Year 8 summer exams in 2 weeks

[mrsjavierbardem]

Ds is at an all boys secondary and I have no idea how much revision he should be doing, is it obvious to everyone else do you think? Ds keeps saying his mates aren't studying but a lot of them may not need to. I just feel so out of touch with the school and find most of ds's teachers fairly chilly with Ds and me. I know it's a very hard job but communicating with us can surely only help.
There's a new HT who just started and hasn't so much as emailed parents, oh maybe once. I don't have any close friends who have kids at this school to ask, also form tutor was pretty useless when I asked her.

I make by ds work because he is very much the top of his year (high school in grammar school area- long story!) and just being top doesn't mean he is working to anything like capacity.
(Oh, and I know he's top of his year because his teachers tell me he's the only one getting the levels he's getting, and we talk regularly about making sure he doesn't coast)

DD started her Y7 end of year exams today. She had her first 4 today: Music, English. History and Drama. She is currently revising again as she has Maths paper 1, RS, French and Art tomorrow. She has 15 exams in total - urgh!

DD started revising 2 weeks before the holidays and then last week. This week she has revision to do each night, and also 1 or 2 revision slots during the school day.

She's been doing 2-3 subjects a night on average inc weekends, but did have a couple of days off completely last week.

We have encouraged DD to revise, using a revision timetable, to get her into good habits. And because she has chosen to do so too. She is in a fairly academic school but it doesn't all come quick and easy for her tbh; she needs to a bit, little and often, some subjects more than others.

She uses her school books but we also have the CGP Key Stage 3 study books and some of the workbooks in core subjects.

Ds had his yr8 exams in the penultimate week of last half term, so got his results back in the last week.

He also chose to selectively revise: choosing Geog, history, RS, sciences and languages as the main subjects that you need to revise for. Maths he's strong in (and you can't really revise for), English was unseen comprehension and unseen creative writing (just needed a bit of exam technique reminding). Music, art, drama you also don't really revise for.

For those subjects he did revise he did about 4-5 hours per subject (but school, like a pp's, didn't let up on hwk, or he might have done more).

His results varied from 60-80% which put him in the middle of his (top) set. The exams are usually very hard with some of the papers being old GCSE ones. I think the concept and practice of revising a whole year's worth of learning can only be a good thing and don't understand while all schools don't do proper end of year exam-condition exams.

Hulababy: ds had 14 exams in one week, which is a lot more close together than they would get in yr 11!

Yes I thought that, though guess they are shorter. But even so - 14 subjects in a week is hard going isn't it?

Good practise for the future I guess.

Jungfrau I think all schools do the exams but they place varying emphasis on them. I am not sure I would have known about the exams if I hadn't spotted it in the school calendar online.

Unfortunately DS is at a state comprehensive who don't seem to be monitoring him or pushing him at all. He is in top set for everything that is set but is towards the bottom of that set so is neither he super bright nor a struggler hence being there forgotten middle. As he doesn't seem bothered or keen to put in extra work, nor sees the point of it, it's a very hard job to get the best for him.

We got an emailed timetable from school.

Dd has Music, French listening/reading, French speaking, French writing, English Reading, English Writing, 2 maths exams, Science, RS, History, Geography & ICT

So 9 subjects, 13 papers altogether.

Well I asked him and he said "just Maths!"

Off to scour the school website to see if I can spot anything more!

We have a timetable. Definitely not just maths. The first week is non-core subjects, the second week is the really heavy stuff - 2 exams each for History, Geography, Science, Maths and English.