Are we ready for a GCSE’s 2019 thread?

[KittyMcKitty]

If so I’m in.

DS (my pfb) will be going into year 11. Mocks after half term. Crossing my fingers for him - needs average point score of 6.5 (across all 10 subjects) to stay for 6th Form.

Anyone else?

Well, huge, huge crisis last night, and I am still rung out, as neither I, DH or DS slept, and while it is now resolved, it was just awful.

DS had his final mock (art) yesterday and the decided to bring his art folder home so he could work on his pieces. Phoned me up in a flat panic just after he got home, that he thought he had left it on the bus. Sent him off to the depot where the lost property is, to see if it was there, and to ask some of the drivers of the bus number coming in. No luck. The though maybe he had left it in local bakery just near the bus stop (he went in there to look for something, decided there was nothing he felt like, and left). Searched that, and asked the staff. Nothing! He then got worried because he was standing at the door, that maybe it had fallen out at some stop, so after we put DD to bed, DH and I went out and searched at every bus stop up to the next turn around, just in case.
We kept phoning the lost property every hour, as apparently they only check the buses once the driver comes off shift, but nothing.
DS was beside himself. Apparently 13 pieces out of 20 for his Art were in there, it is two and a half years of work, and it is supposed to be submitted in two and a half weeks. Even if he painted non stop over the holidays, he couldn't see how he could possibly make up the loss, although he started last night doing another piece (which he would need to do anyway), just as a start, and painted solidly (between breaking down and crying) for about four hours. We persuaded him to eat, and the finally to shower and go to bed, but I don't think he slept much.
He didn't need to go into school today, as his mocks had finished, but he figured he had better and talk to the art teacher about what on earth to do, whether he needed to drop out of art, or what. So I woke him normal time, he struggled to have breakfast, and off he went to school .... to discover he had not taken his art folder home at all, there it was in school waiting for him.... despite the fact that he vividly remembered running for the bus with it in his hand, so he just cannot explain its miraculous appearance at school!!
So we got a text at 8.45 saying he found it. At which point DH said he thought he had better jump in the car and pick him up from school with it (after he had taken out everything that really did not need to come home, and was safer at school), and bring him home and put him to bed.
But you cannot imagine (or maybe some of you can, with DC doing Art) what this would have meant. I am still reeling from the shock of it all.

Oh my goodness Bimkom what a nightmare. Can definitely empathise with the sheer horror when faced with that.

Dd left her sketchbook at the shop at the end of the road, and that was bad enough! Not knowing where it was all that time - just the thought is making me shudder. Hope you can all calm down now!

Is my dd the only one not doing any revision in the holidays? She’s saying she’s going to rest so she can start with full force and not be burnt out once the holiday is over

Oh Bimkom that is awful. I am not surprised your poor DS needed a lie down after that.

A local school to us had a fire a few weeks ago, and a boy we know, and indeed all of the students, lost all of the photography GCSE coursework. They are apparently going to award on course grades, but it can't be moderated, so I am not sure whether they can be awarded a top grade. I feel so sorry for them all.

elisabeth DD is only revising over Xmas because she has mocks re-commencing on Jan 8th. Otherwise she would be putting her feet up :-)

elisabethhh my ds isn’t revising- mocks are finished and he’s exhausted- it’s going to be a long slog come January so we figure he should enjoy the break. He does have some physics homework to do but that’s it.

Well after Thursday/Friday's little episode, we told DS to completely chill for a couple of days. Now that we are back on track, with folder, for art, he is planning to do quite a bit of that, because art has been totally neglected during these long weeks of mocks, and the Unit 1 hand in date is only a couple of weeks. But art (at least when there are no lost folders to deal with) can be relaxing in its own way, it is a bit different from revising chemistry (one of the reasons why, once upon a time, we thought it was not such a bad idea to do it) .
The other bit of good news is that when he went into school to talk to the art teacher (and as it turned out, find his art folder), he met his chemistry teacher who said he came top of the class for chemistry, and his biology teacher, who said he though he would be very pleased with his biology result. So no hard statistics, but it sounds like possible good news on those fronts. He is planning to do chemistry and biology for A level, so those subjects are important.

Ooh! Can I join this thread?

My dd has GCSEs in 2019. She’s just had mocks. She’s had most results back ranging from 5-8 so a fairly good start. She did the bare minimum of revision until the week before when she finally got her head down.
She didn’t do as well as expected in a few subjects so I’m hoping that will inspire a little more revision for the real things!

