GCSEs 2018

[DoNotBringLulu]

Hi all, I am sure many of us with dc going into year 11 this year are trepidatious about teachers and pupils thrown in at the deep end due to the new GCSEs.

There is one thing I can do which I hope will help my ds (even though he thinks I'm mad!), which is to get hold of this year's GCSE English Language and English Literature papers, read the books and work through the paper myself - I studied English Lit at university over 20 years ago. I will know for myself after I've done this how difficult the exam papers are at least - I'm not sure who I can ask to mark it for me though!

Can anybody tell me how challenging the Maths and English papers were for their dc? I understand these were the two subjects introduced with the new format.

Also picking a levels was a nightmare! But she has decided on geography, maths, biology and psychology. She got a place at the local sixth form with a £500 bursary if she excepts ( which she won't as results are very low there )because of her high predictions. She wants to go to her current schools sixth form provided she gets at least a 5 in the English. And, her current school won't accept resits in 6 the form so fingers crossed!

Sostenuto I'm sure she'll be fine! Tell her to read a quality newspaper once a week paying particular attention to the opinion pieces for paper 2. Study the tone and analyse what they do to draw the reader in.
If you can capture the style it really helps with persuasive writing. Maybe spend an hour on it on a Sunday? Her A level options are almost identical to DS's, by the way. He has applied to his own sixth form (but needs very good results to do 4 GCSEs), a sixth form college and another school sixth form. I think 3 is enough applications!

Loose that is brilliant advice about the opinion pieces in the quality newspapers. Just read out aloud a piece in the Guardian about car pollution. and then the comments afterwards. we have been discussing it ever since, the way she mixed up the colourful language with the formal persuasive language. I said to ds he could see that slang could occasionally be used - ie informal colloquialism like put your back up in formal persuasive piece, and he countered that slang SHOULD NEVER BE USED in formal writing, so we looked at how little slang she used, but the effect of one little bit etc etc. Good stuff!

ds has ASD so is very fixed on the "rules" of persuasive writing and tends to bombast.

The Guardian is good - regular columnists tend to use a mixture of humour, often self-deprecating, small amounts of colloquialisms (it's a technique, I promise!) and all the rest - direct address, little anecdotes, exaggeration, facts. OK some aren't like that but a mix is good! It helps to read, think which bits you find persuasive and work out why. Then maybe write a response to the article nicking some of the techniques. (You can tell I'm teaching paper 2 after Christmas!) oh, and look at the headlines as well for ideas.
There's a good example of the genre on the AQA website - Jay Rayner trying to help his son with his homework and failing to come up with a metaphor for pizza is quite funny! (Actually his restaurant reviews are very DAFOREST although the Paris restaurant he hated involved language unsuitable for GCSE!)
Another thing to remember is the exam boards are trying to pick out themes of some interest to teenagers and ones that they have a nineteenth century equivalent, so if you look on the British Library website they have some examples e.g children and work. I'll come back later with some links. Think work, Education, leisure activities, animal welfare/zoos/environment/travel for possible exam themes.

Sostenuo, please be careful when constantly telling her she is amazing. Depends on how you are doing it of course but it could be that trying to live up to your description of her as amazing is adding to her anxiety albeit subconsciously.

Thanks loose will do as you say!

User - don't know how else to tell her to believe in her own ability. Any suggestions welcome please!

Well Loose MY O' levels were definitely harder than the new GCSES, regardless of what mmzz says! At least that's what I keep telling DD to keep her feet firmly on the ground.

Sostenueto I work with post grads, many of whom had straight A*s all the way through their exams and now can't cope with the idea of being consistently mediocre to get through their professional exams when their job depends on getting just enough marks to pass in a lot of subjects in a very short space of time.

Helping your DgD develop resilience is one of the most helpful things you can do. Acknowledge that she is disappointed, but that she will bounce back and may surprise herself later. Focus on what she can learn from making mistakes at this stage and build on that next time.

Stickerrocks that's exactly what I said to her at the start of these mocks. I said treat it as a learning curve, jot down what you were not sure of and do more work on those bits. Tick off what you do know and you will surprise yourself. No matter the results just learn from them and not fret about them. ..doesn't help when the school decides to give mock results in an envelope in January ( no relief for Xmas for the poor children!).

