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 :)

Twas me raspberry.

I'm in the middle of stop using gadgets chat as well Exit

Just signing in as a parent, DS1 (who owns a clutch of ASD spectrum diagnoses, will be sitting some papers on computer and all of them in the room for SEN children) has Biology 3 tomorrow as well as the resit for Biology 2. ICT on Weds - possibly his one good chance for a decent grade, at parents evening the teacher said 'if I can't work something out I ask him' then chemistry 3 and 2 (re-sit) on thurs. We are Welsh board though (WJEC). Feel for him as he knows his stuff mostly but doesn't do well in exams. He wants to do bio and chem A level but I have no idea if he will make the grades required. Happily though he is totally unstressed by the whole experience. Thankfully I am away from home at the moment as I would be making him stressed when he is fine when left alone!

Wish I could just magic time away until August 25th so I know which corner I need to fight for him to do what he wants.

Good luck to everyone with exams today. Ds has CIE Biology which should be okay (fingers crossed).
His last igcse is 27th May but then has to wait until 15th June for last AS maths paper :(

I'm a bit concerned about the iGCSE Biology Extended Theory paper. DS1 has been revising since the end of March, has done over 2000 Biology questions on Tassomai, several hours of non-Tassomai revision and a couple of past papers. All that and he still doesn't know all of the syllabus, because there's so much of it.

Agree - Second - the volume of material for Biology is massive. (my ds is taking the same exam). He was doing a past paper at the weekend with questions on fish, paper and plastic bags, leaves, genetics, asexual reproduction and digestion to name a few. I assumed the paper was about 2 hours long not 75 minutes!
When DS is stuck I encourage him to think 'general biological concepts' and take an educated guess.
Good luck to your ds for today.

Good luck to everyone with exams today. DS1 has core science today (he's not doing triple). After some last minute revision last night which I thought went quite well, he went to sleep with his revision notes under his bed in the vain hope some extra information may sink in over night .

Like a couple of PP have mentioned, DS's school aren't on study leave yet either and instead have structured revision sessions in school. I think it makes a lot of sense but there's been much moaning from the students that "it's not fair" as it is the first year school have tried this approach.

I've managed to juggle things at work so that most days I can be home when he gets in from school, to try and support him and feed him ice cream (thanks to the PP for that idea!) but also so that if he's particularly grumpy I can rescue DS2 before WW3 breaks out!

Bonjour tout le monde. aujourd'hui, c'est français ici

First time on this thread - Citizenship yesterday, Biology 1 today. Last exam is statistics on 27th June. They have to be in school full time until half term - there are revision sessions before each exam.
My main 'stress' is making sure that my daughter and her friends get to school in time for the morning exams - the one bus from the village can be unreliable so the fall back would be an early train (station in next village) but there's a train strike tomorrow! Luckily we can arrange lifts in between the pool of mums.
Good luck to everyone.

Good luck everyone! My DD slept all night. Seems ok this morning and recognised it was a panic attack. She liked the hypnosis app I put on her phone. Helped her sleep. Just got to try to get her to school with no panicking now. Hopefully once we get through the first day it will get easier. I am clinging onto that anyway!

marmite I think you are right, so much is fear of the unknown. School do all they can with past papers and mocks in "real" conditions but it's not real. I think that once they've done one or two it will be easier. I am glad that she's feeling better this morning.

For those of you who are iGCSE and have a few exams ticked off already - am I right? Does the exam routine just fall into place after a few?

Icouldbe I think that does happen. DD has had so many mock exams over the last few months that when she did Citizenship yesterday she said it felt like another mock.

Her school does a couple of "short, fat" GCSEs in year 10, and DD did maths IGCSE in January, so she is used to the exam routine, having 3 under her belt already.

knitting - I think you are right about the routine, the process does get easier and students know what to expect. I was in school this am and students sitting Biology this pm seemed quite calm and relaxed compared to first written exams on 3rd May.
My ds had completed 4 iGCSEs and one AS before these exams and he is used to the routine - not sure I am though!

Yes, the stress before the first exam was the worst. I think it's the fear of the unfamiliar and the unknown. After that, they know what the procedure is, so it's less scary.

DD seems quite calm today. She has already got quite a high %age of marks under her belt for French coursework / assessments and has done well in all the practice papers they've done in recent weeks so she's feeling OK. She's been texting me in French

Good luck everyone today

The only think she's panicking about is whether to go to form before the exam or not - it's the first morning one she's done

We got a panic phone call from school last night because apparently today's biology was missing from some exam timetables. The poor woman in the office sounded so stressed and upset I almost offered to go in and help with the phone cells. DD reckons 75 sitting the exam today and all will have to be confirmed!

Wow. That's a lot of students to contact. I keep having to check out many pieces of paper to make sure if the exams are morning or afternoon ones. Have this fear of missing a morning exam because we thought it was an afternoon one. Going to get a large coffee and croissant in Sainsburys now.

I hope it gets easier, dd is putting a lot of pressure on herself. She has ridiculous targets and worries that it isn't ok if she doesn't meet them. Still, she had a good breakfast and was safely delivered to school in plenty of time to have a joint panic with friends.

Situated - oh dear! how can they have managed to do that?! I feel for them. Hope everyone makes it in today. Is it the afternoon one?

marmite - really glad she is ok, poor love. At least she can see that it was a physical reaction to stress.

Kitten Thanks. Everyone is so friendly on here. I was too scared to post before but felt desperate last night.

I agree that the predicted grades are hanging over them. My DD was trying to guess the other day if she would reach the predictions. Told her I couldn't care less what she was predicted and that I knew she was working hard and doing her best.

Yes, afternoon. DD says she is sure all the DC are aware and that school is just being over cautious. Her first timetable was missing it, but it was very quickly replaced. I'm sure I'd be the same if I was the exams officer though!

We is a nice bunch on this thread :)

I do wish they wouldn't do predicted grades for gcses. I know they need them for uni, but they don't need to to them for kids - or at least they don't have to tell them. It becomes like a shackle, no matter what the prediction.

That poor exams officer.

I'm supposed to be working right now. I'm doing a crap job of that! Still, if I'm sat at the computer typing I can pretend that's work right?!

My DD needed predicted grades to get an offer at the 6th form she wants though

Hello Marmite It really helps to talk to other parents doesn't it? And everyone hear seems very nice and, importantly, sensible

French exam this morning here too. dd is then staying on at school for revision classes so won't know how it went until much later on. The croissant and coffee sounds very tempting marmite. A big welcome to all new posters.
dd already has Core Science GCSE (was taken in Y10 by Double Scientists). It was good practice for the real thing though.
Biology Core papers for most exam boards are this afternoon so that should give more time for situated's school to contact everyone. OCR have 2 different Science syllabuses (is that the correct plural) 21st Century and Gateway. So I guess having the exams on different dates makes sense as otherwise there is a risk the papers will get muddled up.

DS1 just asked me if this afternoon's Biology extended theory paper is open-book!

No! There is an entire O-level style syllabus and you were supposed to have memorised it!

He is going through the sample paper now. There is one question that I wouldn't have known at A-level and didn't study until undergraduate biochemistry class.

marmite DS1 has been diagnosed with panic disorder (amongst other things) so I do sympathise.