S6 chat thread 2020/21

Hi! How are you getting on with all of your subjects! Also have you got any Higher Modern Studies tips?

I agree!

I normally do the same and stick to what I know, so I understand not taking it. Although for me personally I view Spanish as quite an easy language to pick up so I recommend it to people over French if they want to have a language, it is a lot of fun also!

Ah it’s a long story ahaha but if I do history or sociology I think I would go into teaching and also do translating and interpreting at the side or if I choose politics I’m thinking about going down the international relations path ahah. How about yourself?

Yeah I have heard that it's easy to pick up another language once you're doing one, so maybe I'll do it in the future. Spanish is so widely spoken too so it would be good to be able to speak it!

Oh that sounds really interesting! I'm not sure what field of law exactly I would like to work in yet but I think I would like to be an advocate (way way in the future lol).

I wish there was a way to implement voice over lessons to classes more often. Teachers are always telling me things and I forget like 5 minutes later what they said There's a boy who is blind in the year below and he records all his lessons, which I find so cool!!

I got to choose between No et Moi and Le Petit Prince. Both of the books have movies so I watched the trailer for the two of them and decided that if I was going to have to watch one of them on repeat it would be No et Moi. I could tell that Le Petit Prince was going to be easier to study but it felt more childish compared to No et Moi which is more teens/ young adult. Only one person took AH last year as well and she also chose No et Moi, so I'm borrowing the books from her and I was hoping to maybe be able to talk to her about it but the only time I've ever spoken to her was to thank her for the books

I think either Modern Studies or Admin. For French I got work every Wednesday and I was to just read my book, Modern Studies was every Tuesday and Admin was every Monday and Tuesday. So Admin gave work more frequently- twice a week, however Modern Studies although I had a week to complete it the tasks involved much more effort- like watching documentaries, researching and writing my essay. I've barely done anything for French, which is a surprise because it's the only Advanced Higher!

What have you done in Geography so far? And what subject have you been enjoying the most?

Yeah, I also heard that so I decided I would try crash H French this year... lowkey already regretting it ahah.

Thanks! Just have to try narrow it down and decide on a particular field somewhat soon for when we start Uni applications (which is already stressing me out lol) That sounds also really cool! I wish I was more passionate about law as it is something I find rather fun and interesting, although the advocate plan sounds really interesting! Have you participated in the Mock Court programme?

Hi!

I think this page is really cool as a means to meet other S6 pupils! I’m studying H French, H photography, AH Modern Studies and AH Spanish this year (if anyone is the same or has done any and wants to chat )

I’m not 100% sure what I would like to study at university but I’m thinking about politics, history or sociology but either way it will be with Spanish lol. I also thought about law, but after a while I decided I’m not sure I would be suited for it.

Hi I'm taking Advanced Higher French and I'm crashing Higher Modern Studies and Higher Admin, as well as doing Hospitality in College. I've also signed up for my school's Hospitality Team- which is planning and organising school events (which tbh probably won't even happen)

ahaha well crashing the subject was the part that put me off

yeah I can imagine! It was stressing me out not knowing at all what I wanted to do even through 5th year lol. It seems you're studying quite a good range of subjects though which keeps your options open. No I haven't done that actually but I'm having a wee look at it now!

Hi! So far so good, I guess ahah. Honestly not been doing much for most of my subjects, mainly trying to focus on reading my first Spanish book for my portfolio. However, really looking forward to being back at school and getting into my subjects better. How about you?

Sadly, I don't have many tips for H Modern Studies due to the fact I've only done Nat5 in S4 and now crashing AH as I done well in H Sociology/RMPS/History in S5 and was allowed to not do Higher. However, I am well versed in doing essay subjects and when I did Nat5 I managed to achieve highest in my year at school so hopefully the tips I used then and at H level for other subjects helped...

