Anyone want a thread for starting year 10 this autumn?

Coming back on here as we head into Easter - DS has his y10 exams shortly after the holidays, so is meant to be doing revision. I’m a bit doubtful about how this is going to go!

The school held a y10 parents’ meeting recently where they were basically starting the countdown - showing the year ahead (only one set of proper mocks for DS, in January), and talk of revision techniques etc which made it all seem a bit closer! I think y11 is going to go very fast.

How is everyone else? Interested to hear how different schools are handling things right now, whether they ramping up expectations or not.

All going pretty well here, with the main stressors being social (FOMO - are the other girls meeting up without me?). DD got a lovely report at Christmas and worked well on an assignment over the holidays which she presented to her class on the first day back. The big challenge for 2023 will be making a plan for post-16 and getting applications in for sixth forms in the summer/autumn. She’s unlikely to be heading in the same direction as many of her friends, so it’s going to be a big change after a reasonably settled few years.

My Y10 doesn't seem to have much homework either.
They have definitely been doing regular mini tests. And they're doing health and social so had course work for that.
DD has fairly high anxiety and many perfectionist tendencies so we're trying to get her to have more of a work life balance. It's tricky because her friends also seem socially anxious so hard to get them to do activities outside of school - even just meeting up town.

Bumpity bump, how’s it all going y10s?

Very little work been happening here, school really don’t seem to be setting much homework. But i suspect there are some topic tests happening that DS is not telling me about!

@Gazelda , at parents evening we talked about time management when doing tests with the teachers a bit. They talked about the importance of quickly jotting down a few words as a plan for answering any wordy question, using the number of marks available as a guide. So, 3 marks - what are the three points to be made, likewise 6 marks. For the higher mark questions this also helps you to see the best sequence to put them in. The hope is it cuts through any tendency to over-explain or waffle, concise but accurate is what’s needed.

How are your kids doing with time management? This, along with general anxiety, seems to be DD's biggest stumbling block. She has the knowledge, but takes too long to get it down on paper.

She's been referred to the school counsellor, but this also seems to be taking a long while to progress. She wishes she was still at primary school, she's scared of being older.

Sorry she’s not feeling well Emma, hope it passes quickly. It’s tough when they’re working hard but not seeing that come through into results - only thing I can think of is just checking that she’s working ‘smart’, so spending time on stuff that helps her learning the most. Some homework doesn’t add lots of value and some revision activities don’t either. Fingers crossed for the mock!

Reporting back in for duty! DD is working hard but she is not on track for her target grades for a number of her GCSES, according to her latest monitoring report. School is a slog for her due to her several disabilities, the most profound of which is that she is registered blind. She actually has a mock GCSE exam for RPSE on Monday as her cohort takes this for real at the end of Y10.

I’ve just had to collect her from school as she is feeling sick; there is a D&V bug doing the rounds but I’m wondering if anxiety and stress is coming into play here?

Hey all, how is everyone doing?

We had parents evening this week - and actually in person for the first time since primary school! I was grumbling beforehand thinking it was going to be chaos, but it all ran smoothly - I think we must have all got used to what ‘5 minutes’ feels like with the virtual ones in the last couple of years. Actually found that in person was better.

Overall the feedback was positive, though some stuff to work on. It was interesting how focused the teachers were on recent test results - seemed to be the main way of tracking how the kids were doing, rather than class work. No talk at all about predicted grades though those will be in the report card we get later in the year. One or two mentions of A levels though! I really liked his teachers, came away thinking that they know the kids and know what they’re doing.

Hello, may I join in? I have DS2 in yr10 with a big brother who started university this September.

DS2 does quite well at school but is now at that age where he wants to socialise more and seems to spend most of his time either on Whatsapp / Snapchat on week day evenings and hanging out in town with friends at the weekend. I don't mind this so much as he's actually quite an anxious person who used to hate going out and so I think the social aspect is good for him but I'm worried he's getting the balance wrong.

He , like everyone else I think, is doing lots of small subject tests at the moment and seems to be doing well enough other than in geography - not sure why as he quite enjoys that subject..

Just coming back to this to ask a question - have any schools had a careers fair yet? DS’s school is having one with a range of local-ish employers and universities, and the year 10s are invited along with the years above. As DS has only very vague ideas about what he might want to do, I’m hoping this might help, there are a few engineering firms coming which he’s expressed an interest in before. Anyone know how it tends to work, and how to make the most of it?

She has tests, they're seemingly constant !

irfan = urban - fat finger typing!

That’s impressive @woohoowoohoo - does she have tests after half term or more general revision?

@EmmatheStageRat DS is doing Geography and we don’t subscribe to anything - he’s never been one for reading non fiction magazines, though we’ve tried! He does watch things like the Simon Reeves documentaries with us sometimes, some good irfan geography issues in those. Younger DS is the history buff, might need to find equivalent for him.

Mine has been revising all week! I had to make her stop and come for a walk today. What's happening!

@EmmatheStageRat I have not - don't think they'd get read!
My son picked his least worse subjects and has no passion for any of them though is doing the work set by the school.

He is totally clueless about which A level subjects to consider and had a bit of a mild freak out when I pointed out that this time next year it will be open days for sixth forms.

Thank you Geometric, she had a great day and actually only spent £8 out of the £20 I gave her. DD has developed a certain, shall we say, unique (!) fashion style and she is garnering many compliments from random people around our very small town, which is helping to boost her confidence and self-esteem (previously on the floor). She looks fabulous and quirky as hell but she cannot afford to spend three hours every day on her appearance before venturing out of the front door!

Just throwing a question out there for anyone who’s Y10 student studies History or Geography: do you invest in subscriptions to magazines like BBC History /National Geographic etc?

Sounds like she was excited to go out Emma, hope she has a great day! And good news on the social front, MyOtherProfile, year 10 seems fairly drama-free so far here too.

Its been hard to get a sense of how it’s going with DS - but we spent time with extended family yesterday and I heard more about how he’s finding his subjects and how he’s feeling about the prospects of GCSEs in his conversation with his older cousin than I’d heard all term! On the basis of that, he’s mostly enjoying his subjects - Spanish is only ok, finding the hardware stuff in Computing a bit boring - and feels a bit more in control now he’s doing subjects he's picked. He is sounding more confused about what he wants to do next than I thought though.

DD has had a stellar (for her) start to Y10 (she says, frantically touching everything wooden within sight). She was actually one of 30 students in her year group invited to wear non-uniform on Thursday because she has earned so many achievement comments, mainly for her attitude to learning. This is a first for her.

DD is blind and has ADHD and autism, among other disabilities. She is not top flight at her selective grammar school but she is on course for grade 7s across the board. Every day at school is a marathon for DD, mainly because school learning is so visually loaded and she can’t access that. The process of learning is exhausting for her.

I have to battle school constantly to remind them of their obligations under the Equality Act of 2010. DD and I are wrung out after the first half term. DD has gone out with her one out-of-school friend (she has no friends at school, due largely to her disabilities and differences). It took her THREE hours to get ready! I think I may actually have preferred the soap dodging days of getting dressed in a nano-second!

Mine is getting on fine. Still not a huge amount of homework but what he gets, gets done without fuss. There is a definite shift in attitude which is a relief.

My DS didn't have any direction for what career he wanted, he's in Y10 too. We didn't know where to start or what kind of opportunities were out there for him. His school recommended this magazine to us though: https://careermap.co.uk/careermag-parents-carers-guardians/ and it has helped us a lot. We now sit down together to look at the different options. Hope this can help some other people too :)

Both I think!