Sign in here if your child is in Yr11 - taking GCSE's this Summer.

[Milliways]

Hi
Apologies if this has been done this year, but I found a similar thread very supportive when DD started the exam treadmill (not at Uni) and we are about to start again with DS.

Milliboy is 15, late Summer baby so cannot get a job until the end of the Summer hols, when they will have all gone. Good news is - this gives him more revision time

He is at a boys selective Grammar school, so the pressure is on to achieve. He also wants to aim for a decent Uni so understands that good GCSE grades are vital.

Still doesn't make the whole process any easier for him or me :)

Who else has boarded the 2011 Exam Express?

mine has no idea what part of English it is today,' might be poetry' am thinking the A from her mock wil be a distant memory..

We have the year 9 and year 11 combo too. Lovely, exams for years non stop.
DS is on study leave ( ie still in bed ) will do some revision but needs constant breaks and lots of food, driving me and DH to drink ! ( any excuse )
Trying not to get stressed about it all, bit just wish he would tray bit harder and do well and not just coast along and get all grade c ( except Welsh where I think he and his friends are trying to fail in the most spectacular way )
Off to wake him up now......

We have the dreaded Y11 & Y13 combo at the moment, with DS1's 18th Birthday celebration on Friday (rather muted though because his A2s start next week). It's a horrible time of year to have birthdays when you are 16-21 beccause you have exams on/around your birthday

We try not to put any toomuch pressure on ds as the school do quite enough of that already. His head of year told him that a B is unacceptable and a C is a failure.

Sooo, no pressure there then...

Thank God I only have dd doing exams at the mo, ds is only ten :) She told me she not bothering to do stats on Fri Maths, I politely told her that was not an option...gggrrrrrrr

I've always found it difficult to know how to encourage my sons to revise without pressurising them, so I don't bother. Apart from revision sessions at school DS2, is not revising madly at home but is very chilled out and relaxed and will do the odd hour when he feels like it. My niece, OTOH, is a high achieving straight A student, but always vomits and turns herself into a nervous wreck before exams. She's at university now and still the same. I would rather my kids came out with B/Cs and have peace of mind than be like that.

DD is doing her Uni exams, but as she is away from home the stress is not felt here. The only time they doubled up was Yr2 & Yr6 SATs together

Those were the days.......

DS has French & Biology tomorrow.

French and Biol for dd tomorrow too. She said English today was good, who knows though ?

AQA English papers this week (Mon and Wed) have seemed very fair and approachable. Hope all your children have done well.

good to hear Roisin

Don't think it is an either/or cupawoman some students just are very nervy about exams at whatever level they are managing, regardless of external pressures to achieve. Very, very few people can continue in education unless they learn to be independent students and work at it outside of school.

I'm sure you are right baila, but I still find it very difficult to strike a balance between encouraging and pressurising.

Ooops... balia not baila

No worries

Hi, just returned to this thread after briefly being around at the start.

DS2 also had English today but his group came out slightly upset as the first part was split into 2 which mucked up all the timings and mark allocation they had been practising (or something similar...)

Did this effect anyone else's DC?

That doesn't sound familiar Greenshadow. Do you know what exam board he sits?

For AQA the named poem in Section A (for Cluster 1) was Two Scavengers. I haven't seen the paper, but spoke to the students afterwards. They said the question was something about methods the poet uses to portray people or groups of people.

It wasn't in two parts.

just read last few posts.

I too am mega stressed. me and dh.
ds is turnign into wild child and revision, pah.

perhaps he is nervous underneath the exterior?

The question on 'Two scavengers...' was something about political systems, I think. It was a nice paper. Could he have been talking about Section b as one of the questions was to describe the countryside at two different times of the year? They are often like this, though, so shouldn't have put anyone off...

ds2 doing ok, just biol tomorrow - he has found all the english papers ok this week, but had an awful ear infection over the weekend and on monday so hope it hasn't affected him too much
have ds1 doing As's at the same time so a reasonable level of stress in the loshad household atm

i shoudl add ds has done
english
re
and due to do
biology
chemisty
physics
maths
and german

some of these are triple science

it's odd isn't it slarty - my ds has yet to do his re, yet your ds has done his.
i know the triple science bit (teach it) he ends up with an gcse in each of biol, chem , phys - probably not all of the students at his scholl will

Sounds like the AQAone was different to the ones your dcs did today. DS had to describe a place, person or event which was memorable (I think that's what he said)

'Two Scavengers...' is about democracy (it is set in San Francisco) 'Nothing's Changed' is about Apartheid and would have been a really good poem to go with it in this question.