GCSEs 2018 (2)

[Stickerrocks]

Pre-empting our 1000th post.

DS also planning to continue all music and sporting commitments. He has swapped from rugby to squash at school this term, so at least he won’t have Saturday matches.

TheSecond, he has a late August date for his grade 8, which feels a little more manageable!

mmzz your efficiency is awesome!

DD's piano grading will go back to August - although she will continue lessons (30 mins after school)... just one festival which she is competing in which is early March.

Looks like DD breaks up for study leave on 4th May - first exam 14th May - I think she has 7 exams that week

Dd can't cut back on extra curricular as it's compulsory at her school. She dances 4-6pm every night & on a Saturday morning.

I am delaying her Lamda exam to the end of June though rather than March.

DD has grade 7 clarinet and grade 6 singing this term, so lessons and practice have to continue - but am assuming that this is good down time from revision.

I don’t really want her to stop physical activities (5 hours a week) and drama (5 hours a week)....but it is a lot of time away from revision! Especially given her poor mock results.

And yesterday she was doing maths revision- the only mock she did ok in!!

Agree with Blue, you know your own child best. Perhaps discuss with your DC for their opinion, what about a halfway house approach, and suggest cutting back on some but not all.

From my own experience my DC has dropped the voluntary work she was doing for her Duke of Edinburgh but still continues to attend Scouts. She had completed her bronze award, and the silver is on “hold” until after GCSEs. She also continues to babysit most weeks, we have already discussed (although it was heated!), about her stopping the late night/early morning babysitting, need to revisit this one!

DS is revising as we speak

We had his last assessment point report on Friday, and he is now back on target for everything.

He did more french tests last weeks and got 7s for everything apart fro the listening, but that has come up to a 5.

He has been doing a lot of listening work so he is pleased this has shown improvements and his teacher is happy too.

He is still a bit stroppy about revising, but once started is ok.

He isn't giving up any of his activities either. He plays football once a weeks, but has 2 nights training for that, referees for a couple of hours on a Saturday, and cricket nets are starting soon.

He definitely needs the physical exercise to keep him happy as well as healthy.

WeE are just starting on the GCSE roundabout with DD, who is picking options at the moment. Eek!

It's nearly mid-day and DS1 is still in bed. I woke him up an hour ago, and again 30 mins ago.
I know that he's staying there to avoid working - he has revision timetabled and a lot of homework. Yesterday he spent hours contemplating how boring it is. Wow! What a revelation! It turns out revision is "boring"! Who knew?!

Exactly how many platitudes are there for this situation? I think I have mastered them all. But when he gets up (finally), I'm going to offer "A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step".
Will it work? No.
Will it make me feel hopeful for a second? Yes, a bit.

He is a mature boy. He knows better than this. He needs to find his own motivation.

I suspeçt you don't need high level reading comprehension skills to work out that I'm feeling a bit frustrated with him this weekend.

I know what you mean mmzz DS was up and then out on his road bike, who knows when he will be back and I'm pretty sure he didn't take any revision with him

mmzz thanks for the link for the revision planner, just created it to find our old PC will no longer print PDFs. Will try and print it off at work tomorrow. However DD has done some homework and is apparently going to start her revision tomorrow.. got a feeling that this revision planner could be a waste of time as she said “what I don’t feel like revising on the day I’m supposed to” and “what if I want to revise something else”?

DD was working yesterday so no revision - she was given previous Maths paper/History and English questionnaires and French at the end of last week so not expecting any other revision work.

Was very tempted to book a short holiday at Feb HT so glad I didnt ...DD now going into school on the Monday of HT to spend a complete day on DT (full credit to teacher for working during HT - there are only 8 students in the class)

Dd has no homework due to mocks just finishing. She's on exeat this weekend so she's done a dance & fitness class at the local leisure centre yesterday followed by prom dress shopping then today she has been swimming & done a workout.

She says she's going to do a bit of study later.

She's now put Newsies on Broadway HD!!!

She says it's sort of study because there was an extract from it in her music mock!

Have you found the prom dress?

No revision here, but we have been for a walk along the beach with my nephews dog! It was very bracing but good to get fresh air for all of us!

We are just about to re-do the revision timetable with the actual exam results and adding in the revision sessions she does after school. The good thing about this timetable is you can just print out a week at a time and re-jig the week around to suit what they actually feel like doing on the actual days. For all of February I just want to be confident that she is doing some revision in each individual subject - some need more than others, but this way she is in control, but I can quietly monitor progress.

Tonight is looking at maths weak areas and looking though those on some VLE Mathswatch thing that we have.

DD doesn't do much activity outside of school, but when we take her brother to kick boxing she usually does 20 mins on her French app.

We are Prom dress shopping during HT.... not looking forward to it ....we did go into a specialist shop before Xmas and it was very slow going - they had 100's of dresses and DD was daunted by having to chose what to try on...she did have a day out with friends trying on dresses which was far more successful.

We are in London during half term - watching Hamilton.

We've ordered 2 dresses on click & collect (same dress different colours) they didn't have her size in the shop.

All exams entered onto thestudentroom.co.uk....

Had not realised that they go on for sooooooooo long! From 14th May to 21st June!!! And lots of days doing 2 exams.

The website tool is good to allow you to prioritise ones you need to better in. I think that this is the first time DD has truly acknowledged that she cannot be targeting 9's in 12
subjects!

12!!! Swarskid2184 that's an awful lot in one sitting. DS is doing 10 which I think will be more than enough for him and will probably push him to the brink of exhaustion. Good luck to your DD is she worried about doing 12 or is it the norm at her school ?

DS has just physically exhausted himself on his bike and is now planning on 2 hours revision so hopefully that will mentally exhaust him (if he does it properly)

How did she come to be doing 12 Swarskid?

Triple science
English lit
English Lang
Maths
Further maths
4 options
RE

RE is compulsory and in addition to the 4 options they have to take. No rules on the options, although encouraged to take an MFL, and art subject and a humanity in the 4.

Too many in my opinion.

Bluebelle- it is the norm for top maths and science sets.

All take 4 options and compulsory RE. So minimum they take is 10.

DS is doing 10:
Compulsory:
English language
English Literature
Maths
RE
One MFL

Options
Double or triple science (DS chose triple)
2 other options

12 is a lot. Did your school say why so many?

Printed the exam timetable off DDs school website.

As usual DD is keeping me mostly at arms length, she says she will start revision tomorrow and not interested in the revision planner I printed off from The Student Room... Sigh ...