I have no idea why they are doing these ridiculous results days. It's either going to convince them to abandon all hope now or they will think that the results in the envelope guarantee them the same results in August so they can stop working. In my day.....

Lol! Stickerrock! Well if my DgD results are not what she wants think she will go to bits.

LooseAtTheSeams - Head of English has been in touch regarding DD's mock paper, I've PM you, could you let me know what you think?

Oddsocks will look and get back to you!

dd has just come down and told me she has abandoned all hope with her Geography. I tried to discuss with her the geographical factors affecting UK (ie flooding erosion population growth) because she said that was what she needed to revise and had no idea what it meant (think she was exaggerating there) and she put her fingers in her ears Not holding out much hope for Geography, she resents her teacher for being mousy

Meanwhile ds2 is arranging to go to Mass first thing tomorrow morning with a clearly very devout friend and has been watching a programme about the Spanish Armada

knitting Take the route of least resistance for the next couple of days & offer help if she wants it. Alternatively, stick your fingers in your own ears and sing "lalalalala" if she asks you for tea, clean clothes etc.

luckily the Mock is over by tomorrow pm. but of course Geography will not "go away"...

ds2 has now reversed earlier tendencies to being adorable and is being thoroughly tiresome trying to interrupt dd's revising, and also trying to get me to agree to him attending a late evening football match the night before we get on a long haul flight early the next morning. His efforts to "persuade" me through oratory were a triumph but no, he is not going. He has also scattered wet clothes on the floor, which he was about to hang up and has now forgotten about in his agitation over the football.

Now this is what I think is weird. My dgd is brilliant at geography, has won prize for highest attainer in year since year 7 and has been a level 9 since year 8 and has already waded through half an a level work in prep for the a level. It involves essay type questions very analytical subject but she can't cope with the English exams??? r.e which is essays a level 8 so why the hell can't she cope with English???

Sostenueto you ask a good and pertinent question, actually. To do really well on the current English language spec you need not just to be able to identify techniques that writers use but to comment in detail on why they've used them and the effect on the reader. There are very few marks for finding information and most of the emphasis is on inference. The crucial thing is the detail. The texts are completely unseen, don't forget, so you can't learn answers as such, only to really hone your technique. And this has to be done in a short space of time given the number of questions. If they took a phrase out of the text and asked what literary device was being used then you dgd would be fine. Instead she has to find it, identify it, decide why the writer used it and then comment in detail on how it's effective.
So children who are very good at learning concrete information and applying it can struggle when they have to analyse the intentions of a writer they've never studied before. The examiners are taking into account that they are only 15 but it is a challenging exam.
It's not so bad with English lit where you have set texts and some idea of what the questions are likely to be but the unseen poetry analysis causes problems.

So clearly we need to add a poem a day to our Guardian Opinion reading!

Ds1 made a complete hash of his unseen poetry exam 2 years ago; I remember it was a poem about stealing apples possibly WW1 related? He became fixated on the idea that one of the protagonists had Alzheimers and went off on a tangent about that and I think missed the whole point of the poem. He certainly did not get the equivalent of a 7/8/9 overall. What seems to be the biggest problem is working out what the poem is actually about in the first place, they panic and jump in seizing what they think is the meaning and then make the wrong comments about the technique accordingly

The Apple Raid by Vernon Scannell. Just looked it up. There is nothing about Alzheimer's...really quite odd that he leapt to that conclusion...

although I suppose he had got the mood that it was about memory and sadness, so in one way you could say he was picking up on some aspect of the poem Anyway, that was two years ago.

Nettles I can see why he might think that as well! If he gave good reasons I'd be sympathetic. (Although the poem is using the apple raid as a metaphor for a bombing raid!)
My top tip for unseen poetry (from bitter experience of students at university level not doing this) is read the title! It helps a lot. Also in the exam there's usually a bit on the comparison question that at least gives you the theme.
The Poems on the Underground anthology might be useful if you wanted to do a poem a week. It has a good range.

Yes, I can see why she may be struggling in English now......

Sostenueto the good news is practice is the main thing and I suspect school will do a lot between now and the exams. It may be they've done a lot on literature and much less on language as I've heard this from quite a few people. The years behind this cohort are getting a better deal as they have longer to work on the language skills.