-I would look at my class notes and break it into categories for each paragraph of an essay and use the format of PEEAA+E (the main Point of that paragraph, Explaining it further in detail, give an Example that is relevant to the point and/or explanation, add Analysis or in other words how it is important or something of that form, do a rebuttal or counter-argument for Analysis+ and then finish with an overall opinion or Evaluation of that paragraphs contents) and use a colour code to separate the sections so my notes for revision were clearer.
-I would often then start summarising these using as few words as possible and transfer the now shorter notes onto flashcards (the bigger ones from WHSith, normally 3 for 2 lol) so I could revise the key paragraph contents quickly and effectively. *I started doing this around October time as I found its easier to keep on top of it for each essay instead of rushing to do it all from like February time*
-Past papers are your best friend and doing those when you can on top of classwork/homework and either asking for your teacher to mark it or using the marking schemes help you gauge more of what the marker will be looking for to gain each mark
-Use a paragraph structure that used language that tells the marker what mark you are trying to gain from that sentence/group of sentences as it is indicated in a clearer manner (IE- In evaluation, this (insert opinion or argument given) or (for Analysis) This is important because... or However, this fails to consider... (for Analysis+)
-The source questions are easier due to the fact if you memorise the structure for each, all you have to do is identify the points you need from the sources that you can use to base your answer around. Again, practising these as much as possible makes the final exam easier as they don't tend to differ much, only the actaul content does but if you build the skills they become very easily navigated.

Sorry I can't be as much help as someone who has actually done H Modern Studies, but I hope these general tips help nonetheless (or maybe help anyone else who is a Humanities essay subject fanatic like myself)

Exactly! If feel if lessons were recorded then it would be quite a good way to go over stuff if you are unsure about something (or it would be easy to catch up if you were off also).

ahaha seems like a smart decision to choose No et Moi since you know the person that did it last year! We just were told that Le Petit Prince was what we were doing but I like it so far. It's such a cute wee book lol

Yeah I got given loads of stuff for French for some reason but I still had to do a fair bit for my other subjects. In Geography it is quite portfolio-heavy do we have to do this dissertation about a geographical issue where you have to look at different opinions on it, summarise them and critique the sources. So we just focused on that and were given an article that we had to do different tasks on each week. We also did a bit of exam skills work however at AH there isn't really any content to learn it's more about remembering what you've learnt at Higher and applying it to the questions. I think I have probably been enjoying Geography the most but I do enjoy all my subjects. That's the good thing about getting to this stage of school lol

If you need help with Admin then message me and I’ll help you if you want to.

How did you find higher Spanish? I will be doing it this year.

What is your Spanish book about? Before the holidays I didn't get that much work either, I had a week to do my different tasks. I have realised that my work ethic when trying to do subjects at home is pretty much non existent and I left all my work to the very last minute I'm most excited to go back to French because that class is so much fun! I will be the only one doing it at my level but my teacher is just the sweetest most kindest person ever and we do Cake Thursday every week. Which probably isn't the greatest idea because I've been eating soooo much during lockdown
Well done for achieving the highest grade and thank you so much for the tips!! I've been thinking that I might try the Mock Court Case this year if my school does it again, a girl in my year got to go Poland (I think?) to represent our school because one of our teams got really far. I don't necessarily want to work in court but I feel it could be a fun experience that I could learn a lot from.

Yeah honestly didn't want to crash a subject like a language or that but here we are. Luckily I have a few friends who have done Higher and one doing AH so I will hopefully get some help from them (and if anyone here has tips ahah)

Honestly, I really recommend doing the Mock Court project. I'm sure it runs in like 5 different locations within Scotland, the one my school participated in was like 30-40mins away so we got a train to the lectures every week but it was such a fun experience! I was a witness for the first year I participated (S4) and then was a solicitor last year and as you have lectures weekly with like post-grad students who are interning or I'm sure some were paralegals too, it gives great insight into the profession. I'm not entirely sure if it will run this year due to everything that has been happening but if it does, I recommend talking to a Modern Studies teacher at your school to sign up!

It would be a great tool for revising for prelims and exams! Who knows, maybe I'll start recording my lessons It's good that we have us doing AH French here but we also have the Spanish perspective! Now we can all cry about our work together in our different languages @emmajane037 . The one thing I'm most stressing about is the talking exam... I'm pretty sure we have to do 20 minutes worth? I was struggling to remember my 10 minutes in Higher nevermind doubling it! Do you know what you're going to do your dissertation on yet?

