GCSE studying/revision

[WishfulThanking]

Hi
I am just looking for advice on what Year 10 DS should be doing now to prepare for his GCSEs next year.

He always does his homework quickly and easily and I never have to ask him if he has any, but how much extra studying should he be doing? He's in a normal secondary school, doesn't seem to get much homework (ie I never see him do any, but according to his reports it is always completed and to a good standard),and has high target grades in all subjects. I don't have any concerns, but I don't want to let him down by just leaving him to it.

How do we go about creating a revision/study timetable for this period? How many hours a day is reasonable?

He has never been a person that reads for fun...would encouraging him to start reading daily have any effect on his English grade in a year's time, or have we left it too late?

Thank you

Why would he need to start revising now for exams in a year's time? I'm sure the school will indicate when he needs to start thinking about this.

Erm, because he has high hopes for himself, why else?

But he will be bored out of his brain if he revises for a year before his exams!

get him to look at anything that he has had trouble understanding during the day/week.

If he still doesn't understand then he can go to his teachers with it.

There are only sample papers out for most of the subjects so there is no real point at looking at exam questions yet as we don't really know how they will be framed (or marked)

If he has end of year 10 exams, get him to make a revision timetable for them and to try different revision techniques so he knows what works.

For any content heavy subjects (e.g. science and history) make sure that before he enters y11 revision notes (i.e. revision cards or mindmaps) are made and up to date. (Do them for the end y10 exams where applicable).

DS2 is in Y10. He has end-of-year exams in three weeks, so at the moment he is doing 1 hour of revision each day on top of his homework. He did an hour a day in the Easter holidays too.

The sort of thing he does depends on the subject:
English Lit: choosing & learning quotes about a particular character or theme
Languages: learning vocab & grammar
Maths, Sciences, Geography: practising answering questions.

All of this was his idea and he does it without any prompting or input from me.

For the subjects he wants to study at A-level, he also does extra reading 'around the subject', listening to podcasts of radio programmes etc.

DS1 did nothing like this in Y10, so DS2 seems unusually motivated from my perspective.

WishfulThanking does your DS have internal exams or tests this term? If so, he could use these as a dry run, making sure he understands the material covered so far and finding out what revision techniques work best for him.