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.

OrangeCinnamon - sounds very similar mocks system to year 10 here. I think it has definitely made him take them more seriously than previous tests/exams - it's all in the name!

The pool woke him up a bit, thankfully. He generally swims 6 times a week but this week and last week we've cut out the early mornings and he's just swimming evenings to take his mind off exams...

Alsoplayspiccolo Don't worry - many of us will join you in being very engaged in the coming months. And then, when there are enough of us fully engaged, other posters who have never bothered to post before but apparently have been spending lots of time logging in to read our posts, will drop into the thread to let us know that we are doing it all wrong...!

Back again. Ds1 is getting his marks this week for his exams.

He asked me why he needed to bother Going to school for the rest the term, seeing as he has already done his exams. very funny DS1!!

Alsoplayspiccolo it does get a bit all consuming doesn’t it and it’s only year 10! We haven’t done any tutoring yet - but if Year 10 exams don’t go well I might be getting dh to step in with the sciences. On the other hand I want her to be self-motivated and not to think she needs help all the time. To be honest she’s very independent anyway. So then I worry we’re letting her down and should be more involved! You can’t win!

Both my children's 3 schools have/had regular end of topic tests/half termly assessments done in class but both of them also had End of Year Exams every year from Year 7 onwards (in fact they also had them in primary from Year 3 onwards.) At dd's school and ds's previous school they were held the week after May half term but in ds's new school they are held the week they come back after Easter.

There is an exam timetable and revision sessions and they are held in exam conditions but they are End of Year exams, not mocks and cover everything they have learnt that academic year. Mocks, when held cover the entire syllabus and they are given the results in an envelope as they would the real thing.

Mocks, when held cover the entire syllabus and they are given the results in an envelope as they would the real thing.

I remember you describing that last year for your DD, but its not the same at DS's school.
The mock results are given out in class - the actual result is just handwritten on the front of the paper - and even the mock is one cut down paper, so DS will do 10 papers for the mocks, not the 25 or so that he'll do for the GCSEs next year. The mocks are all done in about 10 days in December, so it would be impossible to thoroughly test everything in this time.

Well, I’m not convinced the envelopes with results was a good thing because last year they caused a huge hoo har with wildly inaccurate grades. (Not helped by the fact a copy was put into their records of achievement. Hopefully moving forwards teachers will have a better idea of grade boundaries.

whistl, that made me chuckle!
Crazycrofter, I'd love DD to be independent, but she and I both know that she's not going to manage the next 18 months without a huge amount of input, sadly. What's nice is that's she's recognised that when she accepts help, she does well, and that hard work pays off. I'm also secretly happy to lay a few of my old academic ghosts to rest in the process; I actually understand the sciences now!

Ds1 is doing triple science. Finding physics hard. Tassomai, as of September, is what you are all recommending?

Any other basics that I already should have implemented? Top tips section?

Ds is finding a combination of Seneca (free) & Tassomai is helping.

Dd credits her good science grades to Tassomai.

DS got straight 9s for triple science and that was down to Tassomai.

Until you start with tassomai, Seneca is quite good, the CGP books are excellent and really its just about making sure they know a topic before moving on.
To just be glad to finally stop doing a topic, turn to a new page of the text book and put the difficult bits out of your mind, is the best way to make revision as stressful as possible.

Thank you both. My previous post was based on whistl's Ds2 but mainly her Ds1.

My Ds1 Is bright, but lazy and seems to do reasonably well with minimal effort. Drives me crazy. I can't make him want it - it's got to come from within.

But when I mention to him that I haven't seen him doing that much revision he takes absolute umbrage at this and claims he has done a reasonable amount, it's just I'm not aware!!

I Suspect that not that much gets done : what does get done is a lot of Xbox'ing, you-tub'ing and chatting to his football team mates on WhatsApp and Instagram etc.

I'm just using you! Lot on this thread, and all your experience with your previous children to make sure that I'm doing the basics, of my parental duty :at least mentioning to DS1 some of these are the things that, E.g. Tassomai that are also available.

DD's school also call them year 10 mocks. All other years are called end of year exams and are held after May half term. Year 10 mocks are after Easter and last a couple of weeks as they have a two week time table. She's only just starting to revise but says she can't retain the info - eek! She has assessment tests this week too in a few subjects so has been mainly revising just for those.

In other news she has applied for the Head Girl position and got narrowed down to final 4 for interview. Interview went well and she has just been told that she is in final two so will either be Head or deputy. The other girl who got selected is so super competitive and a nightmare with always having to be first or top (how do the teachers not see this) that the other girls have told DD that she HAS to get Head girl as they know she will listen to them and act on their behalf and not be a glory hunter.

