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 :)

Also here until the 24th.

DD said Biology (OCR B) wasn't great, but shes fairly calm about everything

Maths this morning too. Then Eng Lit-poetry tomorrow.
Half term consists of school for Eng Lang, Maths and German

Good luck everyone today!

Walked into ds's room today and noticed it's getting messier and messier. I haven't really nagged him to tidy up as I didn't want to put further stress on him.

For us, the end is in sight. Less than ten exams to go, and I think by the end of this week, half the subject finished.

Got a bit more out of DD as I drove her to an activity, amazing how being stuck in a car together unties the tongue! DD said that the Science Foundation exams were easy for her (hence not being forthcoming discussing them in details), but is more worried about the additional exams. She says that she isn’t worried about Biology 2 and 3, nor Physics 2, but say that there is so much to take in in Chemistry 2 and 3, and Physics 3. Chemistry is her strongest subject of the three but she says it is by far the hardest beyond Chemistry 1. She said –worryingly- that there are still learning some parts of the curriculum of in Physics 3 (or was it Chemistry 3??) during revision time, although at least that means it will be fresh in their minds!

All this is coming on the week after the break, so I expect she will be doing more revising next week than she’s done so far.

Walked into ds's room today and noticed it's getting messier and messier

DS1's room is immaculate because he keeps tidying it as a displacement activity when he's supposed to be revising.

#EdexcelMaths is already trending on Twitter and they haven't even had the exam yet.

Over breakfast:

Me: Oh, I thought Latin was first today, but you have Maths at 9am and Latin this afternoon.
DD: Really?
Me: You haven't revised for that one, then?
DD: I haven't revised for any of them really!

Oh no Peace! I bet she has and she wanted to test you

Not sure why but feeling really anxious this morning, even though she isn't doing maths at A level it has been a massive obstacle/issue with us. She desperately wants a B - her mock was a C. She has put in so much work and effort. I need to relax. more

Its Edexcel.

Good luck everyone! heads over to twitter

oh no Peace!! Hopefully she just knows it all!

dds room is starting to disintegrate too. As long as she can find all her text books to return to school, that's the main thing! I will be here until the 24th too.

Splendid revision kit TheSecond!

Norbert, both are a good prep for AS maths.

Your DD's school actually supply text books OhYouBadKitten? I didn't think they did these days. The only text books DD has brought home from school were the poems and short stories anthology for English lit. I have bought all the revision guides and had to buy DD a copy of Of Mice and Men.

Good luck to everyone today. DD has a day off as she took maths in January, so she will spend all day revising poetry for tomorrow (AQA English lit)

Well, the day dd has been dreading for years has finally arrived. She spent a long time last night revising cumulative thingy

She puts so much effort in, it is heart-breaking when she doesn't get the results. Her mock was a D - although one point off a C. She panics. If she sits in her room she can nearly always work them out but her brain just switches off in maths exams. She's already convinced herself she is going to fail

Still, she had pancakes and bacon this morning and has swimming practice at lunchtime which she is looking forward to. She is smuggling in rescue remedy pastilles in her pencil case.

LOL Peace!!

hewl I was similar to your DD, so I completely understand her feelings. I believed I couldn't 'do' maths. I could, the teachers told me I could, but I didn't believe them. I got a C. It's heartbreaking, your poor DD.

Strangely, I have always had jobs that involve tons of maths, practical maths. I found sticking it into real life situations, with outcomes, made it easier. I am confident about Maths now, it's all about confidence isn't it?

DS is entirely the opposite, has an inherent belief that he can do maths, languages, art, drama he can't 'do', so he's gone off this morning pretty chilled.

I was A Good Mother and made the DC bacon butties, DH shook his head in disbelief...

I was originally going to be here until the 24th as DS started off on triple science. Part way through the year school announced that they weren't managing to cover the syllabus and everyone would now be doing double science. This was then amended so that triple science was available if you covered the further section of the syllabus in your own time. If there was a letter home I never saw it and I was unhappy at the way it was handled although it doesn't really affect DS as he isn't intending to take science any further. I'm assuming that this is why this year's Y10s are sitting core science now so that there is enough time to cover both additional and further in Y11.