My first Spanish portfolio book that my teacher assigned is "Réquiem por un campesino Español", and so far I have gauged that it's about a Priest reminiscing about a guy called Paco's life as he died at 26 (I believe? I can't remember exactly ahah) during the Spanish civil war. It seems rather strange if I'm honest, but then again I am yet to finish it as I am the same, my motivation and work ethic has been virtually nonexistent since like April. Honestly, language classes always seem to get so much hate but I don't understand why! They are some of the best laughs I have had at school. Ahah, me too! Boredom eating has not been good for me, but hopefully, we will return to some normality in a few weeks! I have a friend doing AH French and she is the only one at our school too, I don't think it is that popular which is a shame as it is always fun and helpful to have at least one other person to work with.

Honestly, could not recommend the Mock Court case project enough! It gives such great insight into the profession, and as much as I was a soliciting role last year whilst not really wanting to do Law as a profession anymore, it still helped me build my confidence and communication skills etc. It also is just an overall fun experience to participate in.

Yeah it would... I might start doing that too
ikr! multilingual group we are But yeah, 20 minutes is longggg! I think I'm going to have to start memorising my answers really early lol.
Do you mean for English?

It sounds good! I know, everyone in my school is so against languages- they''re pretty narrow minded Especially when it comes to spanish, there was 15 people in my Higher French last year and there was only 1 Higher Spanish which is such a shame!! You're right, languages are the funniest classes For birthday's we'd get balloons and have parties! Once when our teacher was off sick we didn't get any cover so the boys just put trainspotting on. It was "interesting" to say the least.... Today I was jogging around the living room to get back into shape before school, didn't seem to do much

My friend did it last year and her team won at something, I don't know exactly what? But she was always talking about how fun it was, but also how she was doing most of the work :/ What did you have to do for the soliciting role and what are the other roles?

I'm enjoying Admin quite a lot this year- it's not been that difficult to crash. I like doing the practical like letters and keeping track of minutes, and the theory is pretty much like Business Management. How did you find Admin when you did it?

Hi! So I have done Spanish since S3, so I had a decent basis of having done Nat5 (I think I got something like 93% in the exam) This being said, Spanish was one of the few subjects I felt a jump in from Nat5 to Higher, mainly in the writing aspect. I'm not sure if you have said previously about doing Nat5? But either way, I can hopefully give some advice/tips on how I coped (as believe me, I didn't think I would at Higher ahah)

-I found reading not too bad. This was because it's only the one text vs the 3 at Nat5, and whilst the difficulty is more intense I found it pretty much the same as it was a continuous text it provided more context that helped me find and at some points guess the answers. As at Higher you do a translation as part of reading too, this does make this paper a bit more difficult. This is because it has to be pretty much exact, the marking scheme only allows slight variations. However, it does help as the marks are split up into 5 sections within- so if you get the first section of the translation wrong, but the others more accurate, you can still gain 8/10 if that makes sense?
-Listening... honestly just keeping up with reading vocab and practising past papers is my best advice as I normally only got like 60-70% on average for each listening as, if I'm honest, I would have to end up playing a guessing game based off of the answers I did get and any other context I picked up
-I hate to say it but grammar... I actively avoided grammar at Nat5 (lol) and managed to do decent, however- at Higher I really had to try focus on this and especially the imperfect/preterite tense when it came to writing. It's easier said than done, but once you start picking it up on how to form verbs in the past tenses, it helps you in all aspects a tonne!
-For writing, I kinda struggled as I would try to challenge myself to write what I wanted to write instead of what I knew how to write, which isn't always a great idea. My best tip is to have a basic structre for each context your school chooses to teach (IE- Society, Learning, Friends and Family etc) as usually, you can get away with the same sentence structures and just change the contents to fit the question. This helps your writing flow better which can boost your mark up, even if accuracy sometimes lacks. But also try to vary your language to try to make it less monotonous, as this also increases your chance of landing a higher mark.
-For speaking, I always did the best in this aspect. But honestly, all I would do is use the speaking booklet the school provides with the questions you will be asked and write sophisticated answers that were a good length but not too confusing to memorise, and then I would get them marked and fixed until they were 100% accurate and then write the final answers on flashcards and memorised them from there. At Higher, you can be asked some introductory questions that aren't planned or some that slightly vary to the ones in the book- however, as long as you have memorised answered to the planned questions, you can normally wing them and alter them to fit a slightly different angle of question.

Honestly, I loved Higher Spanish and can't wait to continue with AH (pending results day and if I meet my A target ahah) I would say just try and be consistent and it will come to you a lot easier and quicker. I hope the above tips help, but if you have any specific questions let me know and I'll try my best to help!