If your dc is bright & academic

[WindSweptCat]

..and if they achieved hight grades at GCSE, how did they manage to this? DS who did very well until including year 7 is having a slump and no longer achieving those top grades, he so readily did until he was about 12.

If you have an academic high flyer, what are they doing other than being naturally bright? How do they study? What are their routines? DC is extremely capable but doesn't seem to know how to do his best. He was set 1 in all topics in year 7 and is now set 2/3. This is a state school where there is some low level distraction during lessons. Yesterday. we talked about his report and he was sad he didn't do as well as usual. However he also said he had to study for a French test today and ended up not doing any revision and feeling bad and guilty at the end of the day. Is this normal? He enjoys going to school, has friends and is generally well behaved. Just quite unfocused and more disengaged than he has ever been. I'm really confused.

He doesn't get on with flash cards. I think he's been also distracted by his phone, watching YouTube instead of revising. It's so sad, he's very capable but not meeting his potential. He's going into year 10 and it's a worry.

So, if your dc' got top grades, what did they do to achieve this?

Adding on, that being a high flyer gets progressively harder the further you go in education. Being bright just means you can coast for longer, but eventually even the brightest of the brightest will need to work hard and consistently to pass. No one has got a doctorate just from being naturally bright.

Is he one of the oldest in the academic year? I found these pupils at the primary stage flew through with their age advantage and teacher approval which sometimes means that they gain confidence and were given extra opportunities to take part in enrichment opportunities. Not naturally more intelligent than the August babies but enjoying that extra year of development which is massive in the primary years.
By year 8 the age difference seems to even out a bit more and the older ones won't be able to rely on the extra months they have, allowing younger pupils to find their stride and positions in the year.
Just a theory.....

IME, y9/y10 is where the hard-workers surpass the naturally gifted as you just can't remember content covered in September when they sit whatever exam in July with the detail which is now required at GCSE level. For maths - maths genie and gcse maths tutor. Science - cognito and free science lessons. To be blunt, no one is going to care that he was a good student in KS2/KS3 if he doesn't put the effort in when it actually matters.

I don't like this idea, but my dad imposed it with my younger sister (i then asked for my a levels which were the same year, yes to that but he wouldn't backdate to my gcses!).

Bribery. 25 quid per a grade, so you could do that for grades 8 or 9. I negotiated 50 per a for a level. Haha dad as I phoned him on results day. But it did focus her mind a bit.

Mine was very self motivated and revised most days for about a year and he got majority 9’s with some 8’s and one 7.He did lots of past papers. I’m not sure it’s great for your mental health to work like that for what it’s worth!

No one has got a doctorate just from being naturally bright.

I understand what you are saying but I would say being super bright comes into its own the further you go and is way more useful for a doctorate than a GCSE. GCSEs and A levels are just about learning exam marking schemes not creative thought. In comparison doctorates aren't tested by written exam and as long as you can argue your viewpoint in the viva you're fine.

? I beg to differ. Your thesis is a type of written examination of your ability to do rigourous facts based research. That’s why you have to orally defend it.

Just being able to think creatively and argue a viewpoint isn’t enough, I can argue all day with you that the moon is an alien space ship observing us as a “creative thinker” but arguing that creative viewpoint is not going to get me my PhD in astrophysics.

GCSEs and A levels are learning what others before you have discovered. Phd is pushing the boundary of discovery forward.

Creative thinking is nice but not necessary unless your PhD is in poetry or some other fluffy subject.

You have to be bright and sufficiently organised and hard working to do the research and write a thesis. You made it sound a bit llike you can just turn up for a viva with a bright idea and wing it, which I'm sure can't have been your intent!

Creative thinking is nice but not necessary unless your PhD is in poetry or some other fluffy subject.

Mind you, good scientific ones can involve genuinely creative thinking - it's a bit harder when it has to be in the context of reality.

Thank you. They did make it seem like that

Definitely. Creative thinking can be beneficial/nice in all subjects so long as it is reality based, but it’s only absolutely necessary in the fluffy humanities.

If he is in set 3/4 do you know exactly what this means? So, sometimes in bigger secondary schools, they split the year in 2 so there are 2 set 1s, 2 set 2s, 2 set 3s and 4s.

This means if he is in set 3 he may be (well) below the average of the year. He may well not be covering the same difficulty of work as the higher sets and if he is in a class with poor discipline and /or he is not trying himself he will be missing a lot of the foundation work for GCSEs. This is particularly the case for subjects where you are building on a previous year's work eg Maths, Modern Languages.

You quote what seem to be high marks, but if these are in a low set, it may be lulling you in a false sense of security. 60% in set 3 is not at all the same as 60% in set 1 as the work may be considerably easier.

Maybe you need to supervise his homework ie be physically in the same room as him, check what exactly he has to do/learn, go through it with him and test him on it until he has mastered it. ( You will learn lot too! ) It is important that he moves up sets before GCSE. If he isn't doing homework/ paying attention in class / revising, he will fall further and further behind.

If he hasn't any homework to do ( this will be his first ploy) then you ask him to get out the books for the different classes he has had that day and go through the class work with him and then test him. It may be in a text book or just what he has written in his exercise book. My daughter and I used to do 2-3 hours a night minimum.( It can be presented as you asking him to 'explain it' to you rather than you telling him to learn it.) You have to be cheery and interested for it to work.

I studied 3 languages so you can imagine the amount of rote learning involved.
You should not just be leaving it up to him. So, eg, if he has a list of 20 words or phrases to learn you go through it with him, noting the genders, the tricky bits of spelling, then cover up the English and ask him to tell you the meaning of the French words. Repeat until he's perfect (orally).

