Last term of Year 13. Gulp.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

Can you believe it?

last thread

All welcome no matter which path your dc have chosen.

Hey MrSlant, you all survived it

That's really positive Gretol :)

It's downhill for us now, 60% done. Six calendar days left.

I have the exam entry sheet with the room numbers on, DS is sitting his in small rooms so it's not obvious where he will be. I fully support him practicing for adult life just not with such an important piece of paper.

Dd will be doing her gothic literature exam soon
It’s history that’s the trouble
There’s always a question on Charles and James
But it’s not specified on the spec
They could choose to do 2 on Charles
Hopefully James will come up as dd hasn’t revised Charles really

Hey knitting, getting there!
dd has done 30% But she's had her last physics lesson now, so it's all maths after Thursday's paper.

English went just OK. Not the themes she was hoping for and ones that they hadn't actually studied. So she had to think!

So that's us over halfway.

Has anyone else had any feedback on Chemistry? DD just texted to say it was ok, but that she didn't have time to re-check the whole paper (she usually has loads of time to do this). That isn't like her, so I'm fretting again. Anyone else's DC say it wasn't quite a breeze?

Yes English was ok here too. DD managed to write an essay on "threat" in Frankenstein and Handmaids.

History/Italy tomorrow is the most worrying one for us. I will be glad when that is done for her.

ds1 has come home from Frankenstein and Handmaid. He said he thanked his lucky stars it was on "locations" as he wouldn't have been able to do "threat" at all as it was such an immense topic and I don't think he knew enough detail to talk about language. But having watched the films, at least a "C" grade version of locations emerged from his pen. He said he was writing frantically, but only managed to cover 4 sides, even with extra time. He seemed quite worried by it, and a lot of things he had left out came to him on the way home, but he did say he talked to someone after the exam who couldn't remember even that Gilead was a "location", so maybe he knew more than some of his class. He said he had revised setting, minor characters and narrative structure but very little else..

DS said that STEP was more straightforward than Chemistry- because Chemistry was harder than he expected.

DD did threat too marmite. She was really hoping for religion, but I think she managed to tuck most of what she knew under the Threat banner.

He said he had done a bit of work on Rossetti last week so the last two days of preparation for Friday aren't going to be so terrifying.
I think the good thing about having lots of exams back to back is that you know you aren't going to be able to cram everything in, so you have to prepare properly, which is what he hasn't done, really, up until this point, leaving revision to the magic four days or three days free before an exam; in his case quite widely spaced out.

what a relief. He has been so lucky with the questions so far.

I don't think ds knew anything about religion apart from the obvious in Handmaid like, religion is bad.

It would fun to do a tour of UK and Europe based around Frankenstein. finishing up on the pack ice.. it is like some sort of upmarket travel itinerary.

How did your dd's English go Fantasy and your ds1's Third?

@Hardwick, DS reported that it was Hard (and he was annoyed because there was one question he didn't realise he could answer until he only had 1 minute left). TBH i would expect him to find it hard - he's struggled in chemistry. I'm hoping that once i get more of a debrief (once he's finished emptying the fridge and i get home so he can start asking what's for dinner), it will transpire that although hard it was better than paper 1.

DS said Chemistry was quite hard, didn't answer all the questions, but most of his group felt the same, so is assuming lower grade boundaries will make it alright. Right about now I am thanking my lucky stars for the unconditional offer from a uni he really likes

DD felt English could have been worse and was a bit better than the first paper.

Back to American Dream now, we did 6 hours of flash cards last night and 1 hour before I left for work this morning ..... We had more tears last night.

Tomorrow will take her over the half way mark, just 3 Maths exams after that.

DD2 felt Chemistry was fine but it may have been a different board however TBH 'fine' has been her conclusion on all papers so far. Mind, she is a phlegmatic soul so tends to avoid getting upset about things she cant change.

raspberry ^ hours! You are heroic.

This is the first time I've noticed what the mark scheme is for the different papers. Shakespeare was 35 plus 25 ie 60 marks and Prose 40 marks total. I really haven't involved myself much - just asked ds what marks he thought he needed for a C essay and he said 22, which he hoped he had. Then he said, well I must have got 10 marks at the very least.

It has been very much his exams, he is only telling me things now that he has actually sat the papers...

missed out the 6 for raspberry

Funny how they are all different Nettles. DD said she had no idea how she would have answered "location" but she hadn't watched them. Good job it was a wide enough range to suit various DCs as it carries quite a few marks.

Italy revision going on now !

So if you're discussing the allowable defences to murder what are the odds of the deceased in the scenario having the same name as your late father? I'm assuming that DS picked up some marks today but not as many as he would have expected to bag. The saving grace is that he only had the one exam today because otherwise he could have let the question wreck two papers instead of one.

I will be so glad when this is over. There is plenty of potential for music to go bottom up, I still can't listen to the radio because so much music comes with memories and I'm older and tougher than he is. I feel so sorry for him, I'm just glad that his offer is so low that none of this really matters.

English was fine happy. Could have gone better due to running out of time
But could have gone worse

Dd however, is panicking worrying she hasn’t got BBB which she needs. She keeps saying she ensures she gets lots of evidence in her answers. Dates and facts which I suppose is a pleasing result
She is beside herself insisting she’s failed after reading Twitter.
The thing I hate about essays subjects is it’s so subjective as to what they learn. Different schools teach it in different ways
Whereas science subjects it’s pretty much bogstandard

DD said OCR chemistry was much harder than last year's paper and she also didn't have time to check all. But it was "ok".... although I'm never sure if the ok is for my benefit so I don't worry!

Chemistry went pretty well thud
Which is good after the disastrous biology papers. Maths S2 tomorrow.