Yesterday J's school broke up & he finished at 2.00. I decided to take him into town as he'd got some money he wanted to spend. I didn't realise all the schools in town finished early & one by one they all descended on the town centre - one comprehensive, then another, then the boys' grammar, then the girls' grammar, then the Catholic school then another comprehensive until the place was swarming with teenagers. Anyway J got the DS game he wanted then we went into a cafe & he had an apple juice & chocolate cake & I had a peppermint tea & thought 'This is nice, being here together' but J was only interested in reading the instructions for his game.
Back home I set about trying to access his report which is now on-line. This did take some time. Firstly the stupendously amazing wonderful thing is that this term he has 100% attendance!!! This is brilliant compared to last year when we were on 'special measures' for attendance as he'd had so much time off sick & I'm so thankful his health has been so much better.
Anyway for nearly every subject he got a really good report, even for PE (one of the nice things about his PE teachers is that they're positive about effort), they all used words like 'superb', 'polite', 'enthusiastic', 'hard-working', 'very pleasant' & then I looked at Geography. 'Has made a modest start'... 'needs to look at the subject in detail & not take such a broad-brush' approach'...'could do better'. So what on earth's going on with Geography (pardon the pun)? I decided to email the teacher & ask him, not expecting him to answer until next term but he answered today. I'm not sure if I should think 'how enthusiastic & helpful emailing parents on the first Saturday of the holidays' or 'get a life'. Anyway he gave this long spiel about how he takes a stict approach in order to try & overcome the 'year 8 dip' & he feels the whole class need to 'raise their game' & this approach worked for last year's class & there was a problem in marking the second assessment due to the snow & J actually did better in that one so would have got a higher grade but he thinks he could still do better anyway. I don't know, just have to see how it goes next term but meanwhile he'd better do his Geography homework.
J's Maths teacher said he might put him in for the UK Junior Maths challenge next year. I printed out last year's paper for him, thinking it would keep him amused for the whole holiday but he did it in about an hour & got a reasonable mark I'm still puzzling over the last question. I'll print it in the next blog bit.
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