GCSE '18s (20) - half term beckons!

My son would still sometimes hold my hand in public up to the age of 13 - he is NT and well adjusted, just a tactile boy. I was torn between being grateful for it (it stops soon enough) and wondering how it might 'look' to his peers so I started to offer my arm instead

DD comes home in her frees and works at home. She has a good timetable with lessons, when they occur, clustered together - so for example she finishes at 12 on Mondays and doesn't start until 12.30ish (I think) on Fridays. She also finishes by 1.30 ish on a Tuesday

I have to laugh when I see DS2's face when he sees a year 7 being dropped off in the morning.
The mother got out of the car in front of us this morning and we had to wait until she was done. She opened the boot, got out the school bag and her (year 7) DS put it on. Then tucked his water bottle into his bag. Then she kissed her Ds on the cheek and they had a hug before she waved him off and got back into her car.
Sitting 10 ft behind them, DS sat beside me watching. He looked slightly appalled that the mother was getting out of the car, but when she kissed her child in public, DS was physically squirming with embarrassment for the boy!
Finally when it was over, and I could roll forward to let DS out, all he said was "Year 7" like that explained it all!

Time goes quicker and quicker - also seems like only yesterday he was a tiny shy blond mite going into year 7.

DS is helping out at the sixth form open evening tonight in the music department. It seems like only yesterday that he was visiting as a Y11!

DD has found that if you got a 7 for maths you are probably having to work your socks off to keep up. If you got an 8, you can probably keep pace with some new challenges thrown in for good measure. If you got a 9, you are likely to be suffering a crisis of confidence because there is definitely someone better than you in your class who spent the whole summer at a Harvard summer school or similar and they've stolen your place in the pecking order of geeks!

I don't get a lot of info either. In fact, there's a poster over in studentroom who blogs about day to day life in the school and its by reading those posts that i find out what they are doing. Its very kind of them... though I don't think they mean to blog for my benefit!

If left to DS, he may as well disappear into a black hole each morning for all that he reveals to DH and me.

DS did tell me his exam results today though. the days of the constant 100% scores seem to be over but he seems to be doing ok.

(Maybe I can stop worrying for a bit??)

Oratory1 yes, exactly! I can't imagine ever wanting to tell DS not to socialise so much!

A child who volunteers information....I can only dream of such riches!

even...

Just to be clear, I don’t make DS account to me for what he does in his frees grin. He volunteered the information that he’d rather use them for working than cut further into his social life at weekends!

I wonder if it's because homework for maths is very task orientated, whereas background reading for English & history is more fluid? You can see whether or not you have completed 2 sheets of maths questions, whereas analysing someone's actions in the French revolution can take as much or as little time as you wish.

DD has 5 structured hours per subject each week. She says she has some maths to do this evening & she did spend most of yesterday working, but that could be because she was terrified that I would bring up her season ticket again! I have no idea what she does in her free periods. I think she is writing up notes from her lessons and playing tennis, but I could be m8staken about the notes.

Whistl great news if your ds is socialising in some if his frees. You must be delighted at that - and at this stage in new school that’s probably more important than extra study.

DD2 has gone down with ‘freshers flu’ so missing lectures 😡😡. It wasn’t helped by a weeken socialising and partying with flat mates and bf visiting from home but I can’t help thinking she s better off missing lectures (which are all on line anyway) than missing out on getting out and about in these first couple of weeks when connections are made

Oh that’s organised bluebelle and very conscientious.

Ds is another one that gets all his homework done in his frees, although I don't think they are given that much. Then he is spending 2 hours each night going through the text books for the sciences and making his flash cards which he will revise from.

doing homework not redoing homework (but he gets some stuff to re-do too which adds to the burden).

DS gets a few frees, and he uses them 50/50 for redoing homework and socialising. He still has a couple of hours work per evening and about six hours at the weekend, and that's about to increase when he starts doing project work.

He's out of the house either at school or travelling to and from there for 9 1/2 hours a day, and then there is the two hours of homework each evening, so its a lot more than the secondary school was giving him this time last year, but that's life, surely?

In two years time, he'll be at university and in 5 years, he'll be starting work and at each stage the amount of hours spent working goes up. Is that not right?

Yep- lots of homework here too. Mind you DD declared English as being the best subject EVER. She was laying in bed at the time (3pm) reading Tess.

....less keen on the 3 hours she spent on Sunday writing the essay though

DS3 isn't doing much as far as I can tell, but he doesn't have frees, only supervised study periods so hopefully he's getting some work done then. There's a VLE that homework is set on, and he doesn't seem to be behind on anything.

DS also only doing set work - but I think the difference this year is he will follow up and get help if he doesn't understand anything and I think teachers will be more on top of it (approx. 8 in each class). He spent a lot of time drifting in years 9 and 10.

I have no idea what DS does in his free periods...

Dd had minimal homework during GCSE's. She's only doing 2 A levels but already she has mentioned having to hand in several essays for English. I don't think she gets any free periods.

DS is making use of his free periods in order to keep the load down a bit at home. He’s not complaining about the amount he’s getting, but then again I think he’s just doing what’s set and no more (so no reading around the subjects as far as I can tell)

I intend to use next week’s parents evening to flush out whether he’s doing enough

He's probably only doing about 8 or 9 hours max a week at the moment. But they do have 6 hours lessons a week for each subject so maybe that helps

Does he have 'free' periods available in the week when he could do some. The girls found if they used those it took the pressure off the weekends and evening.

DS not finding it too bad at the moment, but I don't know if it will ramp up as the year goes on or, as is common with DS, he thinks he's doing ok when he's actually nit doing enough.

Is anyone else's DC finding that they have a lot more homework this year and thinking that they are hard done by because of it?

Ds has 15 hours a week. Some of it is difficult, but mostly there is a just a lot of it.

Honestly i am looking at him and wondering what I did wrong that made him expect that things wouldn't change? Was it not obvious that A levels are harder than GCSEs and require more independent work outside of the classroom?