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.

Comefromaway that's not a bad set of results in the circumstances! Obviously you know he can do better, but maybe for him it's just a case of getting him over this hurdle so that he can get where he wants to. Presumably the bare minimum he needs is 5 passes and a strong mark in music?

We're just over halfway through dd's exams now. She's done a reasonable amount of work for most of them, except for the final two subjects which are on Thursday - and she hasn't touched yet! She will have Wednesday afternoon and evening to cover them both so I suspect they'll be lower! It's all a learning experience isn't it though, dd started far too late.

Yes, in fact one local college says they will accept 4 good passes including maths and English (but for some unis he will need more). (slightly frustrated that he got 6 mark listening questions correct that involved notating pitches, rhythms and identifying chord dequences but left blank easy 1 mark texture questions where he could have answered the texture was melody and accompaniment)

In case anyone is wondering by the way. His music teacher emailed me the music paper and sound files and I condicted the mock exam at home under timed conditions.

Even within music he is one end or the other

For composition he got almost full marks - Grade 9
Performance he could have been better prepared Grade 6
Listening part of the written paper - Grade 7
Set works he got 2/28 marks only, complete fail.

Hi all, been a while since I posted. DD has now completed her Bronze DoE - had terrible weather for the trial and 1st day of real but 2nd day was sunny so she actually enjoyed herself. She didn't find it physically hard but she is pretty fit used to walking and camping. Next up for us is End of Year Exams, which will be like Mocks apparently. They start 17th June. DD has started revising so looks on track :-) This will be the 1st year she has revised properly for end of year exams but then the school has had loads of end of topic tests this year so she has had to learn to revise. I would love her to do well so she can see the benefits of revising properly so fingers crossed. She works so hard all year but in the past hasn't revised properly for end of year exams so hasn't got the rewards.

Have enjoyed readying all your posts about your children. Best piece of advice I could give is that I can't tell DD to revise, she doesn't like the nagging, but I bought lots of highlighter pens, and blank revision notepads and just left them on her desk.

For most subjects, DDs Y10 exams involved sitting a single GCSE style paper.
At this stage she was aiming for 5s and 6s across the board.

She has been given results for about half of them so far, which range from a grade 4 in one subject to a grade 8 in another. I can't work out how she managed the latter, and neither can she.

DD did the entire 2018 English Language paper as her year 10 exam.
4 down, 8 to go next week.

We’ve just had an email to say that these exams will ‘aid the decision’ about which girls do double or triple Science. I’m not planning to share this info with DD...

Year 10 exams finished on Friday here.
It's been a very interesting learning curve; from starting revision in the Easter holidays, DD and I both ran out of steam rather towards the last couple of exams ( one of which was physics, which, with maths, is her weakest subject).
It's been a really useful experience to see what works for her and what doesn't ( she definitely needs a combination of solid revision and night-before cramming, because of her ADHD memory issues), and to iron out some problems with exam access arrangements ( one invigilator didn't stop the clock for her rest breaks).

Only one result back so far - a 6 for chemistry ( combined, higher), using last year's paper 1 and last year's grade boundaries. Really pleased with that, as she has previously struggled with all the sciences, and admitted that there were areas she hadn't revised as well as she could have.
Hoping for good grades in both English and drama, ok in Latin, history, geography and biology, not confident about maths and physics.

Same here, alsoplayspiccolo, dd definitely ran out of steam by the end (exams also finished last week). She barely did any revision for the last two exams, so it will be interesting to see her results.

It does make me a bit worried about next year! Dd didn't really get properly going with revision until after the Easter holidays, although she did a day or so of Spanish in the holidays and a few hours of other stuff. Yet, just two weeks of full on revision (well, after school hours anyway) and a two week revision period seemed like too much for her! How do they learn to pace themselves and keep going for much longer, in time for the real thing?!

Good question,crazycrofter!
DD had an actual GCSE exam the day before her year 10 exams started, so I think that had something to do with it - the year exams felt like a come down in comparison. That said, I have no idea how shell keep motivated when the various papers for, say, biology, are spread over different weeks; it was good to get each subject done as she went ( only geography and maths were 2 papers this time).

We didn't have any kind of revision plan/timetable either...just kind of played it by ear, which meant ultimately, the subjects at the end got rather neglected.
I think steady consolidation throughout year 11 is probably key, so that when it comes to exam revision, it's just a matter of polishing up and past papers.

I created a revision timetable for dd but she decided it didn't work! I'd tried to put two subjects per evening (and 3 on a Saturday) and that was too much for her. I think she also struggled to concentrate on subjects that were further away, when, say, History was looming.

Steady consolidation sounds ideal - but I know if I was that age I'd be leaving it to the last minute and also running out of time!

Thought exams had finished but no, apparently DD has just informed us she has a physics exam next week and another English and also another History.

Had some results back but not all. A right mixed bag and quite disappointing in a way so we've had to lay down the parent knows best card and prohibit watching or listening to phone whilst studying as she got a grade 3 in biology (got a 7 in last exam) and grade 4 in one of her best subjects - eek!!
She was 1 mark off a 6 in maths so that's cool and got s 7 in History but I think that's because we grilled her with questions from her textbook so banned the tv/ phone from lounge whilst we did that.

It's been a wake up call so she has said she's going to study in summer hols every day fingers crossed that's true as she has maths mock when she goes back in September.

