GCSE Supporting - first week nearly over

Ds school still finishing History content I believe or they were last time I asked.

The longest exam today, English lit conflict poetry and Jekyll and Hyde. DD went to a 2 hour cram yesterday, came back quite upbeat and surprised by how much she remembered.
Then a short cram and on to media studies.

Good luck all, here's to more silly memes on twitter and no tears

My DD school are technically running a full timetable. They did have a subject last week though where minimal people were in as most on another exam so they could revise anything.

I laughed yesterday as it was only RS / French and they sent a reminder in morning looking
Forward to seeing all pupils for critical revision classes. Last week on a low volume exam day it was very empty apparently.....

What are they teaching??? Surely the curriculum is completed already? Good Lord. What a stupid thing for the school to be doing.

I'm not sure I see the benefit of keeping to the same timetable apart from attendance figures - I guess they'll get some structured revision. DS school have compulsory revision sessions but if it's not your subject then you don't have to go in.
Good luck everyone today, DS has Lord of the Flies which I studied for O level back in the 80's!

Normal timetable around exams sounds awful.

dd goes into school but it’s her choice - a mix between wanting to see friends, and her feeling more like she’ll get more work done there. She doesn’t have lessons, but is able to arrange to see teachers if she needs help/has any questions. She prefers that to sitting at home, as she feels she’d probably end up watching too much Netflix if left to her own devices all day here. She’s going in today (no exam) as her physics teacher is available all day for queries. Dd will work elsewhere, and pop over for anything she needs if necessary.

Yep another with a child in a school who think it’s great to run a full on non-changed timetable around the exams! She had to do completely unrelated lessons all yesterday morning prior to the RE exam. It’s a bloomin joke which is supposed to carry on after Halfterm! The school are more interested in covering their failing arses than pupil wellbeing. I’d be fine with optional boosters related to the exams the next day but they are still holding the threat of a prom ticket over their heads if they don’t go in!!

My son still at school. He was annoyed last week after the Eng Lit exams as they had to go straight to PE afterwards and he was exhausted. He leaves school properly Fri then after half term can go home after exams.

Can’t believe all these schools making them come in between exams! Our school is running a few Maths boosters, other than that it’s come in for exams only unless they want to use the library.

Good luck for English lit today, anyone else got Curious Incident?

Same! It's such a massive time sucker and so irrelevant in life to come for 90% of students

DD has been feeling like that about Biology and History. It took her so much work to try to cram the facts into her head and make them stay there. I think different people feel like different subjects take up too much time! I guess it's just what you are interested in.

Ds was really chuffed to get an extra English revision session as he wasn't doing RE unlike most of his peers. (Supposed to be compulsory but I got him out if it).

Cannot wait to get Eng Lit done with. Feeling quite resentful it takes up so much of their time when there's so many other subjects too.

Dd just gone to bed, worrying as she doesn't know anything and has no idea of blood brothers. I've told her to report sick.to the office tomorrow after her exam all 2hours 50 mins, if she feels worn out and I will collect her to come home and do physics revison. They still have them in school and as Friday is a Non exam day I also think they will have alot of illness on that day!

Stressful evening here, bloody poetry. So much to remember, I will be delighted for her once this exam is out the way.
Why do they have to make it such a test of memory? Ruins the creativity of subject.

Similar thoughts here tbh. I can't see much online for the rescheduled exam so at least that's something. DD has a day off tomorrow but 3 exams on Thursday.

English Lit tomorrow. Inspector Calls ( dd made me watch it at the weekend) and poetry. She's just been reading her least favourite poems at me. She's crossing fingers for Nature and Seamus Heaney.

Yeah same here! The Edexcel Maths paper answers were leaked and kids were counting up their marks and stressing because they'd done so much worse than they'd thought. I'm really not sure what's going on.

Re the No devices thing for clash students - I think that's going to be hard to resist for some and I'm not quite sure how they will check / recognise if someone has cheated in this way? DD has been online after exams and found actual question papers with the supposedly correct answers on to compare to what she wrote (maths and bio) I don't know how the exam papers have been uploaded but they have!

I mean obviously lots of parents will not care one bit and it isn't difficult for children to go behind their parents backs to send a quick message.

DD's already in bed even though she isn't even all that tired, but she definitely needed the rest so I sent her up. She did some Physics and Computing revision today instead of English as she's done quite a bit of that and is confident. I agree it's a crazy long exam, I suppose this is one of the few times where my daughter's horrible way of coping with time may be useful lol, she never has issues with too long exam time because she's always hurriedly writing to finish her paper so too busy to think about anything else!!!

Students have been sent home with instructions not to go on any devices, but really?? Who is going to stop them?!

Their parents, surely? DD had the same thing last week.

My two best tips for exams:

RTBQ2 (squared) - read the bloody question twice

"Make what you know go" (my A level history teacher's wise advice) for English I would use this to mean use any word you can remember to make reference to the text, even if you can't remember the whole quote and use it to actually answer the question.

Fully expecting tomorrow to be a disaster for DS - English is never good for him but the poems are his weakest point. I tried to go through them with him but he is not engaging so it is just a waste of time. Hopefully the rest of the 2 papers will have been decent enough for him to scrape a 4!

The school have said they will be using some sort of wand to check each child for mobile phones as they enter the exam room. Sounds time consuming but it appears to have been an issue this year. DD is at a great 6th form college and said someone was disqualified in her alevel exam last week as their phone fell out of their pocket half way through.

Good news is the school is starting study leave slightly early after Eng Lit finishes tomorrow so no more lessons for DS (and DD had her last lesson on Monday). So weird that both of my children will be done with school in a few weeks!

Something I don't understand. There was exam clashes today with not enough time to get all the scheduled exams done so the last one is being taken tomorrow. Students have been sent home with instructions not to go on any devices, but really?? Who is going to stop them?! I don't know what the solution would be (overnight supervision with teacher in my day!) but obviously that can't happen now.