Making a Study Plan

urbeau

My son has just done 5th year and quite frankly he has not done a lot of work in the year and is well behind. His attitude to the year was complacent from the start and he seemed to think that he could do very little and make up enough ground in 6th year to get himself a good honours leaving which would get him into university.

Anyway, I feel the need now to take matters in hand and try and lead him by the nose to a decent leaving cert (or at least a good foundation for a repeat year after 6th year!). I got a good hons leaving myself and am a college grad but I am pretty much out of practice since my qualifications were in late 70s and early 80s.

I know my sons subject list and thankfully some of them are ones I am familiar with. But, I dont know where to start in terms of tackling them - all I see is syllabi, books, exam papers and nothing that would help me work with my son to develop a plan for each subject.

What I want is to put together a plan which will enable my son to study and catch up. For example, one of his subjects is Construction Studies and for that I would like to put together a list of say 30 - 40 sessions which may be say 1 - 2 hours each which would give him the theory. I would to do this for all of his subjects and use it to drive his work.

Wondering if anybody has done such plans and maybe has them in soft copy. His subjects are Ire, Eng, Maths, Spanish, Engineering, Construction and Geog and if you have anything on any of these that would help.

Otherwise .... I am going to have to bone up on the subjects and do myself!

ajjmk

In regards to Construction Studies, get your son to start planning out his project now! You write the brief yourself, so it can be nearly everything I didnt start my project until waaaay too late in the year, so it was very poor quality! Also, get him to start doing his folder for it too, as with enough work, folders can get very good marks

Mwah

i don't know anyone who did that much in 5th year...even the people who came out with all a's in the mock, so i doubt he is alone. There is also no point in forcing him to study because if someone tried to force me i would get so fed up and just wouldn't bother caring anymore

coughlan08

god i would hate to have a parent like you:p
my parents are a lot more relaxed about the situation and it has worked out for the better,unless your son is going to put in the work on his own accordance then you or no other person will make it better,leave him alone,hes only just done 5th,for gods sake i didnt open a book until about 2 months to the exams and i can safly say i got my 1st choice with ease.

give him a break,give him a kitkat...:p

muffinz

I did absolutley sweet f*ck all in 5th year, because like every other student in the country i though "ah sure its only 5th year!"
i wish my parents had pushed me to study more, because i spent an awful lot of time out/on the internet etc.
if there is study in school sign him up straight away, i never did it and im regretting it! i never told my mum about it so i wouldnt have to go :P ring the school and find out the details for it in august!
but let him have this summer off, send him to a gaeltacht/language school if you want, but dont plonk him down in the scorching sun and tell him to study! he'll resent you for it! my friend was made study during the summer, she missed out on so much because her parents wouldnt let her out as she hadnt done the 2hrs study already
good luck

fairyprincessx

Your son is lucky in that he'll have project work for 3 of his subjects, if he can start working on them in September he could do very well and get up to 75% (for construction) of his overall grade before any theory/written paper.

If you/a relative/a family friend speak Spanish then start doing so with him as it can be easy to get good marks in the oral with plenty of practise and confidence.

However, don't push him too hard either, he'll only rebel. Few people do a lot of work in 5th year, so he's not alone. If his school has supervised evening/weekend study then enroll him in that, I found it to be a life-saver, as there are many distractions at home. Encourage him to make his own timetable, he knows his own limits. He's going to be under huge pressure from teachers and friends who may be doing better than him. Don't add to that stress!

Melissa X

Theres no point pushing,the desire to achieve academic success must be there. You dont force any child to learn anyway,you instead help them develop..
Let him follow his own ambition.
and I wouldnt worry about 5th yr,I didnt work much that year either but I am academic ,I won lots of academic awards at my graduation and nearly made 500 points in my mock.I did of course work hard for the real LC which I have just completed .Ive always had the interest though ,you need that.Encouragment is ok though

The Cool One

Making a study plan for your son and making him stick to it just won't work. I honestly done little to no work in 5th year but I bucked up as soon as I realised the seriousness of the year at hand.

