Y11 2025-26 - Trying not to melt and pushing through the final weeks

@Bluebelle8261 I said exactly that yesterday when DD said half the paper 2 topics didn’t feature at all.

@Ursulla42 problem with with ten GCSE and 22 exams by DD couldn’t deal with sheer volume so similarly Spanish is the victim

Both AQA triple higher papers were so random this year. Almost like there was no point studying! I feel like the papers should contain a broad range of the spec.

My son keeps asking how to answer the fieldwork questions. It wasn’t included in their mock so he’s never had an exam on fieldwork. There should be something in her geography revision guide though - I also found this guy online but not watched it fully yet.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eWmo9MJNajY&ra=m
ps my son edexcel A

Does anyone know anything about Edexcel Geog Paper 3 (fieldwork) which is on Thurs? It turns out DD does not and she is getting in quite a tizz about it. I thought this was general almost at the end exhaustion but, on asking her more detail last night, I realised she really doesn’t seem to know anything about fieldwork! I’m confused as the Geog dept at her school is really good. My first thought was that we email her teacher but she reminded me he’s one of the teachers who is accompanying the school trip my son is on! There really doesn’t seem to be much about it online either.
She seems to have two issues, both of which are fairly fundamental. The first is that the teacher lost some of the fieldwork results including hers. My solution to this is that she just gets a classmates results as surely the examiner won’t know if it her exact results. And the second is that she simply doesn’t seem to know how to answer the questions.
I think she’s been aware for a while that this paper was going to be an issue but was counting on doing so well in papers 1&2 that it didn’t matter. And then those papers didn’t go very well for her!
One thing I have realised from these threads is that I should have been much more involved from an earlier stage. She has always had good grades, worked really hard and is very independent so it has been easy to leave her to it but I’m not sure how effective her revision has actually been. Sigh!

i told dd2 about triple being geography paper 4 and she agreed. However she loves geography, it’s her favourite so that possibly explains why she didn’t mind it. She did enjoy being told baby cars were kittens.

DD worked steadily through exam period and before but I don’t think done a single thing for weeks on tomorrow’s Spanish. Tried to encourage but seems to have made the decision it’s the only one she doesn’t care about. Did ok in mocks so might get lucky and scrape through but it’s so disappointing that doing well in a language is not her priority. Many of her school peers also seem to feel this too. Feels like a wasted opportunity,

This is exactly what DD said, AQA higher was hard and everyone left the hall asking "what the he'll was that"..

My friend's son said it was the easiest paper so fat, so, although she says he us not doing foundation, I wonder, as it was apparently geography heavy, and he did history, as he struggled with geography.

Lots of tears, lots of anxiety here tonight.

Yep. Super hard, came home in floods of tears.

However, she has managed to find the paper online late this evening and someone has also posted the answers by working them out. DD has calculated that she dropped 6 marks. Out of the entire paper! All that crying earlier and she has actually performed really well.

As I kept telling DD. FM is supposed to be hard. No one ever came out of a FM paper thinking it was a breeze. Even if you get everything right, you will have needed to work extremely hard in the exam to get each and every mark.

Yes my DS said it was super hard. He’s hoping grade boundaries will be high!

There was a graph that measured body mass after a drug x was given. The loss went up and up until it went down. They had to explain what was happening.

Wow really! What was the question?

Shocking as there was a question about weight loss medicines on the Aqa paper for single biology.

Ah that makes sense - yes it is IGCSE. Reading the posts I suddenly thought we’d missed a paper! Thank you

@Caddycat genuinely I would try a couple of Edexcel ones then – new spec and legacy if not already done. It‘s all Spanish after all :)

I agree it’s rubbish that there is so little material. Like in 2016 when we started teaching the then new spec really cold. We barely had a textbook and just one set of sample papers and no idea at all what kind of mark would get a 5 or a 7 or a 9.

Thank you so much! Yes she's done lots of old ones, and the one you've linked they used for their mock. I cant believe there isnt more, she knows them all too much to be useful 😅. Dd says thanks 😀

OCR combined science -biology was “very nice” and french edexcel writing had “nice topics to write about”. The last double exam day for the DTs and French ticked off the list. Just geography, sciences and maths to go here. This time next week they will be finished. One of my DTs thinks French edexcel grade boundaries will be very high as all the papers have been nice. So hopefully that means the aim of the new french format has been achieved by making it more accessible.

We’ve taken to ranking the exam boards and their papers in our house.
I definitely think this thread could provide some constructive feedback to the exam boards

It must have been IGCSE not GCSE – that is only 2 papers (L and then R&W as one paper) and usually all on the same day. Spanish IGCSE is the same, both papers tomorrow. I assume this is a private school as state schools cannot offer IGSCE. Plenty of private schools choose to offer GCSE tho.

AQA GCSE French writing was last week as R & L are on the same day; Edexcel split them up hence French writing GCSE was today.

The only one on the AQA website is the sample set here
https://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/spanish/gcse/spanish-8692/assessment-resources?componentCodes=8692LH

I imagine this might be the one set by the teacher tho?

Otherwise it is tricky indeed. There is a CGP workbook with audio but I would be sure to check the structure of the questions matches the exam structure (they don't always). Not that it matters as it is all audio and good practice. Just need to be aware of the format of the actual exam questions.

Otherwise it’s a case of legacy questions. Or audio from Edexcel. Again, be aware that the exam format is different (esp no TL questions and answers any more, as there are on legacy papers, not Edexcel new spec obvs) but still, someone speaking Spanish and questions on that is still a valuable revision tool.

ETA: just realised the listening is tomorrow! bit late for the book then but legacy papers are the way

How funny, I wonder why that is! My DD is doing the same one that the lady upthread mentioned, who said it was the first sitting of a new syllabus this year and that the writing this afternoon was quite straightforward.

My DS seems to be the same about DT. He says they haven’t covered some of the topics but he said he’s not worried, he’s going to watch some videos tomorrow and he said nothing is covered in that much depth! I said it’s a bit late to be watching videos the day before!

I’m confused about people doing Edexcel French writing today - my DS did his before half term alongside listening and reading. He’s got Edexcel Spanish tomorrow - listening, reading and writing.

I have twins but they’re at different schools -DD did AQA French and her writing paper was also separate.

Thanks for this thread, I haven’t had a chance to post before.

DD had biology and French writing today, and now only three exams left, maths, chemistry and physics. This time next week it will all be over!

Listening to DH do history with DS it’s very sweet. They are both war geeks.

@NotDarkGothicMama that made me laugh as its the kind of thing my DS does only get update when he wants something.

DD is spiralling tonight struggling with Spanish spent most of the weekend doing biology after discovering gaps in whst she had been taught. Done reading papers today and got 57% and 60% had 80% in mocks. Says she can't remember anything ! She normally scores low in listening as struggles but the reading and speaking help bring her grade up.
Hope everyone else's houses are calmer.