Parents of Year 11's - in the midst of exams!

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

roll up roll up, for our new support thread for all parents of year 11 kids. Whether your kids work hard or not, what ever their goals (or not!) this is our place to de-stress :)

Knitting we have a white board which we write the revision timetable and free time/breaks on. This week we have just done Monday-Friday. Tonight we will just do the weekend. Think that small chunks are better. Stops the arguments as the board rules!

Got the whiteboard from wilkos btw. £4 and comes with pen/magnets. A2 size.

morning all, good luck to all exam takers!

Knitting - phew! horrid when thoughts like that get into your head.

Main thoughts this weekend will be on English Lit and the 6 bazillion quotes that have to be learned.

I hope today goes well Lobster. Big day!

DS seems to be learning endless quotes for English kitten - do they really need to memorise endless quotes do you think?

Now you've worried me. I don't know if any quotes being learnt here. Off to ask DD about this.

DD another with 6 exams next week.

In the AQA English lit exam they are provided with a clean copy of the text, but flicking through it to find the quote they want can use up time, so some students with good memories choose to memorise some quotes to save time in the exam.

This does not include DS1, who couldn't memorise a quote if his life depended on it. Instead, he is planning to try to remember where in the text each quote is (e.g. first paragraph of chapter 2).

Thanks second. That is what my DD just told me. She seems quite chilled about it. Says there is not a lot of point in learning loads of quotes as they don't know what the question will be on. Better if they know the book well. Hope that's right.

I hadn't realised before this week that the different exam boards used the same time slots.
I think they aim to use the same time slots where possible. BUT in some subjects e.g. History, RS there are several different options so the times will depend on which option they are doing. Some exam boards have more than one syllabus so that affects timing too.
dd will have GCSEs from 4 different exam boards: Edexcel (3 subjects), OCR (3 subjects), WJEC (2 subjects) and AQA (1 subject).
Anyone know if Mr Bruff covers more than one syllabus. (Watching Youtube videos is very popular with dd).

I shouldn't need a whiteboard - I've painted the kitchen door with blackboard paint. The top third is the school timetable (exams/revision sessions/normal lessons) and the rest is the things that are happening this month. There's so much happening this month that I had to kneel down to get it all on.

The revision timetable started well enough but has been abandoned. DS says (quite rightly) that if he's done four hours revision at school then he shouldn't be scheduled for a further three hours in the evening. He had a few months out of it, it got him revising early and it's paid off now.

EngLit is "fine mum".

Same here knitting. He did loads over Easter so I'm hoping it's just topping up now.

Spanish listening this morning was hard 😭

lashingsofgingerbeer Thank you - you are right about exams and SEN. It's a whole new level of anxiety.

I'm just waiting to hear about this morning.

Only reason I know all the exam boards is because I work in a school so I'm familiar to understanding DDs work and textbooks and what everything stands for... Otherwise I wouldn't have a clue

which exam board for Spanish derektheladyhampster? am waiting for a text from DS to tell me how it went

Well it's good news from OH's house - his DS (who has ASD) has been in for an exam, which went OK, and is back home for an early lunch and OH will take him back in for his afternoon exam.

This is a major positive development - a lot of exams have been previously missed / refused and there have been holes punched in bedroom walls.

These exams today aren't GCSEs, they are functional skills 2, but passing them will make such a difference to his confidence and future.

Spanish was very hard apparently but 60% of it done through coursework and orals which have all gone well, so fingers crossed...

Learning simple quotes will save lots of time in the English Lit exam.

Was it AQA Spanish Nyama? - still no word from DS - hopefully just chilling with his mates and has forgotten to switch his phone back on....

EdExcel

Thanks

DD also said (EdExcel) Spanish was hard. Reassuring to know that it wasn't just her. Glad that is one subject over and done with. These 'bitty' exams are so different from the olden days we I did it. We had one of exams per subject, and that was it.

DDs whole spanish cohort thought it was hard. Some of them went to find the spanish teacher to moan. We've always suspected the teacher isn't brilliant but tbh dd was just glad to get out of school and come home. She's not the type to make a fuss.

The girls I work with do aqa - that was hard. DS does an igcse but I don't know which board, so it sounds as though it was tough all round

LR - well done to your DS. It's such a relief when things go well.

Thanks, derek.

My DD did Spanish four years ago. She thought it was the hardest GCSE after Maths.