Thursday, September 27, 2012

O Levels

JY wanted to enroll into a college and found out that she needed 5 O Level/SPM passes as a prerequisite.
A roadblock! I do so love roadblocks. Makes us stop and think.
JY is at a crossroad now.
She wants to explore her creative side and yet she wants to feed her intellectual mind. She enjoys reading History and Biology as much as working with paints and brushes.
Would having an OLevel cert open up more possibilities for her?
So I asked her "Want to take up the OLevel challenge?"
She said "Why not!"

So the stage was set... next course of action was to get information
1, British Council
There are 2 OLevel exams: IGSCE or GCSE?
As we are not in UK, we have to sit for IGSCE. It costs RM740 per subject and Art is an exorbitant  RM2060

2. Free Exam Papers
 Took a look at what's in store for JY. We had fun attempting the Art paper and lots of laughs with Agriculture paper especially the one on why pants must not be stuffed into rubber boots. It was an eye opener for JY as she couldn't fathom Art being an exam paper and was intrigued at how it was graded.

Next, to shortlist the subjects she wanted to sit for.
Language:
Besides English, she surprised me by saying she would be taking German as well. German? Since when? Well, according to her she was inspired by Tokio Hotel and LaFee as well as makeup artists who narrate in German and Polish. Dankeschön, YouTube!
She has started teaching the boys German too. As she wants someone she can communicate in German with. So from now on she will be speaking to Meme in German.
Today's lesson was numbers 1-100...eins zwei drei......

Sciences:
She was always into Horrible Science and reading a biology textbook we bought on MVDoulus (the floating bookshop) so Biology was a natural choice. I am trying to coerce her into taking Chemistry.

Maths:
She dislikes Maths. But while University Bookstore in Sec14, I showed her an example of a Maths problem and she couldn't beleive it was THAT simple! She has had an imagined fear of mathematics all along. Now to get her to conquer it.
I am trying hard to persuade her that Add Maths is an even nicer subject :) I loved Add Maths, I loved the simplicity and beauty of it and how everything works out in the end.

Art::
Art is an exam!!! Art can be graded?!! That was her initial reaction. Her father is more than happy to coach her in this subject.

English Literature:
Still thinking about this one.

JY has 1 year to prepare for the exam. The countdown begins.......

6 comments:

Wei Yun said...

Thanks for this post. I love the fact that JY faces this new journey with such enthusiasm and eagerness. This speaks volume of the learning spirit that's instilled in her, an attitude that I hope to instill in my children too - that learning is fun and it's natural. It's not segmented and not a chore as how schools have conditioned it to be. All the best to JY :)

Rebekah said...

Hi! I'm a a bit of an unschooler too, and I'm taking O levels this year, with British Council. I'm take GCE - one RM610 per subject. I'm blogging about it at http://asianstudyhome.blogspot.com/

The history is pretty fantastic. It is actually quite fun to study for O Levels on one's own using online resources and textbooks.

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