DD has had some of her results back:
Maths, biology, chemistry, physics - 6
English language - 7
Drama - 8

Looking at the grades, she's very happy and so are we - the science and maths grades are considerably higher than we could imagine at the start of year 10.
However, the actual marks by % are low in some subjects, eg less than 50% in biology. The paper the school set was last year's actual GCSE paper, and they have given grades in line with the grade boundaries, so the grades given are real; I'm just finding it hard not to focus on the actual marks and stress about the idea that she knew less than half the answers.

For those that have been through the GCSE experience with older siblings, how do you not get hung up on % marks? DD insists no-one will ever ask what mark you got, only what grade - is she right?

DD insists no-one will ever ask what mark you got, only what grade - is she right?

Yes she is right.

What you have to remember is that under the new system there are 3 grade levels above a 6. So there has to be enough harder questions to distinguish them. (The first year of the new maths you could get a 4 on the higher paper with only something like 17%.)

Also, I suspect it isn't really knew less than half the answers, more that on the 6 mark questions she couldn't answer with the detail and technical accuracy required to get the full marks.

Does she get the papers back? I found for DD1 looking through where marks had been dropped really helped inform future revision. (My DD2 is y9 so I've all this to come again).

I think that's the point - the exams are really hard, so the grade boundaries will be low. We're just going to focus on grades.

Those results are really good alwaysplayspiccolo - we'd be happy with those grades at this point!

DD finished hers weeks ago well done to all of you hanging in there. She will have two English PPEs/Mocks early instead of October she will take in June so have that to look forward to. She will then have rest of Mocks October then another set Jan She is really enjoying the Poetry section at the moment which is encouraging.

She has reflected that strategic revision didn't really work for her - for some reason she thought certain areas would not appear and didn't revise them in English and Music, this was where she got her disappointing marks.

Thanks, teen and crazy. I know, deep down, that that's the whole point of grade boundaries, as you say, but it's hard to change mindset after so many years of "70% and above =good, less than 50% = bad". This is the first time DD's school have actually used 1-9 grades for any test results; they've only previously used % and aligned it in bands pretty much, uniform for all subjects, eg 50-59% = 5, 60-69% = 6 etc.

We are actually really pleased, and relieved, about her results so far - at 7, we were told to forget about school and find her a hobby to enjoy, and until this year, she has really struggled.
She's hoping to take drama, English lit and history at A level, so it's looking promising if she keeps working.

Orangecinnamon, early mocks don't sound like much fun, but I guess they keep pupils focusing until the end of the academic year - my fear, from previous experience, is that DD and her friends feel that they've done their bit for year 10 and can take their foot off the pedal until September.

Alsoplayspiccolo, wow, who told you to forget about school?!! Was that her teacher or someone outside of school?

It sounds like she's definitely on course to do well in those subjects at A Level. I'm glad it's all started to come together at the right time for her. I'm hoping the same thing will happen for my ds who's in year 8 to be honest!

Dd doesn't start to get results until tomorrow. We've never had 'GSCE grades' before, just marks, so it will be really helpful to get an idea of what she should be aiming for.

crazy, that was the consultant paediatrician who diagnosed DD. She also told us to get DD a pet " because children like her do well with animals". 😯 It was at that point we knew we had a fight on our hands, and it's been 8 years of struggle since then to get her needs recognised.
I'll he honest, there have been many times when I thought it was futile, but DD really has shown what she's made of this year, and all the many hours I've spent working with her, helping her revise, have been worth it.

Wow, that's so patronising! I think you said she has ADHD? Well done for working with her and getting her to this point!

Ds is being assessed for ADHD, so your story is encouraging to me at least! I've been trying to help him revise for Maths this last week and it's so stressful - I've never had to do anything much with dd. I'm just glad I've recently moved jobs and am home earlier in the evening - I'm going to need to be around I think!

Piccolo - last year Dd got 8 in maths, physics & chemistry & 7 in biology. They only finished the course at the Easter of Year 11. Her Year 10 exams were based on only the topics they had covered at that point as were ds’s recent Year 10 science exams.

So if your dd’s Exams were based on both papers then I’d expect only about half the syllabus to be known at this point.

I also struggle with the mindset that actually 50-60% on a GCSE paper is pretty good as the grade boundaries are so spread out! DS has taken to coming home and saying (e.g.) I got 20 out of 38, and you literally have no idea whether this is poor, average or pretty good.
I have told him on no account is he to share his results with my parents (who think anything below 100% is a failure, so would have a nervous breakdown if they heard his results).

DS took mostly actual GCSE papers for his Y10 exams. In most cases they haven't finished the syllabus, but they are working through in order so were able to give them (e.g.) Paper 1, so it was all material they'd covered.

After a panic after DS's first 3 results, he's actually ended up with mostly a string of what would be solid Cs in old money (plus a 6 in maths, which is his best subject). Which for a child that has coasted for the last 2 years and only started working just before Easter, I actually think is not too bad. If he gets his act in gear I'm hoping they will rise by at least a level, if not 2 before the actual exams.

On a related note, one of his DS's Year 11 friends has told him that "revising with others" works best. Any thoughts on this? My personal feeling is that it probably worked well for DS's very studious, driven friend, but will just cause more distraction for DS who is looking for any excuse not to work ...

Thanks, teen and crazy. I know, deep down, that that's the whole point of grade boundaries, as you say, but it's hard to change mindset after so many years of "70% and above =good, less than 50% = bad".
^^ This.

DS came home yesterday and said he got mid 50s on biology but that's 8. I'm sceptical that the grade boundaries will remain so low (assuming school is right about 8). It was only one paper and I think complacency is a real risk. But at 14 he's not going to listen...