ie mini quizzes/tests or starter tasks based on the last lessons?

Will have her run through lesson structure again tonight - but she is not the type of girl to make a fuss about nothing. She's focussed and determined and wants to get the best out of her studies. She's got a clear life plan and knows what she wants to achieve - it's actually scary - so I know she's not exaggerating. If she moves set then it will mean that she has to move set in Biology and Physics as well - which she doesn't want as the teaching is fabulous in those classes and she's doing really well.