Welcome to the unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum - for discussing everything CH/Old Blue related. All pupils, parents, families, staff, Old Blues and anyone else related to CH are welcome to browse the boards, register and contribute.
anniexf wrote:Well pinkhebe it's just a matter of saying these interesting things in the right thread! There were some remarks a while ago, maybe before you became a CH Mum, to the effect that parents were having to wade through reams of "reminiscences" (i.e. waffle) which had invaded their dedicated threads. Courtesy, that's all I meant!
Well I enjoy the memories, and am used to threads wandering
What languages are spoken then? This is interesting. Is this children whose mother tongue is something other than english? Foreign origin children, or what?
There are definitely German students and Chinese students so those 2 languages will be spoken (not sure if it is Mandarin or Cantonese that the Chinese students speak).
In our rural comprehensive we have students fluent in Portuguese, Russian, Lithuanian, Spanish and Mandarin - all because they and/or their parents are from those countries. I expect there are plenty of other languages spoken at CH and the languages department will be well set up to cope with the different levels.
I have found that CH is excellent at differentiating and personalizing learning for students.
Ooh - sorry for the confusion - dd said all the classes are taught in sets ( or the same children in the same grouping for the year) but that they are mixed ability except for Maths, where the children are put into sets according to their ability (streamed).
She thinks that the non streamed sets are all jumbled up next year.
Atticus wrote:Ooh - sorry for the confusion - dd said all the classes are taught in sets ( or the same children in the same grouping for the year) but that they are mixed ability except for Maths, where the children are put into sets according to their ability (streamed).
She thinks that the non streamed sets are all jumbled up next year.
At risk of trespassing where I don't belong - see my posting above - we used to be divided into streams ie the whole year was split into A and B stream, the A stream being considered (not necessarily correctly) 'brighter' or more academically inclined than the B stream eg A got to do Latin, Chemistry and Physics, B did German and Biology. Later it became the custom to divide year groups into sets according to their ability for individual subjects - thus a child could be in a higher set for maths and a lower one for French. To my mind this makes far more sense - just because some of us had done well in the 11+ in English and Maths didn't necessarily mean that we were going to be academic all-rounders. In fact for the first year post 11+ CH did not stream us; they took time to discover our abilities first, but then continued to just divide overall into A and B streams. Personally I would have been happier in the B stream. I can remember only one case where someone was transferred from B to A. I always found it difficult to explain to my mother why I was no longer at the top of the form as I had always been in primary school; she didn't seem to grasp the concept that everyone else had also been top in primary school and somebody had to sink to the bottom!
Obviously at Horsham, or any modern comprehensive school, the numbers are far larger and it makes more sense to divide the whole year group into ability sets for each subject, provided that there is flexibility if a child is found to be in an unsuitable set. But what would an old fogey like me know?!
Fjgrogan wrote:
Obviously at Horsham, or any modern comprehensive school, the numbers are far larger and it makes more sense to divide the whole year group into ability sets for each subject, provided that there is flexibility if a child is found to be in an unsuitable set. But what would an old fogey like me know?!
In my day not only were we setted for French and German but the choice between those two languages was based on their assessment of how well the pupil was likely to do at whichever one was chosen. French was regarded as being harder than German.
IMHO (and what is an old fogey like me to know?) pupils should not progress to the next year's syllabus until they have passed an exam demonstrating their full knowledge and understanding of the previous year's teaching.