Struggling Y11 - just need to offload.

[PumpkinPie2016]

I have 3 Y11 classes in total - normally would be more of a shared load but various reasons mean I (as HoD) and a few other experienced staff have had to take the load.

Anyhow, 2 of my groups are grade 1-4 learners. One group is entirely grade 1-3, lots of need including 5 EHCPs and only 1 TA. The other are grade 1-4 but less SEND. Both groups are small.

They are nice kids - I honestly can't complain on that front. They behave and do work in lesson.

I taught the SEND group last year and they are performing well in that they are at or above target but most won't get a 4. The other group are similar.

However, they are struggling to retain basic information - particularly the SEND group. We set learning home work each week and they are supposed to do look, cover, write, check. It appears they have done it, but when they do the quiz, they can't answer so I suspect they are just copying. I have spoken with them about it but to no avail. Beyond that, they do zero revision at home for a whole variety of reasons beyond my control. We offer revision sessions but most don't attend.

I do retrieval do now tasks every lesson and try to repeat questions they get wrong.

I just feel down tonight after another quiz with them unable to answer or even attempt most of 😔 I am honestly doing all I can, but we need to finish the spec (which is massive!) as well. I should be done by Feb half term so will have some time to revise before final exams but it doesn't make up for the lack of revision they do. I obviously want to do the best for them but my god it's hard.

Has anyone found any miracle strategies or can anyone just offer solidarity?

Also a HOD, hums, LPA students are pretty much as you describe. I believe some of this is beyond our control as students are presenting with huge functional memory deficits (sorry, not a nice way to put it, but you know what I mean). Stuff just doesn't stick.

I think you have to work out what absolutely needs to stick, i.e. which basic information they need to retain. Curriculums are bloody huge at the moment, for example, I've just created a question bank for one of my GCSEs and it runs to nearly 1,000 questions. This simply isn't possible for my LPA students. So what can you trim it down to? How much information can you leave out and still have them attempt at least 50-75% of the exam paper?

One thing I've started to do is run big MC quizzes after the mocks, for example, 60 questions per unit. I break those units down, using the exam board spec, into the key topics, and this gives me roughly 20 questions per key topic. Students self mark and I collect the data in the key topic chunks. This gives me a picture of which key topics they're weakest on, as a class, and I direct my revision efforts there. It's basically an expansion of a QLA but grouped by topic.

Our revision sessions aren't 'optional'. You're coming or you're explaining to the principal why you're not there, and you're banned from prom if you keep truanting. Like you, we're also struggling to finish the spec in time, so these after school revision sessions are where I can leverage the data I'm collecting from my MC quizzes.

I don't know what your subject is, I find we often lose out to core when college offers specify English, Maths and Science, the young people often just focus on those so revision time is a hard sell for option subjects.

Basically, though, as a wise man once told me, if you can evidence what you're doing and it's sound, you're not going to 'get into trouble' for your results.

Solidarity.