Year 11 GCSE Exam Support Thread

Could she ask the English teacher to write her a letter saying what her predicted grade is and that the grade on report is a blip/hard marking and they expect her to meet her target of X?

DD is now worried as she has to take her Y11 report to one of the sixthform interviews. The teachers comments are very positive, but she has a poor grade (well below her predicted grade) for English Lang and she is worried it will put them off - very oversubscribed school

Juggling, DD is wobbling between Eng Lit (see above!) and Art. And possibly Philosophy/RE.
If your DC is good at maths and finds it relatively easy, I would say take it - no essays, no big time-consuming projects

Thanks BTM, calming is definitely the order of the day, I'll get her to try it.

Juggling, has she got any idea what she would like to do ? Also how is her Maths, is she a dead cert for at least an A or ideally A* - it has one of the biggest jumps between GCSE and A Level I have heard.

DD looking at doing Art as that's far more her thing. Big workload I believe.

Sorry, the link doesn't seem to want to work, but if you put in the birdie bit, it has breathing techniques!

Great to see this come up in active convos tonight and some friendly familiar folks also with DC in Y11. Am going to need some hand-holding along with dd I can see by May (yikes!)
Mocks not too bad though some time management lessons to learn about attempting all the questions. Teachers encouraging at parents eve about how they'll be practicing papers to improve on this. Probably need to take on board idea of doing more of this and other exam technique study at home too?
Got mostly B's but targets still hopefully mainly A's
Has just applied to stay on in 6th form doing Biology, Geog, Eng Lit and Maths, though wobbling a bit on whether to do Art instead of Maths.
Any thoughts on any of this very welcome - what do yours want to do in 6th form? What do you think on the Maths/Art dilemma ?

I know you don't want her to fall asleep, but it is calming! [[http://www.byrdie.com/how-to-fall-asleep-fast]]

She won't try hypnotherapy, says it is a load of rubbish. She is receptive to Rescue Remedy so will get some of that. We'll practice deep breathing and I'll reinforce reading the question several times, good idea.

Guess it is a good thing it happened in the Mocks as we have time. They are having further Mocks in March for Core subjects I think so that gives us a short term goal to focus on.

I'm feeling a sense of the time going by quite fast at the moment - anyone else ?

Well to cheer you all up here are some extracts of DD'S Maths mock.

What she was asked to do - draw a 10 cm straight line. What she did - draw a 10.5cm line. When I asked her why she lost the mark she claimed it was because she had done it in pen and not pencil and was adamant the line was not longer than 10 cm until faced with the evidence when I finally found a ruler.

Asked to draw a rectangle with 14 cm perimeter. What she did - draw a square.

Asked to work out how much change someone was given if he paid with 3 x £20 notes . Had a list of what people ate which was a fair few items. Her answer was £53.65 or something like that. I'd like to eat there, lovely and cheap.

Now we've both stopped laughing I need to address her panicking when faced with this and Anyone any suggestions for a hypnotherapy download?

Just shoving this thread back onto the first page - keep in touch people!

One more day of mocks to go! Ds2 had 4.5 hrs of exams today. Eek!

Having had so many exams crammed into 7 school days for mocks, hopefully the real timetable will be a breeze in comparison. His real exams are spread over six WEEKS.

DD is very resistant to us helping which doesn't help. I figure I can't force her to do this but can try and facilitate things wherever possible. She has brought home her Maths papers from the Mocks and seems to want us to look through them with her which is progress. Guess for some it is like learning to walk, a lot need to lean on you until they master it themselves. Others insist on the process of falling down and picking themselves up on their own . Eventually they all manage to do it

Sadly Maths cupcakes are not to be as her friend who was telling her about the other friend's tutor got muddled up with her old babysitter. We're at her Japanese tutor right now for second lesson as school let me take her out. Much better experience than last night as far as I can hear from the other room.

This is where I worry about DS1 - he's been coaxed, mollycoddled and cossetted all the way through his A levels by DH. I know for a fact if he gets to uni, no work will be done. I can see it all falling down around him.

I reckon at this stage it's about establishing good working methods - if they can already do that for themselves, great, but if they need our help that's fine too.

There's still 6th form to go; that's when they really need to crack the independent working thing. For one thing, at GCSEs they're doing a lot of subjects, some of which they'd really rather not be doing (my DD gleefully tore up her History notes at the end of year 9, I think her German and Eng Lit will have a similar fate in a few months!). Hopefully at A level and certainly beyond that, the subjects should all be ones they really want to be doing and so their motivation should be better.

AuntP - completely in your corner on past-papers. There is SO MUCH online that can help them practise their techniques, and spending time at the weekend with them helps you inform yourself how they are doing and gives them the security of knowing they are not doing this alone (as in, the family is behind them, encouraging and engaged with them)

Stayathome, I think you are right in wondering how much support they should get used to having seeing as Uni will be independent of any family involvement - but don't you think these days its so much harder than when we were young to succeed in your chosen subjects? The competition for good Uni places is intense, and the fact that GCSE grades are now assessed along with the A'level grades means youngsters have to start motoring academically much younger than 20 years ago ... any support is surely good support ...?

Just my opinion ...

Maths tutor £20 an hour plus travel here dingit.
Very impressed Auntpetunia with your mocks papers,I find that with DD initially she is awful when assisted but after a few days sees the good results and is far more compliant.
But she won't have this sort of support through uni so I wonder how helpful it is long term.

Thanks sugarplum. I'm speaking to someone this evening, I was reckoning on £30. ( AS level)

Got mock results today. Not as good as she hoped, but all A-C, so I'm happy.

Think they are real - no idea how that works with learning Maths but if it works I wouldn't be complaining (and happy to eat them)

Dingit I paid £23 yesterday which was him coming here (south coast). Another friend paying £30 for A level. DD'S Japanese is £25.

Anyone know how much a Maths tutor costs ( south east)?

Error. Yeah we said 2 30 min sessions with about 5/10 min for checking. He didn't check on Friday but Saturday and Sunday we had less stupid mistakes to be honest I'm just happy he's actually doing some work. Though he's refused point blank tonight "as I stayed after school didn't i?" He did the compulsory Monday stay behind and thinks that's enough. Am not going to fight with him as he's narked I won't let him go the new youth club tonight as he's out at drama and scouts on Wednesday and already goes to normal youth club on Thursday so I think 2 nights out is enough. Apparently I'm horrible and everyone is going and he's been treated like a baby!! I just told him any more lip and he wouldn't go on Thursday. He was reading his science file when I went up but now he's on Skype, so not everyone went the youth club or he'd have no one to skype

auntp - when you're dividing up the time for a past paper like that, does it allow for the 'go back and check if you've got time left' phase? I think if my DD does any papers at home she'll probably have to do the whole thing at once, as she tends to go through quite fast but really does need to do the checking for silly mistakes.

DD tells me that following a pep talk from one of the teachers, a friend of hers was sobbing about her mock grades (pretty awful) and the small amount of time left until the real thing .

Thanks BigTillyMint. I think I am going to have to find her someone else, she says something about him spooked her though feels sorry for him as knows he was trying.

She's just remembered another girl in her class has a tutor and they make maths cupcakes in the lesson, whatever they are. That sounds more like DD so she is under strict instructions to find out who tutor is.

It sounds like DS is making good progress Auntpetunia and you have has a bit of a break through