What books would you recommend for GCSE learning?

[CuttedUpPear]

Today I am keeping DS home from the new term after years of his unhappiness and isolation at school.

I am trying to be brave and facing up to home edding him through his GCSEs (he has problems with focus and concentration and is possibly SEN, waiting for assessment).

What books are good for taking him up to exam level?
He's doing Eng Lit, Maths, Science and Geography. Possibly Art as well if I can rekindle his interest.

Is he year 10, CuttedUpPear? I'll watch this thread with interest as my son has just started this year and will need some extra support. I've been wondering myself what books could help him.

What about the GCSE study guides? (AQA at my son's school.) His older two brothers used these and they seemed well laid out and easy to use in bite-size chunks.

A lot of home educators opt for IGCSEs as there's no coursework element, just exams at the end. We use Edexcel but you can find specifications and sample exams on the individual exam boards' web sites.

It might be worth looking around your local area to find a school or other centre where he can take the exams, and make your decision based on which boards they cover.

For geography there are some excellent video resources online too - look at BBC class clips and geography at the movies. Hecan upload his own into GATM if it's good too!

Or log onto the TES website in the resource section

DS is year 11 and has only just stopped going to school, so he had started his GCSEs (we are in Wales). So he would need to continue with coursework - to be quite frank I have no other idea of how to go about it.

Using some books would seem best as he has problems with focus and concentration and I will need to be out at work quite often. I could set him a task to complete while I'm out.

You can do IGCSEs in a year easily if you are focused. I have just started my Year 9 daughter on three to take in the summer. My eldest is just about to start college and did 11 GCSEs and IGCSEs over 3 years. All of them we started in September and took in the summer. If the school are happy to help with the coursework, or you have someone else who will, keep him going on the boards he is doing. Otherwise, you'll probably have to start afresh, I'm afraid because coursework can be very hard to do as a home educator.

We did mostly Cambridge have a look at their website here but also some Edexcel.

The books we used were mostly specific to those boards.

Geography we have the second edition which maybe cheaper

Science as three separate subjects, Biology, Physics and Chemistry (which you can take at foundation level if he finds it hard. The foundation papers are lovely and very accessible). Physics Biology and Chemistry were three we used.

English Lit we just got the York notes on the books she was studying, and DVDs/ film versions if any were available - this helped massively.

Maths I mostly used past papers, Collins, CGP and Edexcel's own GCSE maths books. Most of the GCSE maths books you can buy will cover much the same stuff. DD1 found the Collins maths the most accessible.

Oh and bitesize GCSE is brilliant. Set him a section to read. There is a test at the end of each section and often other videos and activities. I found it went in much more than from a book.

I don;t know where you live but we found that visits to INTECH in Winchester covered half the Physics for us!