Year 11 22/23 support thread.

Arrh yes I just googled as we don’t watch dancing on ice it’s the same guy. He comes across as a nice guy no idea if he is but my gym obsessed DD likes him.

We watch a lot of classic TV! Poirot, Miss Marple, Cadfael all favourites. And currently Jeeves & Wooster.

Is that the gymnast who just won dancing on ice?

We’ve been watching on iplayer bbc3 go hard or go home series. Training with “warriors” (my DD likes Niall the ex-Gymnast) but they are mostly young people who all struggle with anxiety and confidence issues. And the Apprentice which cracks us up ..:where do they get those people!

@NCTDN DD and I have been enjoying watching Outlast together on Netflix. It’s a US reality TV survival show, set in Alaska. They have to compete in teams and it quite quickly turns full on Lord of the Flies. Fun to watch together and a good release from school work!

Not school related, but any suggestions for tv programmes that ds and I could both watch? It's hard finding a shared interest. We've enjoyed Wednesday recently and worked our way (twice) through the Big Bang theory and young sheldon.

Good luck to your DS @PhotoDad - sounds very exciting!

Thank you, @NCTDN! I posted about it on another thread we're both on, but DS Yr11 has reached the interview round for an Arkwright Engineering Scholarship after application form and exam. He is interested in Chem Eng.

DD has been feeling the pressure this week. Finishing off art coursework, music performance recording, finishing off composition coursework, audition/interview for 6th form place which she is really keen on. And she’s had a heavy cold.

I think she’s starting to feel pissed off with it all and the proper revision hasn’t even really started yet. Although I remember from my own exam days that the time when teaching is still ongoing and they are trying to finish the syllabus along with prepping for exams and completing coursework plus trying to make applications for next steps can feel a bit full on.

@PhotoDad that scholarship sounds amazing. If I'd known about it in time, I'd have encouraged DS to apply after getting his school to sign up to it
Good luck to your ds. Does he know what type of engineering field he wants to go into?

Ok, much art is now happening. Not much other revision but it’s something

Aargh, DS1 was supposed to be doing art this evening but has just messed about on YouTube instead and is now feeling guilty

@Infracat

DS is doing about 2.5-3 hours a night including his homework.

Personally I'd say it should be more than 2 hours at this stage.

DD is still getting quite a lot of homework and doesn't get home until 5pm. She is doing about an hour of Additional Maths and an hour of Biology a week as those are her weakest subjects. She's not planning to start on anything else until the Easter holidays.

It's hard to say atm because he has had mocks this past week. I guess between an hour and 90 mins?

My DD trains 4x days a week in a competitive sport, and has then had Dance GCSE coursework after school 2nights. So she’s only squeezing in on average 7hrs a week outside school. With competitions over a few weekends in March/April even that’s going to be tight.

Thanks. Maybe this is excessive. How long does he do?

Ds doesn't do two hours per night after school apart from when he's has mocks.

How many hours revision per evening are your children doing? Is 2hrs acceptable after being at school all day? Or should it be more. Conscious not to overload my DS, but want him to bedoing enough. He has no idea.

We went through all this in the summer and DC used the CGP revision books which were brilliant. They knew the topics they needed and went through every single page and learnt them. Biology and History in particular. There are definite ways to answer questions, especially in History and English, but unless you know the facts you can't answer anything. Tick lists for when they thought they knew them.

English Literature - DC had lists of themes, characters, plots, and lots of quotes to demonstrate these. Flash cards, white boards etc etc. Look.at a couple of quotes, statistics, equations etc every day and they will eventually stick. And we started now, the week after half term so there was plenty of time.

Thank you. This is really useful.

@ThePenOfMyAunt your poor son and the schools for not supporting. My youngest is autistic & has been struggling in mainstream school so I’ve been researching different options. The face book group Home Education UK & Exam alternatives- has a brilliant wiki page with lots of information about how to take igcse and at different times of the year. It’s eye opening as to why would you take 10 GCSEs in May when you could spread them out over 1-2yrs and still use them to get into college options. It may give you options for next year if this year doesn’t go to plan.

#BonjourCrisette this is exactly what I was looking for. Think I will sign DD up for the 3 month subscription. Thanks

The best way of revising is to do questions. The more you have to actively access the things you need to know in your memory, the better you'll be at doing it. I subscribed DD to Save My Exams, which is not too expensive (£30 for three months). It has lots of past papers and also mark schemes and model answers. He doesn't have to do a whole paper in one go, he can do a question at a time and then go over the answer carefully. Maybe save full papers for later on when he is more confident - there's no point in doing a whole paper now and getting discouraged about what he doesn't know! Also, you can do a paper/question more than once. Do the paper/question, compare with mark schemes and model answers then have a break and come back in a week or a few days and see if you can do better in structuring your answer and including the important points. Even looking at a question and looking up everything you can't remember can be useful. Again, do this and come back to it in a week or something and see how much you have retained.

DD did write lists of what she needs to know, but she also divided them into things she feels confident about and things she knows she doesn't know well. So she is concentrating on the things she doesn't know as well. Flashcards etc can be good for some subjects eg equations for Physics, definitions of things in Biology, vocab for MFL. Other things might not fit so well into that method. So eg Eng Lit, she has written a list of themes for the book she is studying, a list of characters, a list of major plot points etc and she has identified quotes to support anything important she needs to be able to say about all of those.

Don't know if that is helpful! Hope so!

Hi everyone. First time posting on this thread. How do you go about putting together a timetable for revision (for final exams)? Do you go through and list the spec for every subject and then take topics from that? It feels like a lot to fit in doing it that way. I really am clueless on this and so is my son so any advice would be really welcome.