English Literature - Working at Grade 1 in year 10 - is this ok?

[Lougle]

DD2 had her year 10 mocks in November. Her report came out last week. She's working at level 1 for English Literature (level 3 for English Language).

Nobody has told me (and the teacher is off sick so no email reply) whether this is ok because she'll improve over time and pass, or if it's worrying.

At this stage, all I care about is her getting a 4, so I suppose my question is whether a typical student would improve 3 grades by GCSE exam time from now?

She should improve but it's not usual for a student to progress from working at Grade 1 up to Grade 4 without some serious intervention.

On average students might improve 1-2 grades over a year unless their weakness is due to exam technique in which case more is possible.

We'd say a grade a year, but often kids do pull their socks up after mocks. What grade is she hoping for?

Isn't a 4 in either Language or Lit ok? Which she should achieve given she's at a 3 now in Language.

How hard is she working, honestly? It's hard to know whether she has the potential for dramatic improvement without knowing her.

The teacher should be concerned, and should be in contact with you about it imo - it's a key subject and a big deal if she doesn't pass - but sadly it's been my experience that schools avoid any involvement with parents until it's too late

Language is the important one, as its English Language Grade 4 that some colleges and universities require.

They are telling you now that she is coming out with low grades.

Options for you include:
Find out the course content and pre-read all texts with your daughter so you can discuss and help with homework.
Practice decoding poetry.
Put pressure on her teachers to provide extra support.
She will need to work harder than she has ever done in her life including going to every catch up/homework session run by the department
Private tutor
Move schools
Re-sits in college

It’s really hard because I don’t know if her struggling is to do with sen, absence, school culture, behaviour issues (which in themselves are an indication of struggle).

It won’t just be from Year 10 though - a level one in English indicates issues with organising info, decoding, a lack of complexity in language skills, reading age - which will have its roots far back in time.

I'd say a 1 was pretty low for Y10. How is her English generally? Have you been aware of any issues previously? What grades are her other written subjects - geography/history/RS?

Can you afford a private tutor?

That’s very very low. What’s her reading and writing like? I would encourage her to read and discuss the books/ texts with her. Are the levels equivalent to grades?

The language she may be OK on, but going up three grades in a year from such a low base is a lot less likely. It's not the same as a student going from six to nine. If she has been allowed to get this far at that level, then it would imply that you will need to seek external help for your DD as the school do not seem to be addressing it. If you an possibility afford a tutor, that would probably yield the best improvement.

It's quite unusual to improve from a grade 1 (equivalent, roughly, to the age-related expectations for year 3) to a grade 4. Having said that, it might just be that she has completely got the wrong end of the stick about the paper, or didn't finish it, or was in fact messing about on the day.

There are lots of possible reasons why she might have achieved a low grade that are not necessarily indicating a really significant concern, but I would want to have a serious conversation with your DD about whether she did her best, and if not, why not, but if so, what she is struggling with. You should also have a chat with her teacher to find out their thoughts about what the barriers are. Nationally, only about 5% of students get grade 1 or below, so it is a concern.

BBC Bitesize is an excellent resource for this.

Has she struggled with English in the past? OP we need some context. Grades 1 and 3 are very very low, and even gaining grade 4s (which would seem unlikely) in 18 months time would close many many doors for future opportunities and courses

Sorry I didn't come back earlier. She has ASD, although it took until she was 9 (and 3 schools plus home ed in between schools 2 & 3) for anyone to take me seriously. She was diagnosed at 11.

She got 110 in her English SATs because they realised she'd fail so they taught her to test. They realised she couldn't infer information from text, so they taught her key words to scan the text for, with the associated inference.

Now, at secondary school, every time I have said she's struggling, they've said she's ok. But she can't read a piece of text and pick out what is relevant information. She can't infer from the text.

I was reading an extract with her and I said "the lady is excited about her skiing trip..." and DD2 replied "Well she shouldn't be because she's going to die in a minute". I tried to explain that the examiner would expect her to just approach it as a reader. She said "I am a reader - I've read it, she dies in an avalanche!" So I tried to explain that she needs to ignore that and just look at the bit at the beginning but she pointed out that she knows how it ends and she can't unknow it.

Somehow, she is going to have to learn that it doesn't matter what she knows and what she thinks - if a question is focused on one part of a text, she needs to isolate it. Or at least, if it's asking her to analyse the language, she can't say 'Well it's stupid that she's excited because she's about to die..."

At parents evening the teacher said she was doing ok. Now we've had her report with a working at level 1. She can generally talk quite intelligently but can't get it down on paper.

I have managed to get them to let her use a laptop and have a small room and rest breaks for exams but that's only been put in to play in the last few weeks.

She's doing Lord of the Flies and Jekyll and Hyde as the texts. Lord of the Flies was really hard for her.

When DD did English lit she basically memorized everything on BBC Bitesize. It was especially useful for poetry.

You could teach her to infer by treating it as a kind of sum: put a bit from the text on a post it note and something she knows about that thing from the real world/general knowledge on and other post it note and giving her a third post it for what she works out by adding them together. For example, the woman is skiing and feels a bit scared + people like skiing because of the adrenaline rush = she likes being a bit scared and is excited because it is edgy/frightening.

It is really difficult in English Lang for those who read on the surface, but if she works hard on her writing she may be able to bump up her marks considerably there. For Lit, there's a lot she can do by thorough revision and building her memory of the text and standard interpretations.

If she learns 'go to' effects of different techniques then she could offer reasonable interpretations as long as she thinks about whether an obvious interpretation eg that a metaphor makes you think about item a, by comparing it to item b. We usually think x about item b so if we apply that to item a it means...

Thank you @ElizabethinherGermanGarden that makes sense.

She's come a long way, really. In primary school her teacher started by letting her say everything she wanted to write, scribing it onto a whiteboard, then getting DD2 to copy it. Then she reduced it to writing the key words from what DD2 said on the board, then only the words that were tricky. From there, she moved on to giving DD2 a timer with 5 minutes for each paragraph.

They used preteaching in maths to stop her panicking and shutting down, etc.

From what you're describing in the avalanche it sounds like a problem with theory of mind - which makes sense considering her autism diagnosis.

It doesn't seem to be an academic problem as such - if she managed a 110 for year 6 SATs.

*the avalanche story

@Anyother

From what you're describing in the avalanche it sounds like a problem with theory of mind - which makes sense considering her autism diagnosis.

It doesn't seem to be an academic problem as such - if she managed a 110 for year 6 SATs.

I think she's actually very intelligent but she can't demonstrate it on paper. She is working hard but she's floundering. I'm finding it hard to help her because I'm not in the lesson and she's getting lost in the lesson, then her homework is often 'finish your notes from our lesson'. It's a bit better now she's using the laptop because she can copy a bit faster but I don't think she's actually learning how to analyse the text, just how to copy down what the teacher/class are saying.

If someone could help you work on her theory of mind it would help her a lot in life not just for the GCSE.

I know. I do masses of work on it with her. I constantly explain why people do what they do and why it's expected that they do. It's not easy though.

It's not easy, of course! And if she's 14/15 and still struggling with it - shows how difficult it is for her. I'm sorry you haven't had support from school.

She'll need to be doing a Shakespeare plays as well as the two you mentioned.