If you insist on putting together a plan for him, take into account that it's a long 9 months. If I was doing as much study last September as I was doing last month, I would've went insane. But as most already said if he's not academically motivated pushing him to become so will only lead to resentment.

irish_man

Well for geography I'd say get exam skills geography and learn 2 to 3 answers every week.
I only got it a few weeks before the exam if I had it earlier I would like to think I would have done way better.
By the end of the year you would have all the answers learnt. Happy days

dan_d

I'm not going to tell you how to make a study plan, because to be honest you'll be fighting every last step of the way if you sit down with him and tell him "here's what you're doing every night".
The best thing you can do for him is imprint on his mind that you already have your exams and qualifications, and it's no skin off your nose how he does....but he'll be opening his results in August next year with all his friends, and he'll feel a hell of a lot better about himself if he does halfway decently. You could also try and get him to understand that nobody is going to do the exam for him. It's him, the desk, and the CAO system, and all he's going to get out of it is what he puts into it.
And no matter what other people might say....the ones who keep saying they're doing nothing are almost always the ones who are studying all the time.
Help him as much as you can, but don't force him. It sounds like his problem his more a lack of maturity than anything else.

Columc

Hi Urbeau, are all his subjects Higher level or is he taking any pass?

Regarding construction studies. Get him a nice T-square and ruler set, some nice penicles a big board and some good sheets of paper. And make him draw everything. I really have to say regards to the actual exam of CS, the drawings are by far the most important part. Get him to do a drawing a day can be small drawings of stairs, roof ect and then get him to do atleast one of the main drawings a week. And get him to hand into his teach to be corrected. this is the most important part, there is no point for him to be drawing out stuff that he has no idea if they are correct or not. Overall there really isnt much drawings needed to be learned as they are all overlapping each other. (stairs, door, window, roof).
Regards to the project. Get him to start researching what he wants to do. The project is a really important part of the overall grade and should not be neglected. The brief I think is the main point of the project. the actual object itself is important, but without a good brief supporting it the examiner cant give much marks. What i did for CS was i done a model fo a house, this was great for various reasons as it helped me with the actualy study and learning of CS and also the amount drawings i done for the brief(to get them perfect) helped me learn the drawings needed for the actual exam.

Geography. Depending on the actual student. This subject is fantastic for them or a pain. When i done Geo I thought it was quite easy to understand, but the writing down and knwoedlge to know for all the items in the papar was quite difficult, I think this exam is down to what student can retain the most infromation and write it down in the exam. The main thing with this exam that i have to emphises is the structure. make sure your son knows the structure of the exam paper. This is extremly important as you dont want to be studying extra peices of information without realyl neededing to. Make him write out sample answers for each question and make him give them to his teacher to correct and perfect. Once he has a sample answer for the exams it is really as easy as just learning it off to a T and just write everything he knows down. Timing is also key to this exam due to with all the writing. If he wants to get a good grade he really should be staying in to the end. So when he is practicing writing out his sample answer get him to time himself.
Regarding to the project. It is important to get it done with quick and easy. Get the information, write out the samp,le and then when everything seems correct put in nice and neatly in the book.

Maths, Higher level maths I find is quite hard if you dont have a good teach. Lucky enough for me my teacher was fantastic and he thought me well and made me understand why and how you do the maths equations instead of just learning the process in how its done and just rinse and repeat. IF he dosent have a strong knwoeldge of the higher level course i would really suggesting going down to Pass. It is extremly easy to get a A! in pass maths and thats 60 points in the bag. Pass maths is literly just doing the exam papers over and over again.

Unfortunaly i havent done anything else that your son has done(i repeated the leveling cert droping rish,english and a european language) I was in the same boat as your son going into 6th year and didnt do much work. Once i repeated, i relised how awful the Leaving Cert is and just decided to put my head down and get it over with.

