Year 10 GCSE Support Thread

[OrangeCinnamon]

Hi all,
Can we have a thread for Year 10 support please? Even though Dd started in Y9 I have already noticed a massive ramping up in pressure and her anxiety I imagine it is a fine balance of being supportive but not a helicopter parent. How do you motivate but not nag? How do you encourage good study/revision skills without being overbearing? How can I help my Dd to be resilient....so many questions hoping for some hints, tips and support along the way.

Dd is Summer born so struggles sometimes. Her main loves are Music and the Humanities subjects. She bobs along with Maths and Science and despises French. Wants to be an international popstar, historian, writer, journo or judge! She sufffers terribly with low self esteem but hopefully this term will be able to get her on a course of cbt.

Thank you Kingscote. Yes I’m afraid it does involve WiFi 🙄. She’s stopped all her after school clubs, although she is doing silver DofE so has some activities lined up for the NY.
But great idea about sharing the pain! I could definitely sit down and read or do housework during that hour. Funnily enough we have inflicted the one hour ban (just taking away the phone) from dd2 every evening and she’s now got into a habit of doing a work out and then doing her homework during that hour. It didn’t occur to me to do the same with dd1 and getting her to revise in that hour . Thanks!

Can I join as well? Kingscote staff - do we read the same books?!

DS currently does about 5 hours a week. Homework varies between none and ridiculous. He’s at leafy RC comp with v wide catchment. Grade predictions due before Xmas but school seems to be having science meltdown at moment.

Homework done lunchtimes, weekend and any spare bit of time as swims six times a week plus comps. This will have to change next year! Also far far too much time spent YouTube clips watching....

I really don't think it's a good idea to be doing extra work at this stage. DS did GCSEs last year, and only did set homework usually badly until the Christmas of Y11 when he started revision for mocks. Work really stepped up after February half-term. It is a really long slog from there until the end of June. They will burn out trying to do too much at this stage.
DD is Y10 and not getting a lot of homework. She is trying to revise properly for end of topic tests etc, but I don't think she needs to be doing more than that yet.

Seeline I think that is fair enough if your DC is paying full attention in class and taking clear notes. If (for example) they've been doing The Treaty of Versailles in History this term, they won't come back to that topic again until possible revision sessions in April 2020. If the T of V notes they've taken this term were incomplete and the handouts they were given were crumpled at the bottom of a PE bag (I'm looking at you, DS), then they will be spending time next year recreating a full set of notes when they should be spending time on pure revision.

Having experienced this last year with DS, I am strongly encouraging DD to do a little bit of work each night checking that recently completed topics are understood and (if necessary) augmented.

I agree with Kingscote. I remember cramming or my gcse’s - eg trying to learn the entire Chemistry syllabus in the April beforehand, because I’d been coasting along not learning anything for two years! I keep telling dd that the more she does now, the less stressed she’ll be later.

That’s DD’s logic - she isn’t naturally academic and she knows that through year 11 she’ll still be doing insane amounts of diving (unless something awful happens! Touch wood...) so is making revision materials now and copies up her notes from class/adds extra notes at her own pace at home. It’s also helping her work out a bit of a routine (which because of the intense sport schedule is important for her). She won’t be able to add many more hours in as exams near - probably an extra 5 at most, assuming the hours training don’t go up again after January. I think knowing the content really well now and having material to revise from already made will make the run up a lot less stressful and crammed. (And she’s stressed enough already as it is!!)

I agree with both Kingscote and Seeline!

Seeline is right that doing too much now will lead to burn out long before they've put pen to paper on the first day of GCSEs. But I fully empathise with that "if I could turn the clock back, then I'd front load the work" feeling from around late Feb / early March of year 11.

DS1 had almost just enough time to revise everything but that was only because he worked flat out. If he'd caught a bug in April or May, he wouldn't have been able to do as much work as he did and would not have taken home the GCSE certificates that he picked up last week.

I promised myself last Spring, that I'd learn from DS1's mistakes and do better with DS2, which means having full notes for every subject before the end of year 10 exams revising starts and making sure he understands every topic before he moves on.

I'm just not sure that to achieve that, it requires 5 or 7 hours per week in year 10??

PS YY to doing work yourself when they are working and to not making them feel that they are always working whilst their sibling is having fun.

DD is a very visual learner so she actually makes her notes for most subjects into really beautiful sort of comic strips and flash cards - it’s a good creative outlet too, she didn’t take art as it was such a heavy workload but this allows her to keep it up. I think it makes it more enjoyable for her too so it’s worth the extra few hours to do. If she wasn’t doing that she’d just be reading or on her phone anyway so no time wasted

Just to clarify my DD isn't doing anything else apart from the approx. 5 hrs of homework each week. She isn't doing any revision unless it's an actual test. I would love her to look over her work each day/week but it just isn't happening and I've decided not to push her. I've suggested it but she doesn't want to. I am trying to find the balance between being supportive without being too pushy as it just won't work with my DD.

