Year 11 2023-24

Can you get the paper back? You may be able to see where he needed to ' write more' so to add examples or quotes or explain what he meant. ' Write more' is unhelpful. I agree to seeing if he can drop back to just doing maybe 5 subjects. Edit: I just saw he's doing a couple of Btecs. Maybe ask if he can concentrate of English, maths and the btecs.

@AmyandPhilipfan So he's facing 9 different subjects? If he's struggling that seems far too much. Couldn't he drop some of them? The school will push back against it but it is do-able, and at this stage the most important are Maths and English.

We can read most things! We're not allowed to just give up.

"just write more" is really not helpful. More what? Does he know which questions are the problem ones?

@Waspie well done to your son for his mock results.

DS spent time going through his English seems strange scoring if what he told me was right. He was 2 marks of a 4 and 10 marks of a 5. Teacher told him he could easily have got a 4 just needed to rwrite more. Also she struggled to read his writing in some areas. Any idea if some examiners give up if writing is so bad?

Probably not much use to you then, I'm afraid

Thanks, his school use Edexcel for English.

@AmyandPhilipfan If I can help at all with AQA English, please let me know. It's entirely predictable once you've been taught the papers.

Yes, he attends mainstream school.He's down for 7 GCSEs and a couple of BTecs.

Also we've seen a HUGE improvement in concentration and focus since banning her phone during any study. Went down like a lead balloon to begin but so glad we did that.

I put a time limit on my DS's phone that is only an hour. He asks me all the time if he can have more time and I give him a bit more because he likes doing duolingo and is obsessed with not losing his streak ( he's foung gcse Spanish so it's kind ifcrevision too! I once commented that there was no point him having a limit as he keeps asking for more time and he actually told me to keep the limit as it makes him stop going on his phone during revision time!

@AmyandPhilipfan My DD2 did 2 years at level 1 at college and was so much happier for doing a course she really wanted to do at a level that worked for her.

However note there are potential problems with getting the maths up to a 3 as then the rules may be that your DC has to keep resitting GCSE at college rather than being allowed to do Functional Skills.
Though it depends as some colleges offer Level 1 functional skills but if you pass that they then move to GCSE rather than teaching Level 2 functional skills.

(DD2, 19, post college, is doing Level 2 FS English this year via a tutor, it is so much more straightforward than GCSE English Language).

@AmyandPhilipfan is he in school? how many subjects is he taking? Is it possible for him to just sit English and maths plus maybe something else that he enjoys? Surely he would be best off putting all his efforts into getting the best grades in English and maths so he can access a course at 16.

It's so hard isn't it? It's moments like this you wish their 25 year old (hopefully now high achieving) self would travel back in time and tell them to give their head a wobble

Would he be willing to study with friends, ideally ones who may be able to coach him a bit? Or if going solo maybe agree he sits with you or another parent/adult for the first 10 mins of each study session to carve out a specific plan of "I'm going to achieve X and Y and to do those things here's the actions I'll take " kind of conversation?

I don't know about you but (having a DD who also struggles and didn't do great in these last mocks) when I think of the sheer volume of stuff they need to cover I feel overwhelmed I think they sometimes need help to break it down into specific chunks. Then maybe revisit what they seemed to have "got" a few days later. Then hopefully they feel like they are shifting the work it could motivate them?

Also we've seen a HUGE improvement in concentration and focus since banning her phone during any study. Went down like a lead balloon to begin but so glad we did that.

Yes, there's a vocational college near us that will take them on a Level 1 course in the area he's interested in, without any qualifications. Or he needs maths and English at grade 3 to get on the Level 2 course. Maths he possibly will get the 3 as he got a 2 in mocks but English he got 1 in Language and 0 in Literature. I've always known he struggles more in English but for the past couple of years I've been told English he's doing well and on track for grade 4 but struggling with maths. I knew that didn't sound right. The thing is with him if a teacher clearly explains what they want him to do he's not too bad, but he does not have a clue what exam questions are asking of him.

@AmyandPhilipfan Has he identified a post-16 route, and what qualifications will he need to get him there?

Well, got my son's results back. All ranging from 0-2. I don't know if he has any hope of getting any up to a 4. I know he's always struggled but I wouldn't mind if I felt he was trying his best. But he's so anti revision and if he says he doesn't understand something he has such a mental block of working at it to try to understand it. I've told him he's going to have to start doing more work, including in the Christmas holidays and he feels that's unfair and 'harsh.' I'm not going to make him work 24/7 but he slobs around at home gaming all day, I'm sure he can fit in a couple of hours of study time!

DS got his results on Friday. He did really well but instead of being proud of this he spent Friday evening ranting about how unfair "miss" was in her marking. I really wish he could look and see positives in his achievements rather than negatives.

The "miss" in question gave him a 7 in his mock and is predicting an 8 in his GCSE, so hardly a bad score. This is one of the subjects he wants to take for A level, and one where he is strongest, so was hoping for an 8 in mocks and a predicted 9.

The whole "unfairness" of it all is apparently compounded by the fact that he did this particular past paper in an after school study session a few weeks before the mocks and a different miss within the English dept. marked it as a 9. Sigh. But his "miss" is well known as a hard marker. He's in top set and no-one in his set got higher than a 7. Although some people in set 2 got 8's and 9's (this compounds the grievance). He has English later this afternoon so hopefully miss will go through how she's marked the papers and explain her position. Fingers crossed because I don't want another evening of "it's so unfair".

On the brighter side he has text this morning to say that his maths was only a couple of points off an 8 so "sir" is really pleased with him. Maths is perceived, by DS, to be one of his "weak" subjects. Hopefully after a day of reviewing their mock papers he will feel a little less p-ed off about it all.

Apologies for all of the annoying quotation marks in my post. I just do not want anyone thinking that these are my thoughts or feelings on the subject!

If you are AQA, past papers and marking schemes are here
www.aqa.org.uk/find-past-papers-and-mark-schemes

@BeingGrownUp help her to find as many questions as possible to practise on. Use all the questions at the end of the topics in the exam book, plus free resources such as BBC Bitesize and Seneca, plus any past papers you/she can get your hands on (school may have made some available to them). Help her to use the questions to find out where her knowledge gaps are, then go over the knowledge points with her. She will absorb much more when the learning is directed towards being able to answer questions. Use model answers and markschemes, where available, to improve her answers, and impress on her the different levels of detail required for a 1-mark question versus a 3-marker versus a 6-marker etc.

I found that my son didn’t know how to revise and actually the school didn’t really teach him what revision looks like.

I think that is so true thanks Teen. I think she thought she knew it all and it was going to be easy

I did revision 1-1 with my DD1 it helped focus her mind. Otherwise she got distracted and/or convinced herself she knew stuff when she didn't.

Thank you both. I thought she had been going through the exam books and making notes of the key points on flash cards. And I can see evidence of that but she hasn’t learnt any of it. I really like the idea of doing it with her - thank you pancakes. Will discuss with her today

@BeingGrownUp I helped DC revise the most 'fact heavy' subjects (Biology, History, Eng Lit) by going through the revision guides page by page and learning it together. I won't lie, it was painful and we took months (started in February for May exams). It worked for them, half an hour per subject every day. It's not for everyone but worked well for them. But we did have some very late nights ...

This is what mocks are for.

How has she been revising this time? Has she really done as much as she thinks she has or might she have been distracted by other things in her room and not been as focussed as she might have been? Can you look at what type of learner she is and help her to devise strategies that will be more effective for her preferred style of learning?