Out of the adivce i strongly recomand your soon to do all of the exams from now to 10 years ago, over and over and over again. Learn the marking scheme, make sample answers, look at the patrons in the exam papers, learn how the exam papers are broken up. ie in maths paper 2 is XYZ and Paper 1 is ABC quection 1 is X ect ect.

The next major part i think is organisation. If your son isnt orgainse with all his sample answers for the diffrent subjects for the diffrent years for the diffrent question he wont be able to find anything. I always prefer a folder for each exam(2 folders if its 2 papers) with divders sorting the years of the exam.

At the moment I cant think of anything else for general tips other then 1)knwoing exam paper 2)sample answers, and rewriting/learning them(after they are corrected 3)being orgainised.

If I can recall anything ill update this and extremly sorry about the spelling. Once I get home i'll clean it up a bit(Now you know why I droped English )

wayhey

Dan D makes great points, I agree with everything he says. If you want your son to study then it needs to be his idea. If he has a clear goal maybe he'll study more, so maybe you could take him to a careers counsellor privately? From my experience of schools they generally do feck all- you have to go to a private or pay for them, or at least I've had to. If he knows what course/job he'd like then that's half the battle.

"The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teenagers" by Sean Covey (ISBN 978-0-74325-252-2) is a great book for self-motivation. I bought it myself but if I'd gotten it when I was younger I'd be so grateful. I picked it up at the start of 6th Year and it isn't as condescending as you might believe from the title. Just leave it out for him with a kind word of encouragement- if my Mam came at it with me nagging I'd fling it in the corner and never look at it again it's a great book.

www.skoool.ie breaks subjects down nicely by topic but so does the contents pages of most textbooks. Advice-wise I'd tell him to play the points game. I did Honours Maths til just before the Mocks, wasted loads of time doing a subject now worth nothing to me. If you hate it study it is something I heard the other day too :P

But tbh if my parents made out a study plan for me I'd freak out at them because I'd find it really controlling and condescending. Is your son young? If he's going on 17 or 18 I'd just give him some college prospectus books, that visit to the guidance counsellor (maybe have a look at something called the Careers Handbook or something...it's published annually, had a red cover a few years ago and it's great, goes through all jobs with duties, qualities and skills required, salaries, training duration...written with LC students in mind too).

But I didn't do that much study either in 5th Year, just kept on top of homework and in-class exams and I got 485 in the mocks. Realistically you get mountains of homework in 5th Year, there isn't as much time as there is to study in 6th Year. There just isn't because you're doing new material every day. Courses will finish up (I mean what you have to do in a LC subject for the exam) around the mocks in February/March, some will be earlier than that and a few later, but generally the real studying doesn't start til then.

Maybe the Parenting forum would be better than this? Seriously though, be sure your son is behind and the school believe so too. Saw something about summer classes in the Institute in Leeson St. too in a little booklet they had (www.ioe.ie). Don't know what they're like or anything but that might be a start if he's really in a rut.

If you take anything from this though rest assured that some students do work well in 5th Year (i.e. hw, a little study in the run up to class/house exams) but most do very little in terms of full-on study for the Leaving. G'luck with it anyway, I'm sure he'll do grand if his parent is so interested in him, with or without intervention.

Wolfe Tone

If he doesnt want to study he wont. Simple as.

Captain-America

Wait, is this study plan for the Summer?

Aoiferz

To be honest, if my parents had tried to get me to study properly over last summer I would have gone out of my way to do nothing. I barely studied in fifth year and didn't really get serious about these exams until late 6th year but I reckon I did okay

Lawliet

MUSSOLINI wrote: »

If he doesnt want to study he wont. Simple as.

This.

You can make out all the plans you like and even force him to sit at his desk with books in front of him for hours, but if he doesn't want to learn he's just going to stare blankly at the page. You can bring a horse to water and all that.

x in the city

urbeau wrote: »

My son has just done 5th year and quite frankly he has not done a lot of work in the year and is well behind. His attitude to the year was complacent from the start and he seemed to think that he could do very little and make up enough ground in 6th year to get himself a good honours leaving which would get him into university.