Very smart to have the mocks results for last day of term Timbertot! We just have a few hints from ours. I do think though that having the mocks before Xmas was probably a smart move, although exhausting, but it would be nice to have some results.
What board of Geography is your DS doing? W are doing one of the more obscure ones (OCR B), which means there is less revision material directly on point, and there have been some shambolic aspects to the teaching - DS's teacher for Year 9 and 10 left at the end of last year - she had decided to do case studies that the other geography classes weren't doing, and generally had not covered lots of the material. DS thinks well of his new teacher (who took a different class last year, which did well), but she is having to pick up a lot of pieces. DS has switched one of his case studies to one being studied by the other classes (from some South American one to Istanbul), as he just felt it was easier, and he had never had a great grasp of the South American one, but has kept the second one (Birmingham rather than London), because he felt he was too far gone in learning that, despite him thinking tht it would have been better to start off with the case study the other classes used, and also because he knows London better. In theory he should do really well in Geography (originally predicted very high), but poor teaching and little available in terms of resources to help make up the gap (and I looked for a geography tutor, but they are really difficult to come by, and it is an obscure board), doesn't help.

Binkom glad it all worked out! What a worry.

Ds is in full relaxation mode. No revision no prep prep at all. He says he's burnt out from (lack of) revising for mocks. He has more mocks in Feb so good ugly knows when he will work. Tbh I'm actually upload he's having a break. He's finding committing to the work really hard. His issue really isn't learning and absorbing info. His issue is training his brain to sit and work for lengthy periods of time. He just cannot do it at all. I'm letting him have time to work through it on his own. Come Feb I will be stricter and told him I'll have to enforce strict rules about revision times and he's said if he's not settled into revision by then he doesn't mind me nagging.

Dd hasn’t done any revision at all and don’t know if this is normal. I’m not interfering with it unless she’s doing significantly less than others. What are your dc doing?

My ds isn’t doing anything. He has one piece of homework to do and that’s it. He worked hard for the mocks and now knows what he needs to do for the real things.

Mine is only doing art. Has done several hours at a stretch on art. On day he came down in a terrible temper because "it wasn't good quality, and he had just wasted 6 1/2 hours of work, and there is no point putting it in his portfolio if it was going to bring the quality down, and it was just too difficult ....... etc etc". Of course he had not had much breakfast and worked through lunch so his blood sugar was low. Calmed down a bit once we had managed to stuff him with some food.
I did try and gently suggest that there were other subjects besides art, only to get a lecture about how far behind he is in the art (even with his folder found!), and he really should do another three pieces over these holidays, and it takes him so long.

My comment: everything he does is so detailed, no wonder it takes him forever to complete a piece - it's not my taste, to be honest, his art, I prefer more calm or nature scenes, where he seems to do these covent gardeny paintings with sky scrapers and light ups of Harry Potter and Kinky Boots and Matilda all over the place (reflected in water half the time). v. odd. I gather his teacher likes them though. I don't know how we are going to cope when he has to produce work within a limited amount of time, it is going to be very stressful, and I am no doubt going to get my head bitten off a lot, because he gets really stressed and impossible when his art isn't going right.
But I don't think he has looked at anything else in any other subject.

His maths teacher emailed (in response to an email) to say he got a 9 in maths. It would be a shame though if he didn't do so well in the real thing because he took his foot off the pedal. I certainly don't think he has looked at a maths problem, or a science problem for that matter since he finished the mocks.
At least he went out to a matinee with this girl he is friendly with (dating?) who is here from Holland - Chicago would not have been my choice for him, but it wasn't my choice.

Bimcon, my heart was in my mouth reading your post about the supposed lost GCSE Art portfolio. What a relief that it was found! If that had been us, we wouldn’t have slept either!! My dd is also doing Art- but luckily she can walk to school. God the workload is atrocious isn’t it?? She is always doing Art it seems. The portfolio came away with us at Christmas and she’s doing some more right now! She’s up to date but re-doing her final piece from last summer as her teacher suggested although it was excellent, it didn’t quite ‘fit’ with the other pieces. Grrr like it matters !! So she is wasting time imo when she could be having a much needed rest. Then there is the Spanish speaking answers and vocabulary to learn for the oral in Jan. I really wanted her to have a good break before the stress of the next few months. Ha ha !! No mock results here as yet but not holding my breath.. might be pleasantly surprised 😆

Oops sorry Bimkom not Bimcon!!!
Soursprout fantastic results, well done to your dd. Btw