DD in year 10 and struggling

[wangle99]

DD went into year 10 in September this year. She is quite bright and is placed in top sets for all subjects and has good estimated GCSE grades. These last couple of weeks she says she is struggling and feels stupid and can't do it. I'm unsure whether this is an issue or whether she is just been a kevin teen and being grumpy and over dramatic.

I've tried to sit down and help her, this evening she reeled off everything she had to do homework wise so I suggested which order to do it in and she has done it but she just panics so much.

Not sure whether I need to see the school, ride it out for a bit longer or how to help DD. Oh, and she's REALLY peeved she's got to go to school tomorrow when her brother's is closed because of the strike lol

Anyone BTDT? Thank you

Is there a teacher she feels comfortable with, who she could ask for help, or to be a sort of mentor? She sounds like she is lacking confidence. Some pupils need to understand the longer term plan and to feel reassured that they will fit everything in. Do they have study sessions after school. She might like to do some work there?

Do you know a pleasant high-achieving sixth former who would be prepared to come and help your dd by going through her work with her? That can be less threatening than a tutor and more reassuring because they've been there themselves quite recently.

Maybe she is just getting very tired towards the end of a long term?

Thank you for your responses. I think alot of it was to do with the music exam this morning which went ok, she seemed alot happier when I spoke to her after it. I do think she is panicking, we have a plan to go through the excess work and I am going to email each teacher concerned and see a) whether they have any concerns and b) if they do what we can do to help.

I also think she is possibly tired as it seems year 10 is alot different to year 9!

I think now is a tired time for many of them. Teach her the importance of a good list, it's a useful skill in terms of keeping on top of work.

Y10 is a step up from KS3. She is now doing GCSE courses and should realise that they are more demanding than the stuff she did before.

Reassure her that her feelings are normal.

Ds was a bit like this, not top sets but worried. Early in year 10 he set up a spreadsheet, included every subject and then every sub heading from the text books. This helped him with revising. As time went on he colored sections red amber green and dated them, so if a topic was red, he would revise it and date it. Then a few months later he would run through the same topic again and mark it green amber or red. Because each topic is listed, nothing gets left out. It sounds a bit anal but he does need help and this works for him at reducing panicking.

How many subjects is DD doing? Could she be feeling swamped by the amount of work rather than the level of difficulty?

CecilyP could be right. Is she doing a lot of express subjects (eg 2 languages taught in timetable space of 1, triple science taught in space of 2) and/or subjects like art & textiles that are very heavy on coursework? Our DD was advised not to do art & textiles together because of this and heavy academic workload, and instead picked art and music, as this didn't require much extra work for her.

Maybe call her form tutor and explain issue and ask him/her their opinion, they will have a better idea if it just requires more planning or if she is actually overloaded given subjects. I wouldn't leave too long as if it is a problem then it is easy to sort now.