Anyway, I feel the need now to take matters in hand and try and lead him by the nose to a decent leaving cert (or at least a good foundation for a repeat year after 6th year!). I got a good hons leaving myself and am a college grad but I am pretty much out of practice since my qualifications were in late 70s and early 80s.

I know my sons subject list and thankfully some of them are ones I am familiar with. But, I dont know where to start in terms of tackling them - all I see is syllabi, books, exam papers and nothing that would help me work with my son to develop a plan for each subject.

What I want is to put together a plan which will enable my son to study and catch up. For example, one of his subjects is Construction Studies and for that I would like to put together a list of say 30 - 40 sessions which may be say 1 - 2 hours each which would give him the theory. I would to do this for all of his subjects and use it to drive his work.

Wondering if anybody has done such plans and maybe has them in soft copy. His subjects are Ire, Eng, Maths, Spanish, Engineering, Construction and Geog and if you have anything on any of these that would help.

Otherwise .... I am going to have to bone up on the subjects and do myself!

similar to my subjects, for construction studies go over all the drawings, eve shutes, chimney stacks or whatever it is they have covered...! my teacher basically told us what to study back then but its not impossible to get a hons A, I did.

geography is the same, go over all the notes! sounds cliche, but answer as many questions as possible and never leave a blank space. also use colourful drawings, a picture tells a thousand words (ie costal erosion)

trust me;)

maths needs homework, practise and more homework, I coverd all past papers and brainwashed myself. I got an A1 in pass. and dropped history to spend time on math.

math is important for uni engineering, so nail it on the head. it needs a good bit of effort

good luck

urbeau

Wow, did not expect to get so many responses. Lot of really helpful advice in here and also some messages which have made me feel a lot better and a bit calmer about the situation.

Those of you who are saying that I should ease off and stop pushing, I feel you are quite right. Actually I did start doing that about a week ago and now my son is coming to me and discussing things more and for the first time seems genuinely interested.

You have given me some great pointers and again thanks so much for taking the time to do that.

urbeau

Columc wrote: »

Hi Urbeau, are all his subjects Higher level or is he taking any pass?

Regarding construction studies. Get him a nice T-square and ruler set, some nice penicles a big board and some good sheets of paper. And make him draw everything. I really have to say regards to the actual exam of CS, the drawings are by far the most important part. Get him to do a drawing a day can be small drawings of stairs, roof ect and then get him to do atleast one of the main drawings a week. And get him to hand into his teach to be corrected. this is the most important part, there is no point for him to be drawing out stuff that he has no idea if they are correct or not. Overall there really isnt much drawings needed to be learned as they are all overlapping each other. (stairs, door, window, roof).
Regards to the project. Get him to start researching what he wants to do. The project is a really important part of the overall grade and should not be neglected. The brief I think is the main point of the project. the actual object itself is important, but without a good brief supporting it the examiner cant give much marks. What i did for CS was i done a model fo a house, this was great for various reasons as it helped me with the actualy study and learning of CS and also the amount drawings i done for the brief(to get them perfect) helped me learn the drawings needed for the actual exam.

Geography. Depending on the actual student. This subject is fantastic for them or a pain. When i done Geo I thought it was quite easy to understand, but the writing down and knwoedlge to know for all the items in the papar was quite difficult, I think this exam is down to what student can retain the most infromation and write it down in the exam. The main thing with this exam that i have to emphises is the structure. make sure your son knows the structure of the exam paper. This is extremly important as you dont want to be studying extra peices of information without realyl neededing to. Make him write out sample answers for each question and make him give them to his teacher to correct and perfect. Once he has a sample answer for the exams it is really as easy as just learning it off to a T and just write everything he knows down. Timing is also key to this exam due to with all the writing. If he wants to get a good grade he really should be staying in to the end. So when he is practicing writing out his sample answer get him to time himself.
Regarding to the project. It is important to get it done with quick and easy. Get the information, write out the samp,le and then when everything seems correct put in nice and neatly in the book.

