GCSEs 2018 (11) Big week coming up

[mmzz]

old thread

Belated thanks teenmum even though dgd doing aqa she still did both papers! All good practise!

Glad he's gone straight to A&E, Alexander. If worst case it is a mini-stroke, speed of treatment is the key. Can you get there to be with him?

Alexander hope your DH is ok- sounds like his colleague has reacted very quickly, which is a good sign whatever caused the symptoms
Lots of students trooping into their maths exam here, then tomorrow my class go in for English 2.
Fingers crossed everyone gets good papers!

What do they do with protractors I ve bought hundreds over the years

Also Alexander - bells palsy and tingling in the arm etc generally go together (not indicative of mini stroke)

Loose will we know soon what AQA will do about English lit paper 2? Or where would I look to find out please?

Best wishes, @AlexanderHamilton for your DH's speedy recovery. Try not to worry - I know that's asking the impossible.
Are you going to the hospital to wait with him?

hmc there's been a case on the BBC in the past couple of days about precisely that misdiagnosis - again, patient in question ok but the misdiagnosis didn't help. Hopefully it'll be at the front of their minds at the moment, which should help avoid mistakes.

Oratory - I have purchased about 4 of those maths sets (you know - protractor, compass etc in a tin) over past 18 months. Keep having to replace disappearing ones

Didn't see that goodbyestranger - interesting!

@AlexanderHamilton

I had Bell's Palsy a few years ago. If he does have that, here are my tips:

Start taking steroids as soon as possible.
If the muscles around the eye are affected, extra eye care will be needed. I was unable to close my eye so had to use ointment and tape it closed at night.
Soft food is helpful. Have a tissue handy when attempting to drink (dribbling happens).
Try to see a physio as soon as it's feasible and do the exercises religiously.

I started seeing a slight improvement after 4 weeks and had complete recovery within 3 months.

I suspect, Sostenueto, you'll find out through these threads. I bet it will be ages before anything is decided though. First they (AQA) have to measure the extent of the issue before deciding how to remedy it.

@alexander - hope your DH is OK .

On the AQA paper (no axe to grind here - DD did another board), DD came up with some very sound reasoning last night about why it could have disadvantaged quite a few power and conflict students as easily as having advantaged them. I didn't fully understand what she meant because I don't know the structure of the paper in the way she does, but I could see her logic and could see that doing nothing would probably be the fairest thing for everyone, on balance. But still not good to have happened.

Hamilton hope your DH is ok x

goodbyestranger most of the issue is that the war cohort got prompted to study the question before the exam, a suggestion which many the majority of?) schools took up. However, a second issue is that the love cohort got stuffed with Singh Song. If. The exam board was out to make things easy, they'd have gone with When We Two Parted, or similar, but no, they went for one of the least popular poems.
All DC were supposed to study all poems, but the nature of it is that there isn't time with lots of other exams going on to study them all in depth. So the students are advised to do half in depth and half more superficially. I am willing to bet that Singh Song was in the superficial group for most of the love cohort.
That's the luck of the draw, but it seems unfair to give one half a poem they are unlikely to have chosen to study in depth whilst giving the other cohort a poem that they were encouraged to study in depth.

Alexander hope dh is ok.

And hope all our ds are ok today with Maths. I had a sudden panic that ds's calculator will conk out....must find a dose of rationality to take each morning!

Re AQA English lit - goodbye I think your dd is probably correct. There are a lot of variables to take into account and no way of knowing how many dc did/dd't see the question, did/didn't go over it in class or get it as a mock. It was an interesting read for what OCR did for Romeo and Juliet. We will need to wait and see AQA's response after the exams.

I read through the OCR reaction/remedy last night (sad person because again it does not affect DD). It looks like the error did not have a major affect just 1/2 marks but they do a complete analysis looking at results from the two questions (on same book), other questions on other books and looking at scores for other elements - e.g. whether a student had scored well on two papers but poorly on the paper with the error. I assume it would be the other way round scored well on the paper with the Ozy error ( in this case) and scored poorly in the other two papers...When you do get time to think about it I dont think it will make too much difference because of the marking schemes and the fact you are comparing a poem with another poem and given the issue has been highlighted it may well benefit the L & R students where more leeway will be given if anything.

@AlexanderHamilton - hope your DH is ok. Xx

Alexander thinking of you and DH. X

mmzz yes we both get what happened to each group but I agree with DD that there are likely consequences of having a particular poem in the specimen paper which could have created disadvantage. Just nipping back to see the link about OCR which I haven't yet clicked on.

Alexander hope A & E identify swiftly.

HEs been living in a caravan by a fishing lake with during exams so there are often midges & stuff.

He’s texted to say he’s had bloods & his heart checked now has a 2-3 hr wait.

I may have to go up there to deal with Dd later but I also have Ds at school here.

"I had a sudden panic that ds's calculator will conk out"
Thanks cubscout, now so do I!

Good that he's already had his initial investigations - keep us posted Alexander

Dh phoned the drs who told him to call an ambulance because he was so far from home. He didn’t want an ambulance turning up st school in case it worried Dd hence his colleague took him up.