Finals Week For High School

Posted by Vulnadia on Jan 04, 2010 at 10:01 AM It's finals week in Caddo Parish for all High Schoolers. This is our first foray into finals week at Magnet. Bregon has been studying each & every day of his break (yes the school board is not very considerate when it comes to planning breaks around finals for kids so it eats up christmas break every year or so it would appear for the past few years) and has written his essay for history already. Some of his teachers have given him study guides and essay questions to pick from for his final. He's filled them out, and written that essay and he is trying to get prepared. It's hard to prepare him for something so important when he's never done this before! In fact, this is the first year that school is set up like college basically. How do you explain the full importance of these tests to your child? What is the best way to prepare him? I have one friend who has her child go over & beyond the call of class requirements and has her child study even on weekends regardless of workload for the class. Notes are even formatted differently and required over & beyond the norm. I try to stay on top of my eldest & what is going on as best as I can, but sometimes it's super difficult with everything going on even in just the immediate family responsibility-wise! Does anyone have any tips on how to stay on top of it all and get my eldest prepared for everything? How would you handle all of this? On top of that, there is a HUGE possibility of snow on Thursday in the forcast. Heck, today's snow wasn't even in the forcast & it already stuck in some areas! What are we to do as parents? How do you plan for EVERYTHING that could go wrong to go wrong & not stress out the kiddo who needs to be prepared!!!! thanks! its hard because my eldest is a boy & has adhd...which his algebra teacher swears she cannot tell (a good sign i think)...but he is disorganized as can be poor thing - we have worked & worked & worked on it though-he even had a teacher last year take special care with him because she recognized her own habits in his notebook keeping...he kept everything backwards of sorts...she really helped him out some... but also, he has another fencing tournament this saturday which is really confusing him- he knows that down here nobody trains like they should & none of the kids put in the same amount of time as the kids up north do...& he wants to fix that, but I dont allow him to even train during the week other than his team meets & coach requirements (which are saturdays til 1, mondays,tuesdays & thursday nights) he doesnt understand that he has to balance everything & until i can be positive that he is getting it (high school) & can keep his grades decent enough to grow in both respects, i cant allow him to put in the extra hours there either even though it is how he plans to fund college (he is already being watched/courted by several colleges at 14) & it will most likely be a career choice for him if nothing more than a fall back plan... the snow chances are a big distraction & he had a teacher get all sorts of pissy with them yesterday over the idea that the alternative (should they miss thursday) will be to take all 4 tests in one day & remove that luxury of having 2/day with a half day of school... its not their fault but she stressed them out by saying it...she has a horrible bedside manner even though she means well...the kids always take what she says wrong for some reason- i myself really like her poor dear... but i have him cracking his books each night in increments, his essay is done, the open book test info has been tabbed labeled & organized into his notebook for easy access & he is busily studying- i have been able so far to let him do his monday night meet, & tonight we shall see what happens- he has very maturely stated that he doesnt feel he should make tonight's practice- team practice has been cancelled for this week thankfully (that is m-thursdays after school til 5) so we dont have that distraction as well just the other...i may let him go for an hour if he really seems on top of his game... but if i dont impress upon him that these grades are on his transcript & the importance of them in college apps, i'm afraid he will let his studying get away from him as he did all thruout middle school!!!! i know he will be able to balance it at some point, i just want the foundation laid for him!!!! he had about 5 years of bad study habits instilled upon him from elementary school that had to be undone once he got to middle school & i worry!!!!