Maths, Higher level maths I find is quite hard if you dont have a good teach. Lucky enough for me my teacher was fantastic and he thought me well and made me understand why and how you do the maths equations instead of just learning the process in how its done and just rinse and repeat. IF he dosent have a strong knwoeldge of the higher level course i would really suggesting going down to Pass. It is extremly easy to get a A! in pass maths and thats 60 points in the bag. Pass maths is literly just doing the exam papers over and over again.

Unfortunaly i havent done anything else that your son has done(i repeated the leveling cert droping rish,english and a european language) I was in the same boat as your son going into 6th year and didnt do much work. Once i repeated, i relised how awful the Leaving Cert is and just decided to put my head down and get it over with.

Out of the adivce i strongly recomand your soon to do all of the exams from now to 10 years ago, over and over and over again. Learn the marking scheme, make sample answers, look at the patrons in the exam papers, learn how the exam papers are broken up. ie in maths paper 2 is XYZ and Paper 1 is ABC quection 1 is X ect ect.

The next major part i think is organisation. If your son isnt orgainse with all his sample answers for the diffrent subjects for the diffrent years for the diffrent question he wont be able to find anything. I always prefer a folder for each exam(2 folders if its 2 papers) with divders sorting the years of the exam.

At the moment I cant think of anything else for general tips other then 1)knwoing exam paper 2)sample answers, and rewriting/learning them(after they are corrected 3)being orgainised.

If I can recall anything ill update this and extremly sorry about the spelling. Once I get home i'll clean it up a bit(Now you know why I droped English )

He is looking to do pretty much all honours but I am concerned that he may have too much ground to make up and may have to do pass level and then do honours in a repeat year.

Thanks for your response, I will follow your advice on the subjects mentioned and it looks really sound. Much appreciate you taking the time to write such a detailed response.

urbeau

wayhey wrote: »

Dan D makes great points, I agree with everything he says. If you want your son to study then it needs to be his idea. If he has a clear goal maybe he'll study more, so maybe you could take him to a careers counsellor privately? From my experience of schools they generally do feck all- you have to go to a private or pay for them, or at least I've had to. If he knows what course/job he'd like then that's half the battle.

"The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teenagers" by Sean Covey (ISBN 978-0-74325-252-2) is a great book for self-motivation. I bought it myself but if I'd gotten it when I was younger I'd be so grateful. I picked it up at the start of 6th Year and it isn't as condescending as you might believe from the title. Just leave it out for him with a kind word of encouragement- if my Mam came at it with me nagging I'd fling it in the corner and never look at it again it's a great book.

www.skoool.ie breaks subjects down nicely by topic but so does the contents pages of most textbooks. Advice-wise I'd tell him to play the points game. I did Honours Maths til just before the Mocks, wasted loads of time doing a subject now worth nothing to me. If you hate it study it is something I heard the other day too :P

But tbh if my parents made out a study plan for me I'd freak out at them because I'd find it really controlling and condescending. Is your son young? If he's going on 17 or 18 I'd just give him some college prospectus books, that visit to the guidance counsellor (maybe have a look at something called the Careers Handbook or something...it's published annually, had a red cover a few years ago and it's great, goes through all jobs with duties, qualities and skills required, salaries, training duration...written with LC students in mind too).

But I didn't do that much study either in 5th Year, just kept on top of homework and in-class exams and I got 485 in the mocks. Realistically you get mountains of homework in 5th Year, there isn't as much time as there is to study in 6th Year. There just isn't because you're doing new material every day. Courses will finish up (I mean what you have to do in a LC subject for the exam) around the mocks in February/March, some will be earlier than that and a few later, but generally the real studying doesn't start til then.

