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.

I don't believe the school actually can have a policy that that fails to make reasonable adjustments - that would be discrimination, surely?

Ds's previous school was a selective indie and although exam access arrangments were excellent (all about the results) they point blank refused to make any other reasonable adjustments in every day school life because "others would think it unfair".

Oh, yes, that old chestnut! The SENCo actually tried to say adjustments would give DD an unfair advantage - as if being able to take an exam without distractions isn't simply removing the barriers faced by a child with attention deficit.

DD's school has pushed as many kids to get extra time as they possibly can, presumably because it doesn't cause any inconvenience to them, and helps results.

You don't need to have a SEN diagnosis to need a scribe - a broken wrist would do the trick! They must have had to scribe for someone at some point in the school's history.

Yup, a time out card would mean he would make excuses to get out of lessons he didn't like (funny he hasn't used it once in his new school). Somewhere he was allowed to eat other than the dining hall ("our dining hall is a lot calmer thanother schools") not even considering a hungry child with concentration issues is going to concentrate even less and have behavious problems.

Yesterday a teacher from his new school who hasn't taught ds before telephoned me because ds is going to be in his group on a residential trip and he wanted to know things he needed to look out for, did I have any worriedswhat could he do to make the trip run smoothly for ds. Such a contrast.

Well, the school has now said that DD can take her exam next term in a small room with a handful of AS exam students. She was given a school handout, detailing various possible exam arrangements, which included separate invigilation, so I'm not sure why the SENCo ever said it wasn't their policy.
She's happy, we're happy and relieved - her attention deficit is pretty severe, so the less distractions, the better.

Report is in and flight paths for everything is 4-5 I am dismayed. As it's 6s her at A level

The online English tutor any recommendations

Are the flight paths based on actual achievment though or on spurious SATS results? Are they targets or based on how how s/he is actually working at the moment?

Dd was given ridicilously low targets based on CATS results and she ended up far exceeding them.

Saying that A levels do not suit everyone and if a child is genuinly on course for Grades 4/5 (as my ds is for several of his subjects) then other routes may be more approriate such as Btec's which can alos lead to university or degree level apprenticeships.

Took ds into school for 2.45 am this morning and he has gone to Spain until Wednesday. It's raining!

He will be missing Awards afternoon which is a shame as he has been awarded full colours for music. Also none of his friends are on the trip as its a sports trip. Ds signed up for it before he dropped PE in favour of dance but he does love football, I just hope he can keep up with everyone.

Littlebillie, what do the 4/5s mean? Are they current attainment ( that’s what they do at ds’ school)? In which case you could be looking at 5/6 or higher by end of year 11? Or are they the grades they expect at the end based on current performance?

Apologies to those from other threads who've already seen me write about this...
I had a surprise this week when attending a university open day with my year 12 DS that the university (LSE) look at GCSE results and, apart from all the other A level requirements, they have set a minimum level for GCSE Maths and English Language of 6.
When the GCSEs were introduced, 5 was going to be the minimum meaningful level, but it got dropped to 4.
So, now to get into 6th forms, you typically only need 4s for maths and english and whatever else for your specific A level choices. However, the main point studying of A levels is access to university, so it was a surprise to think that the GCSE hurdle has been cleared, only to find that you hit it again, with the bar set higher when applying to university.

LSE is one of the more competitive universities in the UK. Others may have lower thresholds but I wouldn't know what they are as I've only visited one and, by chance, it was willing to be specific about how it filters applications, rather than vague "look at GCSE profile" type remarks

Anyone else starting to experience stealth boasting from others about how much revision their DCs are doing. Bumped into a friend while out shopping with DD yesterday - she made a point of saying quite smugly that her DD was at home revising^ and is just so dedicated^ and studies all day as she looked DD up and down

How charming of her Back! The only response I can think of is 'oh dear...I'd be so worried about burn out'. (I'm great at thinking of responses hours later, whereas I'm normally left speechless at the time).

Lots of stealth boasting about targets...along the lines of 'I'm so surprised that all the targets are 7 or above'...

Sigh.

Haha, that’s so funny! It’s never occurred to me that revision would be boast-worthy!

I’d never dare brag about targets anyway- what if they don’t achieve them? We’re still completely lacking any clarity anyway. Dd had her mid year report this week with not a grade in sight! The English teacher at parents evening said it’s because they’re all aiming for 7 and above anyway and they don’t like to predict above that? But there are still quite a few 6s and below each year. I hope she has some predictions before she applies for sixth forms though!

Dd is on holiday today and plans to start planning her revision, but not doing it - is that something to boast about! Knowing her she won’t do much!

Usually you get the 'naturally bright' boasts discussing how little work they have to do to get 8s and 9s along with the pitying look and comment about 'how hard' DD has to work. Grrr.

Indeed Wheres I always think of the best comebacks far too late! DD is revising over the holidays for year 10 mocks in May. However I think it's important to also have some down time even if that risks snooty comments from those that have chained their DC to their desks

Back Just look at her as if she's slightly mad and you feel a bit sorry for her. To be honest, she is to be pitied.

DD has year 10 exams mid May. On the basis that she has SEN and everything takes an age to sink in, I'm encouraging her to do a couple of hours revision ( and definitely no more than 3 hours) a day. School said at the beginning of the school year that they should be doing 6 hours, but that's just crazy.

6? Wow School recommends that for GCSE year with 4 days of no revision. This year they’ve been told to rest and make sure they are organised with up to date revision cards

Haha, there’s no chance of even 4 hours a day here! Dd is going to see Shawn Mendes tonight and apparently it takes all day to get ready!

I’m not going to worry too much, Year 10 exams are just for the practice. I’m feeling a slight sense of deja vu though. Last year she didn’t do any revision over Easter, she was adamant that no one else was. Then when the results came out it transpired that they’d mostly been lying and had been working pretty hard over the holidays! I’m sure she said this year would be different and she’d be revising over Easter!

DS (internal exams in mid-May) has created a revision timetable for the Easter holidays. He has planned approx 3 hours of revision each day. I would be pleasantly astonished if he sticks to this.

He did do some revision on Sunday, then yesterday he didn't do any because he "forgot".

He has a tendency to prioritise the subjects he enjoys most (Maths, Chemistry, Computing).

DS has year 10 exams in June - 11 weeks away.

There is no way that he will do any work this holiday for them. I might try to persuade him to tidy up his notes though and paste in all those handouts.

DD is also mainly 'organising notes' from Years 9 and 10 so far.

This has involved printing out each exam spec in her favourite font, arranging dividers in her new lever arch files and writing headings on each tab in a variety of gel pens.

It all looks beautiful, can't comment on the content, though...

This has involved printing out each exam spec in her favourite font, arranging dividers in her new lever arch files and writing headings on each tab in a variety of gel pens.

DD drew a beautiful frontispiece for each of her science folders.

I wonder how lovingly they'll look at those folders by this time next year?!