Year 11 Advice – Preparing for Sixth Form

We aim to make your transition from school to College or Sixth Form successful and whilst you are here, we will work hard to ensure that you have both a happy and effective time with us by preparing you for the next stage in your career.

Advice for Year 11s

We have now created a range of ideas below that will help you to prepare for joining us in September, we hope to add to this over the coming months with more subject-specific advice on how you can best prepare for the course you have in mind at college but meanwhile we know that a key focus for every student should be on you continuing to develop literacy, numeracy and verbal communication.

So, every day you should read something, practise some numerical calculations, and practise your verbal skills – maybe prepare a presentation about your future:

• What course would you like to study?

• What is it that excites you about this course?

• What do you think you will find challenging when studying this course?

Then record yourself delivering the presentation to improve your ability to communicate clearly.

Create a learning diary

It is vital to develop good study habits, and one aspect of this is the way you capture and organise your learning.

For instance, you may wish to use a notepad and pen and make a hard copy of notes. Some people like to build themselves online portfolios, and there are lots of free resources that you could investigate to do this.

Our recommendation is that you use OneNote for your Learning Diary, which is part of the Office 365 suite of software. If you have an Outlook account then OneNote is available to you. It is a digital notebook – some of you may already be using it.

These short video clips give you an introduction to OneNote:

Taking Notes in OneNote

Insert Pictures, Files, Videos

Create More Room in your Notebook
Research your future
Researching your future will help you to choose the right course when you progress to college if you start thinking about what you would like to do afterwards. It might seem a long way off, but the following activities will help you to start to make some plans about your future career path – and more importantly, will help you to understand what you will need to achieve at New City College in order to fulfil your plans. Make notes in your Learning Diary as you go through these activities.

Activity 1 – SACU

SACU is a free online service that has features to help you make the best choice possible when it comes to Higher Education, jobs and apprenticeships. It is designed to help you explore the range of possibilities open to you. Go to the SACU website and follow these steps.

Step 1: Create a SACU account
Step 2: Complete the Spartan Test
Step 3: View the results in either the careers cloud, apprenticeship cloud or subjects cloud
Step 4: Investigate further some of the options shown for you by clicking on them. Note that you can click on your top 10.
Step 5: Add anything of interest to your ‘Bookmarks’

The Spartan Test is a crude tool to determine your interests. It may give you some relevant ideas, but if not then try doing the test again.

Extension tasks: Fully utilise your ‘Research Zone’ in SACU. Add research notes, use the checklist as you complete tasks, create a personal statement using the ‘Personal Statement Builder’ (use this useful link to start you off on your personal statement).

Activity 2 – UCAS or Apprenticeship Search

It might feel a long way off for you, but it will help you to start thinking about your future and understanding the entry requirements. Don’t worry if you don’t know what you want to do yet – use this activity just to get some ideas.

Research possible university courses or apprenticeships using the links below (or maybe both if you are unsure). Find five separate courses or apprenticeships and for each

Browse UCAS
Browse Apprenticeships

Some useful questions to reflect on as you write up your research are:
1. What career do you want to be in when you are 30?
2. What do you want to be doing when you are 23?
3. Do you want (or need) to attend university in order to succeed in this career, or is it better to take an apprenticeship?
4. What course at University do you need to do or what apprenticeship?
5. What grades do you need?
6. What subject are you good at – what is your evidence?
7. What are you good at outside of school – what is your evidence?
Summer Activities for Vocational Courses

If you have applied for a vocational course at one of our campuses, you can complete our subject-specific activities to help you prepare for the start of your course.

We will be adding the activities very soon.