Yr 11 support thread - the scaffolding is holding up well

[pointythings]

Because we need a new thread now that things are really hotting up!

DS is panicking a bit about CIE IGCSE Drama tomorrow is anyone's DC doing this drama paper or has any tips for it? He is generally good at essay based subjects but really struggles with Drama written work for some reason.
Oh how I wish this was over

Hello all, I hope you don't mind if I join?

My ds is struggling. It turns out his geography teacher switched him to the foundation paper! He said it was so easy.

Eng lit, he said went ok. He is revising like mad for maths and physics, has R.E tomorrow but feels ok about it.

His brother is at the same school, and was slammed into a metal fence and got his arm caught between the slats. His arm is all swollen and his blazer ripped, and when ds heard about it he was fuming!

DS had eng lit (Great expectations/Romeo and Juliet) and geography decision making today. He thought geog went well, english not so much.

DS has a 2nd Geography paper after half term and that one is all the case studies. His one today was Sustainable Decision Making exercises.

Iamnotinterested - yes DS did Macbeth and Sign of the Four. He said it went "quite well i think" by text but I haven't had a chance to ask him any more as he is with a female 'friend' revising at the moment...

Mind you DS thought his last english mock went well and he went from a 7 to a 3 so who knows???

Anyone do WJEC geography B? DS said it went really well (it is his best subject) but there were 2 maths questions re speed=distance/time but he didn't have a calculator with him so may have got them wrong.

DS did the CIE paper with the poetry and prose (also Spies). He thought it went well. It was one of his stronger mocks but you never know. He always goes for the extract questions and is planning to do that in his drama paper on Friday.

He is quite chilled right now - listening to Soundgarden and mourning Chris Cornell - but the rest of the week has his weakest subjects (Maths, Physics) as well as the other English literature and two more Latin papers; he still seems to have quite a lot of Catullus and Ovid to get through. Looking forward to half term so he (we) can have a bit of a break.

Ds said English (R&J/GE) was "fine" and he "wrote plenty." I suspect this is all I'm ever going to get!

...Roll on August.

Fancyfingers- that's awful and really not what you need right now on top of exam stress. Hope they are both OK.

The gossip is that AQA messed up Christmas carol, calling the Staves 'chapters' which is a basic no-no and - more importantly- crediting the passage to the wrong stave / 'chapter'. Heads will roll!

As I said on the previous thread I am not allowed to see the paper until tomorrow but after listening to our pupils and reading online it does seem as if some schools will be penalised for text choices. If you chose R and J and Christmas Carol you might have come a cropper. Fortunately for us we did either The Tempest, Much Ado or Merchant and Pride and Prejudice ( a dream question) or Sign of Four! Seems rather unfair that questions were clearly not of equal difficulty.

Did anyone's dc do Inspector calls today and Men and mice?

DD said there was an announcement at the start of their exam about the references in the Jekyll and Hyde question being to the wrong chapter. AQA I think

Yes that is true.

DS reported that too.

ambition is the big Macbeth theme which they cover ad nauseam. I think if dd had had that she could've written the whole thing from memory. She did edexcel & they had control instead. Which caused a bit of head scratching but I think most of them managed to come up with something they were happy with.

Absolutely. Ambition is a bog standard Macbeth theme-the male aggression thing isn't for R&J. Might it work in their favour in terms of grade boundaries?

I don't think the idea of male aggression in R and J is at all left field actually. Not sure that the students will use much subject terminology or context when writing though. This has been an on-going issue with R and J, including in the sample papers.

To disagree (sorry Bertrand) Tybalt and Mercutio are far and away the most interesting characters in R and J : assuming candidates remembered them!

I think it will be left field for lower ability kids- particularly if they are looking for something they have revised...

oh one thing I wanted to ask - dd swears that they have been told that the "exam board don't like you using additional sheets" ... can this be true? She said she had to make her writing really small to fit it all in the answer booklet ???

Grade boundaries do not address individual texts so if the most popular text, Macbeth, has an easy question the grade boundaries will go up.

"To disagree (sorry Bertrand) Tybalt and Mercutio are far and away the most interesting characters in R and J : assuming candidates remembered them!"

Absolutely- and high ability kids will have had a good time with it. (I know at least 2 who did!) Unfortunately there are only 7 of them in our school......so I suspect a lot of hard working and conscientious kids will have come a cropper........

All mine did revise was the fight scene though...!

The whole thing is left field for most students ... deep sigh...

"Grade boundaries do not address individual texts so if the most popular text, Macbeth, has an easy question the grade boundaries will go up"

Bugger.