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A-level mocks a complete failure

chucklepie

Hello,

My son has HFA. For this he receives additional time in exams to read the papers.

On finishing GCSE's he got mostly A and B grades. However, he's finding the mock-exams at A-level grade difficult in that on his latest he got a U. 

The problem is he fully understands the subject (and his other subjects) and probably knows more about it than the others but he simply cannot infer from the questions what they want him to say (he doesn't take things literally like answering 'yes' to questions requiring a full answer, just fails to pick out what is being inferred).

It seems the move to A-level is exaggerating this greatly.

It's really quite sad that someone who clearly fully understanding the entire topic to a high level will fail completely due to this.

Is there anything that can be done, e.g. (I doubt it but) is there a way exam questions can be altered to be more specific, or are there any books available where I/he can read to attempt to improve his ability to interpret questions, etc. ?

Thanks.

Parents

  • Thanks for the reply.

    It's not the following the neurotypical approach that is the problem as I'm sure he can do that, it's actually more simple than that - just understanding what the questions are asking of him, i.e. where do I go or what can I do to get him taught to interpret questions? is it a case of going through as many mock exams as I can (not that he'd let me anyway....) so he can spot question types? are there any books by the NAS to help? etc

     

     

  • in reply to chucklepie

    For me it was as simple as doing a mock exam question ever week at lunch time  By the end of it I was using 10 minutes to focus on the question with a spider diagram to organise what I'd pen ... It was then I realised it was sort of a game whereby I had to regurgitate and organise a clever set of answers regardless of the veracity... without the rote training of a mock exam one a week I wouldn't have got into the writing essay mindset .... The frequent  feedback stopped me going off at a tangent ... exam questions then became less stress full. I say less because I'm always stressed! 

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  • in reply to chucklepie

    For me it was as simple as doing a mock exam question ever week at lunch time  By the end of it I was using 10 minutes to focus on the question with a spider diagram to organise what I'd pen ... It was then I realised it was sort of a game whereby I had to regurgitate and organise a clever set of answers regardless of the veracity... without the rote training of a mock exam one a week I wouldn't have got into the writing essay mindset .... The frequent  feedback stopped me going off at a tangent ... exam questions then became less stress full. I say less because I'm always stressed! 

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