DD does have a tutor in maths and English but only one hour per week each and it seems to be paying off. She moans obviously when she has to have them but does actually knuckle down. They set homework too so bear in mind that adds to the workload if you go down the tutor route. The good thing though is you can say what you are studying in class so they give more in depth help in those areas if you need them. They also know her syllabus - guess they check what board they do online - so they sometimes tutor in advance of what they are due to study but not always.

For people who are tutoring or using Tassomai - are these weak areas or potential A Level subjects?

We don’t really have the spare cash to pay for anything else at the moment. I think that dd is an all rounder who’s fairly ok with exams - but until this next set of exams I can’t really be sure. I suppose I’m just wondering how much extra support, if any, to give her?!

Perhaps I’ll just be guided by her.

We've recently discovered the Physicsandmathstutor site, which has topic notes, question banks and past papers in all the sciences and maths.

For dd we discovered that Science was weak area. She had some poor science teaching in Years 9 & 10 (a teacher who was due to retire and who taught the same topic three times over the course of two years but missed huge other chunks of the syllabus.) A change of teachers in Year 11 & a re-jig so that each science teacher was teaching their specialism but after the January mocks dd was distraught that her science grades were so poor. There were several in Higher Tier science who were deemed to have failed their mocks, at least dd passed, she was given Grade 4 in Physics and Grade 6 in Chemistry/Biology. (She was predicted 7/8 in everything else).

In the end with Tassomai and a lot of hard work she got 7 8 8.

For ds he has asd, slow processing and demand avoidance and doesn't cope well with traditional book based revision methods. We moved him from a selective school becasue they wwere awful at dealing with his autism and he couldn't cope with the pressure. However he is in top set maths but bottom set English. His targets are Grade 6 but in English last year he was only on track for a Grade 2, Hence we are paying for an English tutor once a week in an effort to get him up to a Grade 4/5 at least (all his teachers and the tutor say he is easily capable of a 6 if he can overcome his specific problems with writing.) His latest grades from school indicate he is now working around Grade 4 level and the tutor says he has prodiced the odd piece of Grade 6/7 level work so fingers crossed.

I am paying for Tassomai for him as he likes it and it is the only way I can get him to do any study at this stage.

When I've spent money in the past, its been targeted on DS1's future.
The problem with GCSEs are they are broad-based, and your DC will give up 2/3rds of these subjects in June 2020, so they aren't the future. They are just a key to getting access to the future.

(Am i making sense?)

Although your DC may not ever speak another word of French after GCSE, will a weak grade matter later?

So, the decision on where to spend money for me starts with the question, what will this GCSE be used for in the future. The answer will likely be some combination of:

1. get access to their first choice sixth form
2. get onto a A level course that they need to have done in order to get onto the degree course they want
3. create an impression of an all-rounder, maybe for uni applications
4. help with self-confidence that will boost performance in other subjects

Those are difficult things to know the answer to, but if you do have a vision of the future, then its much easier to work out a path to it and then work backwards and put the extra resources into helping your DC achieve those goals.

Hope that makes sense! It does in my head!

That does make sense whistl.

For dd and the science the fact it was 3 subjects that had so much lower grades than her other subjects (she chose triple not double) made it worth spending and for ds the fact that if he doesn't pass his English he can't do the college course he wants and the fact that if he can get Grades 6/7 in maths and science along with his beloved music that raises his overall grades to look better alongside his other subjects which are likely to be Grades 4/5 when it comes to uni applications.

I'm hoping that as long as he doesn't crumple and we can keep stress levels down that his grades will look something like this:

Music 7/8; Maths 7 Science 6 6, Business 5/6 Computer Sc 5 English Lit 5/6 English Lang 4/5 Food 4

Its a lot lower than his predicted grades based on CATS but we have to be realistic.

Yes, that does make sense, thank you. At the moment I have absolutely no idea what grades she’s headed for - marks have been either in percentages or combinations of A/B -/+ etc. I’m hoping they might give more meaningful grades after these exams so that we can decide if there are any anomalies.

Can someone explain how Tassomai works, please?
I'm happy to spend money on anything that will help DD, but it's a bit pointless if she doesn't choose to use it.

It's been updated a bit since dd (and whistl's ds) used it last year as they have reposnded to feedback but basically there is a set number of questions you have to answer every day to reach your daily target. The algorithms work out what you know and what you don't and you have to answer a question correctly a certain mumber of times before it is mastered..

The answers are multiple choice and when you start a new topic for the first time some of the answers will be silly so it feeds you the correct answer so you learn the content before it becomes harder.

The aim used to be to keep your progress wheel on green or blue, not red but that has changed to hitting your daily target at least 4 times a week. You can enable and disable topics within the syllabus if your child hasn't yet covered it in class.

It works on the little and often principal.

@comefromaway they have Records of Achievement ...? I didn't know they existed still are they in a burgundy folder?

That's really helpful, thanks comefromaway. I think DD might be quite motivated by that sort of set up.

Yes! Although that might be a coincidence as dd’s School colours are burgundy anyway.