GCSEs 2012 support thread

[Kez100]

Here we go........hold on tight!

Physics went well but the harder paper is next week so we are not out of the woods yet. It is geography tomorrow then four days to the next one so DD can relax a bit revise carefully for next week.

iGCSE Physics this morning went ok according to DD but unfortunately she had a really bad stomach ache and had to take a rest break (she is allowed these due to a particular condition which also causes stomach aches.) Hope it didn't affect the grade too much.

PE this afternoon- she achieved an A on her practical but apparently the theory paper is almost impossible to get an A on and last year there were only 6 marks between an A* and an E?!!!!! so not hoping too much- think she will be happy with a B- fingers crossed.

Only 6 marks between an A and an E Bridgit*? That's crazy. Art seems to be similar, you can drop just one or two marks and you drop a grade according to DD.

Brigit apologies!

Crazy thresholds! I know my godson got a C in A level Maths module 1. I thought he had done badly but he said 6 marks more and it would have been an A.

It is absolutely crazy the grade boundaries. However some papers are only out of 45 so I suppose they have to be quite close together. Some are just ridiculous though - in DS's science coursework you needed 36/40 to get an A* and 30/40 for a C! That's only two marks per grade which is worrying.

On a more positive note DS has done an english practice essay today and has started on some chemistry revision. Not the most productive morning but more than I expected he would do!

Anyone's dc doing 21st Century Science tomorrow? The 'Ideas' module. I'm confused, dd insists she doesn't need to revise because she gets given an 'article' to read and all the answers are in said article! Can anyone confirm this? She has another one next week.

Just got back, this thread has been busy.
IdontknowFajitas for breakfast! I'm impressed.
PE was easy according to DS.
Heavy day tomorrow, two chemistry papers which he is fine with and the dreaded English lit poetry.
His very last English exam. Celebration tomorrow I think.

No exams for DD today, but she had an appointment to have her brace adjusted. We have to drive an hour and a half and the appointment was at 9, so an early start. She came back then went to school for Physcis and English lit revision classes. During the afternoon, the back bracket of her brace fell off, presumably after having been fiddled with this morning, so now she has a lose wire in her mouth as well as the ache of a newly adjusted brace, and has Physics and English Lit exams tomorrow. I'm a little bit cross (as well as worried she'll be distracted). I now have to take more time off work next week to take her back for it to be fixed. Grrrr.

Chemistry and English Lit tomorrow here tomorrow - dreaded Lord of the Flies and the wonderful Carol Ann Duffy. DD has been "revising" in the park!

DS's been under house arrest today - still didn't improve his levels of productivity!

For those whose DC are doing the anthology poetry on AQA - which group of poems are they doing? DS is doing the Place poems but can't seem to find a great deal of resources for them online. Is that a less popular cluster?

21st Century Ideas papers - yes, my daughter has both like your DC.

There is a pre-release document for both and that gives some information about science in real life. I can remember seeing one of my daughters papers - one with Hypothermia, the National Grid and something else on it. They read the pre-release and then get an idea of the science behind it (daughter did both of these things in revision lessons) and the teachers give them an idea of what sort of questions might come up. I think it is designed to test understanding of science in real life.

They only had two lessons on it and she has Lit poetry tomorrow as well as core Ideas in Science. She needs to revise for English Lit, so has taken the attitude if the teachers aren't pushing the Ideas Science then presumably there is not much more that can be done so long as she has been at the lessons - which she has. (I do hope she isn't proved very wrong).

Cardi - not needed at the moment. Hope she doesn't end up in any pain.

Conflict cluster here

Aargh!
DS's school have, from this week told them they don't need to be on the premises / studying if they have what is now a 'free' lesson due to them having finished that subject.
His timetable today meant he had to be in first andlast lesson only.

We talk about how that leaves him more time to study, and, although he hasn't got many exams over the next week, there will be clusters of exams coming up, so it would be a good idea to start spending an hour or two on them, etc.,etc.,

Guess what he's done ?

Period 1 - in class
Period 2 - sat on the field in the sunshine and revised (possibly )
Break and Period 3- football outside with his mates
Period 4 and lunchtime and Period 5 - Down to the park with his mates.

He really just doesn't get it, does he ?

You are right that they don't "get it". I think DD has woken up rather too late to the fact that there is a direct link between the work you put in and the grade you get. She is very likely to have thrown away the A she was predicted for her Chemistry GCSE tomorrow which was based on the practical and the 1 paper she has done because she has basically refused to revise for the last few weeks. She has already checked away the A for English by refusing to revise for one of the controlled assessments and the best she can hope for is an A. It is frustrating, but in the end I stopped having a go at her, as it was just making her worse.
She has to learn the hard way unfortunately and will hopefully learn her lesson when the grades come out and will later on salvage her potential University place through her AS levels.

Ds is doing conflict cluster as well.

He got up got the chemistry papers out, then spent the next hour telling me how many points he needed for chemistry. Then how much he wants to go to MIT and finding out what are the top engineering universitys, the how he can't wait to go to uni,
Made me late for swimming, the rang me up quite pathetically asking for blister plasters because he had a blister on his thumb from writing.

"Relationships" cluster here.
After tomorrow he has only got physics next Wednesday then nothing until after half term. They are in school until 1st June though so there will be lots of gaps in the lessons for revision. It's a rural school and most of them are bussed in so can't get to and from home very easily.

kez100 thank you so much. She has had loads of science revision lessons at school, so hopefully they have covered it all and she will be fine. Just found it strange that she didn't need to revise!
In return I can tell you dd did conflict poetry in January and got a B. English is not her strongest subject and she found it pretty straight forward.

Tbh I'm not surprised there aren't many people doing the place cluster, I've flicked through DS's anthology and all of the other clusters seem a lot more interesting. He's got a 30 line extract of the Prelude to tackle. He's hoping it doesn't come up though as he says it takes a good couple of minutes to read so that would use a lot of time in the exam!

Thanks Knitted.

I worry for my daughter a bit in Science Ideas because she's a foundation paper scientist and isn't great at it and I think applying science is harder, not easier. She is right on the borderline though and, sitting foundation, she needs a decent grade on it if she is going to stand any chance of C Grades because you can't really get away with failing any papers badly as there is no way of gaining credit from an A or B on another module as all are maximum C. Most you can hope for is a high C to give a little bit of headroom but that's not very much : certainly not enough to offset a bad module.

She tells me I am a bit wrong on that - she could have got a higher grade on the controlled assessments to give her a bit more credit to help with a bad module exam. Then she said "but having said that, I don't think I did! I think they were C grades"

Dd does higher and so far has a mixture of B's and C's, not sure what the final grade will be. You're right though if a C is the highest a foundation student can achieve in all aspects that does not really allow them much to fall back on. If it's any help dd insists all the answers they need for tomorrow are within the 'article' they are given. Next week is the same but they need to use more of their own knowledge. This is what dd says so don't hold me to it! Good luck to your dd for tomorrow, and you Kez100!

Thanks and to you and yours......and everyone else on here.

Poor old DD is having a pre-physics wobble. She is not happy at all. And i have no knowledge of physics whatsoever so can't help. Poor baby.