Maybe the Parenting forum would be better than this? Seriously though, be sure your son is behind and the school believe so too. Saw something about summer classes in the Institute in Leeson St. too in a little booklet they had (www.ioe.ie). Don't know what they're like or anything but that might be a start if he's really in a rut.

If you take anything from this though rest assured that some students do work well in 5th Year (i.e. hw, a little study in the run up to class/house exams) but most do very little in terms of full-on study for the Leaving. G'luck with it anyway, I'm sure he'll do grand if his parent is so interested in him, with or without intervention.

As per the other detailed responses thanks so much for this. Had a quick look at some of the sites you mention and they do look really helpful. I am a regular web user but of course they were unknown to me. Again thanks and much appreciated.

dan_d

urbeau wrote: »

He is looking to do pretty much all honours but I am concerned that he may have too much ground to make up and may have to do pass level and then do honours in a repeat year.

Thanks for your response, I will follow your advice on the subjects mentioned and it looks really sound. Much appreciate you taking the time to write such a detailed response.

Is he concerned that he won't be able to do honours because he has too much ground to make up? Never mind you, what does he think about it?

Has he done summer exams and how were his results? Did he fail everything abysmally or did he scrape a pass or did he get mostly Cs......depending on this it may be the case that you are worrying too much (as any parent does!!) and he isn't too badly off.

I remember barely passing LC hons maths in 5th year exams and telling my teacher in 6th year I though I should drop to pass. To which he said "what for? you're not going anywhere, you're well able".

Now I'm an engineer!!!

The one thing about the points game is that he'd want to be sure what he wants to do. If he decides to drop to say pass maths or irish, he'd want to be damn sure he doesn't want to do anything in the future that he might need them to get into. Make sure he fully understands the implications of dropping to pass in those 2 subjects in particular....I have friends who are several years into the world of work and are now returning to do the hons LC paper in those subjects so they can reapply to college and do other courses to get different jobs.That's not a position you want to find yourself in!!You need to keep your options as open as possible, particularly if you're unsure about what you want to do. Now obviously if he's struggling really badly at them, then pass is the best option, but otherwise he should think long and hard about it.

Good luck with him, he's lucky to have someone who's so willing to help him out. Treat him as a responsible adult, and hopefully that's how he'll respond!

pathway33

urbeau wrote: »

He is looking to do pretty much all honours but I am concerned that he may have too much ground to make up and may have to do pass level and then do honours in a repeat year.

At least one repeat school I know of (Cork College of Commerce) seeks students who have followed the honours course in their first attempt at the leaving cert. I'm sure this does not apply to all repeat schools but something to bear in mind.

pathway33

urbeau wrote: »

Had a quick look at some of the sites you mention and they do look really helpful. I am a regular web user but of course they were unknown to me.

Here's a few more sites that should be useful

www.examinations.ie contains past papers, marking schemes, chief examiners reports and circulars issued to schools.

www.education.ie has a link on the left of the homepage which leads to all the syllabi

www.qualifax.ie for CAO course choice advice

LouiseZ

I wouldn't be too worried about it to be honest, not many people actually work in 5th year! Next year is what matters, get him on the straight and narrow for September. Draw him up a study plan, but in September not now. It's his last real holiday before the LC so give him a break! It's next year that counts NOT last year, seriously realise that!

Wolfe Tone

urbeau wrote: »

Wow, did not expect to get so many responses. Lot of really helpful advice in here and also some messages which have made me feel a lot better and a bit calmer about the situation.

Those of you who are saying that I should ease off and stop pushing, I feel you are quite right. Actually I did start doing that about a week ago and now my son is coming to me and discussing things more and for the first time seems genuinely interested.

You have given me some great pointers and again thanks so much for taking the time to do that.

The most important thing is not to try and make him study. If my parents were to have tried that with me I would have done zero study. If you have to try to encourage him try to guilt him into doing it. Worked on me!