If Ds was doing that much heifer I’d be more than happy. But he doesn’t revise for any end of topic tests & dies almost no homework.

Alexander does your DS not get much homework or does he just not do it? DD has never revised properly but really wasn't happy with her end of term tests in October so she did actually revise for a resist. I am interested to see if she revises more for the next tests... Fingers crossed.
If DD didn't get much homework I'm pretty sure she wouldn't be keen to do any extra work herself. I guess we are just lucky that her school seem to be getting them on track in Yr10 as they have definitely upped the workload and amount of tests they are having.

I would like to join the thread if it's OK.
I have a DD in Y10.

Hi SilverHill!

Dd only does homework, nothing more at the moment. She makes positive noises about doing extra stuff but it never happens!

I tend to agree that Easter to Jun of year 11 will be enough in terms of revision. I get the point about notes being in order but don’t kids tend to revise from revision guides and YouTube videos anyway? I’m sure even when I took GCSEs I was using the revision guides?

I think dd’s notes are ok apart from biology but thinking ahead to ds - his books are such a mess and his writing is barely legible! I don’t fancy his chances if he has to rely on his own notes!

Both Heifer. He gets a weekly online maths thing that takes around 15-20 minutes to do. Then every couple of weeks he gets homework for one of his options (which he does the bare minimum/often forgets to hand in). He's had no English homework all term. In science he did really badly in one end of topic test (Grade 2) and ok in another (Grade 6). He did no revision and in fact had forgotten he even had a test. He does score very highly in maths tests 81% in his last one (Grade 8).

He does spend hours a week on music homework and extra music stuff though. He's written a musical theatre overture composition and been researching baroque music.

DD was getting a bonkers amount of home work at the beginning of the year - 3 hrs a night.

A bunch of them complained to HOY and it's been cut down to closer to 2, with built in time for 'card making' and revision for tests. I think it's still a lot at this stage.

Do agree that having revision notes in good nick this year is key though, so they can hit the ground running next year.

Took my eye off the ball and haven't posted on this thread for a bit. Have just read last page rather than recapped back to when I last posted. I also agree (as another parent with a dd who has already been through GCSEs) that there is a real risk of burnout in doing too much too early.

Ds is simply doing his homework and revising for end of topic tests. Nothing else is necessary at this stage.

Ds is doing fine in his end of topic tests on the whole - ranging between 7 to 9 in the sciences, geography and history. Some weaker areas - French is a 4/5, English a 6 and a recent maths topic test was 45% (which, given the low grade boundaries for Maths higher would probably be a 5/6). I suspect that he has some a milder version of the working memory / processing issues that his dyslexic sister has because he finds it particularly hard to memorise maths formulae. Can anyone recommend an online maths resource which he can use when revising for maths tests please?

Having good revision guides, and where relevant, good text books is key. Not having to learn things that they never understood the first time also makes a huge difference.

You ought to save a copy of your post, Nathan as it is liable to be deleted. If it gets deleted, you can re-post it without the links. People will find you.

Your advice is good though. I found an old post from you this time last year where you outlined your approach. At the time, you'd added an extra post about planning to turn it into a web platform, but nothing was ready for use. So, I created a spreadsheet and incorporated a lot of your advice. Then I added in other sage advice from other sources.
What i ended up with was a comprehensive plan that took DS from the start of revision through to the last GCSE paper. It had to be dynamic, and it required DS to be honest with how well he knew each individual part, and how long he estimated it would take him to revise each thing.
I would export the relevant views from the spreadsheet as a PDF each week and DS found that it was reassuring to know when he'd have time off, and also know that he had a pan to cover everything (because the GCSEs can seem like a mountain...),

It must have taken at least 30 hours for me to build, and rebuild and edit and then edit again (and I know excel like the back of my hand!). If a decent study planner had been available at the time, it would have made a lot more sense to pay for that, then spend way too much time building it myself.
So, I wish you luck, Nathan. I think you have a very good idea there!

Sorry to put that in context, this time last year DS1 was in year 11. So, he used my plan to do his GCSEs and got good results (with minimised stress).

I'm on this thread because DS2 is in year 10 and I've already reset the spreadsheet for him and uploaded the one GCSE he is doing that DS1 didn't.

iirc Nathan your method is akin to Agile Programming? If so I think it is a sound approach and similar (but probably far better organised and presented) to the one I used with my DD 14 years ago.

Nathanmcgurl - I have searched and can't find your method! I'd be very grateful if you could explain it please. Your website looks great and I am keen to find out more about the method. Anything to help GCSE revision become less stressful and more productive!!!

Limit my DD hasn't used it for maths, but found 'get revising' had good resources for geography. It's free, some dross on there, look for 'teacher recommended'. You may find it helpful as it covers all subjects.

Haven't used but I hear good things about Hegarty Maths, and Tassomai gets good press as well (although expensive).

Thanks Wheresthebeach - I'll take a look at those