Then, the more difficult bit, cover up the French and ask him to remember it when looking at the English (again orally). This may take 5 or more times.
Finally do the same but ask him to write down first the English meaning when he looks at the French word, then ( more difficult) write the French words when you provide the English.

When he can do this with no mistakes he's finished.

A similar approach to learning any subject is necessary so eg, breaking it down into small sections and trying to write it down from memory but you will need to start off doing it with him until is second nature for him to learn it.

Yes. Years ago Manchester Grammar used to give extra marks to boys sitting their ( very difficult) entrance exam according to how much younger they were. They reckoned the youngest children needed until about 14/15 before their disadvantage disappeared.

Age wise he's right in the middle, February.

Tutoring. I have much younger lad (11) and he behaves like a monkey when it comes to doing some learning with me or self study. I pay pretty girls (students)£15-£20 per hour and that does the magic as he is trying his best to impress them. He has 4 h maths per week, one hour of Computer science, two French. He wants to be an IT specialist.

No matter what age, tutoring with a bit older does wonders.

Years ago Manchester Grammar used to give extra marks to boys sitting their ( very difficult) entrance exam according to how much younger they were. They reckoned the youngest children needed until about 14/15 before their disadvantage disappeared.

I don't know if they still do, but afaik all 11+ exams used to be age-adjusted. DM was a primary teacher, she used to get me to work out the adjusted scores on practice papers for her.
But that doesn't really seem to be the issue here, though general maturity of attitude may well be part of it.

11+ is still age-adjusted.

My middle, who is very bright, struggled to give his working out in science and maths and would lose marks. He could get the right answer cos he is bright, but it took time for it to click that he needed to be strategic and answer the midrange questions showing the method rather than racing to the end to do the hard ones and just give answers.

Thanks, lots of food for thought, very helpful. Do many successful students revise in an ongoing way, throughout the term / school year? How about the holidays? If yes how? @ElizaMulvil explained it well, it would be helpful to hear about more approaches.

We'll consider tutoring.

My DD17 works really hard but also loves learning.Is ambitious and wants to get there.She reads all the time.She takes an extra a level for the fun of it.Her grades are exceptional but at risk of burnout at times
My also very bright DD15 started slipping in year 9 when she couldn't get away with it anymore, is on her phone too much and will probably panic in year 11 and cram to scrape through.She failed 2 mocks which she was predicted 8s in though!A science tutor has really helped her not fail that.She has ADD though so 1:1 has been great for her

Mine used to study in the holidays and through the school year, not just in the lead up to exams. He was always finished for 8pm though, and used to relax by watching a film/gaming etc.

School doesn't show them how to revise or what good study skills are and so he hasn't got a goal IYSWIM. He wants good grades, likes to do thorough work but does not know what he needs to do to get the top grades, which he did until mid year 8.

I would arrange to speak to his form tutor or Head of Year, or Head of House or however they work it in his school, and tell them this.

It is quite common with dc who are naturally bright, and always 'got it' without having to work, and are lucky enough to have good memories and a natural ability, to then get stuck as they get older, as they have never learned how to work.

Tell the school this, and ask them how you can help him.

The school system is set up like this. It's very cyclical. There will be smaller pieces of work (spanning say 4-6 weeks) and then there is an "end of module" test. For GCSE (and most definitely for A Level) it's a really good idea to get into the habit of revising each module thoroughly when it completes, checking that all material is understood and creating revision notes (in whatever format suits the individual student). School will probably support this approach by setting revision as homework.

By the time you get to GCSE you will have been through at least 4 or 5 lots of revision for everything and it should be ingrained, and can spend the latter periods of revision honing exam technique and focusing on areas of difficulty rather than trying to remember what you did at the start of Year 10.

Subjects with coursework are a bit more complex, but again it's really sensible to work at it in small increments as you go along rather than a mad panic at the end (especially for Art).

I'd focus on getting him engaged, focused and motivated.

Really focus on getting him exposed to future opportunities and next steps, open lectures at local unis, family lectures at the Royal Institute are year round and often streamed or on youtube, Science festivals, Techathons, all of these things will help him see how applicable what he is currently learning is and keep him engaged.

DD is the same age as your DS, she is very bright but also autistic.
She does overlearning for key subjects she likes or are core (English, Maths, science, computer science, geography) so will pre read the English texts and analyse them making notes in the margins and add to those notes from videos like Thug Notes and Spark Notes, will pre watch revision content or do BBC bitesize / Seneca on the topic before covering it at school, she finds them she can just ask the teacher about any misconceptions she has and can delve deeper into the subject.
She built herself a comprehensive spreadsheet for revision with each topic per subject and various revision techniques that work for her along the top so she could tick them off and keep track. She largely learns from YouTube videos (Sean Donnelly if taking AQA science) makes comprehensive notes, a few weeks later turns it into a mind map and then a few weeks later into flash cards. Then she does a past paper and goes through and marks it and looks at the examiners report to see where people go wrong as its exam questions she struggles with not the knowledge.

However, all of the above was off her own back, she enjoys it. I used to teach and am a big fan of flipped learning so introduced her to overlearning and pre learning and it really works for her as the general school environment is stressful so having already covering the content helps deal with tha. I just provide her with the necessary resources and am a study buddy as required. She does not do school set homework and they are ok with that as she does the above and gets excellent grades.

Bright + enthusiasm + hard work is the combination to achieve good results.