DS did a practise non-calculator last night - didn't go well. He's worked so hard on his maths and has got to a position that an A is attainable IF and it's a very big IF he stops with the ridiculous mistakes. He did admit he wasn't focusing when doing it last night. Things like messy writing making 4000 look like 4600 so when he totalled it up he was 600 out! And trying to get him to explain what he's doing - just with a one-word heading - on the longer/multiple step questions! Hoping the exam will focus his mind enough.

needastrongone thank you! Yes it is really sad - she's genuinely worked really really hard. I never know what to say when she says 'but I work so hard and I still might fail, its just not fair and it makes me feel really stupid'

She's the opposite of stupid - very good at subjects like history which she got an A* in in her mocks.

She desperately wants to teach so she will need that Maths GCSE.

Icould that's really frustrating about the science. I think it is alot for them to cover in the number of timetabled lessons. Certainly at DS school they've tried a few different approached over the last few years. For DS it meant they started with some of the common modules (to double and triple) in Y9 so they got it done - but even then, with the coursework/CA seeming to take weeks, they only just finished the syllabus just after Easter, so have only had Paper 1 mocks in Y10 and Paper 2 mocks end April!

Hello lovely people.

Maths here today too. And DD is very nervous. She's another who believes she "can't do" maths, even though she clearly can! I have spent a fortune on tutors over the years, mainly to boost her confidence.

Good luck to everyone today

That's frustraing knitting and all sounds a bit of a mess. Teaching the triple science seems to have been a very rushed job at DS's school too wtih the syllabus being covered rigth up to the start of the exams and a lot of extra sessions not for revision but just to get through it. It annoys me as it's not as if the syllabus is new this year, and they put the kids into the sets half way through Y9 so they've had more than 2 years to cover it all, so I don't know why they seem to be unable to time the pace of the course correctly.

Maths is DS1's best subject, but I'm worried about his handwriting in the exam too. He has a scribe for everything else but didn't want one for maths because it's too hard to scribe apparently. I don't know why he couldn't write it for the scribe to copy out during the exam. If the marker can read his writing, he should get an A*. If not, who knows...

We're worried about English. He's doing WJEC English and hoping to get a C. He hates English but needs to get the C so he can do A-levels (and go to university afterwards). It is a hard slog getting him to revise for English because he hates it so much. He's predicted a C, so I'm hoping his teacher is right.

DD struggles with Maths as well. It just does not come naturally to her and she makes silly mistakes which then affect the outcome. She is perfectly capable of getting an A, and did in her mocks, but on the past papers she was doing yesterday evening she was only getting between 57% and 64% so she has gone in today not exactly brimming with confidence.

She will insist on working late at night, I could hear her revising her Latin at midnight . It seems crazy that she has 4 one hour Latin exams for one GCSE, but just two 1 3/4 hour English exams for two GCSEs.

I suggested we went to the Art exhibition this evening but apparently she needs to come home and revise History for after half term. She definitely needs a good rest.

I failed on the breakfast front this morning as I stayed in bed Went to a concert last night and my foot was very painful this morning.

dd has been invited to a party on Friday night with sleepover and I am going to let her go, she will need a complete break after the horror of maths.

English poetry tomorrow which she did amazingly well in her mocks, highest mark in her class, She loves unseen poetry "as you get good marks for just waffling on"

The maths syllabus was not finished for DDs class. They did Stats GCSE at the end of Y10 so spent all last year on that, giving them only Y11 to cover the whole Maths syllabus. Probably OK for the natural mathematicians but not for those who struggle with new concepts.

oh god exit [stressful emoticon]

I AM SO NERVOUS

Any word seeping out yet about the maths exams?

Are there diff exam board maths going on today - ie are we all going to be talking about the same one?