GCSEs 2019 - support thread part 2

[AtiaoftheJulii]

Here we are again

Thanks buffy and soursprout - he is fine thank goodness and now he has a phone he can use we have returned to something approaching normal service

I agree about not offering advice asking about revision. Although I did say to him just now that he needed to get back in the swing of things, revision-wise, and he agreed and admitted that he has not done enough maths over Easter, which is definitely one of his weakest subjects. I am a little worried that he's resting on his laurels for English, History, Geography and to a certain extent Spanish, and not worrying about the others too much because he thinks knows he'll get 5 really solid marks there. I've not said this to him though...

But hey ho...what will be will be. I must admit that I feel much more philosophical about it all than I did a few months ago. He'll be ok, he's not going to crash and burn, he's a bright, happy and personable young man with a loving family and lots of friends and exams aren't everything!

But he will be spending all Saturday at school in a geography revision day

Turned out ds1s geography revision "day" was just the afternoon! He "forgot" 🙄😁

He's going to some more tonight.

I really think he needs to concentrate on maths and eng lang but he gets very defensive when I point that out....sigh.

Just popping in for some advice as I'm sure all of you GCSE mums are all over this. What is the best resource for GCSE Physics revision/ help?

My DD is only in Year 10 so has a way to go yet but this is one of the subjects she's finding more tricky. We know about FreeSceinceLessons.com but is there anything else online that's helping your DCs?

Any advice gratefully received

Tassomai gets good reviews

Just realised ds1 is at cinema at 1pm tomorrow and then at speedway at 6pm.
Sigh.
Just tried to encourage eng lang and maths revision.
Didn't go well! :)

i think you have to pay for tassomai. Was looking for something free

Just popping in to say Hi and feel everybody's pain with the revision tension. I am unsure whether to drop in with a motivational speeches or whether just stay quiet. Discernment has never been one of my strengths.

So sorry to hear about your son Maud. Must have been very upsetting for him. Pleased he is okay but might knock his confidence for a while.

My DS' health has been up and down. Is currently in bed as he is so fatigued we are both concerned about that and the impact on his revision. He is panicking that he isn't doing enough and I think the panic is getting in the way of him revising effectively.. He is relying purely on his revision guides and free science lessons as his school books are missing so much information due to his illness. I am not sure if that is enough.

I just wondered, does anyone know how long the course of Tassomai is? The website just says never too late so I didn't know if it was worth purchasing a month or if that would be totally ineffective? thanks

double
I’d advise him doing past papers and anything he struggled with can be researched?
What exam board is it?
We haven’t used Tassomai but lots on These threads do.

Ds did an hour of maths before we went to see endgame.
(No spoilers but omg!!)
Speedway canceled so hell do some more later

He has told dh he will do 5 hours tomorrow!
So....dh Canberra in.charge from now on! :)

Thanks soursprout darn these immune disorders.

Iambuffy he is doing AQA.

DD has been using tassomai and has found it useful - more so at the beginning I think as it helped her to understand her gaps... then she discovered far too late that visual learning is best for her with sciences

DD hasn't done much yesterday/today - she did some biology yesterday morning but wasn't feeling great and very unusually for her went back to sleep for an hour or so early afternoon.

Today, DD and I have had a lovely day at an independent clothes/jewellery/craft market and a vintage furniture store where she got treats of new earrings and some prints for her room. As school starts again on Monday I've taken the view that she needs a bit of relaxation and chilling out before everything ramps up. To her credit she has worked very hard over the holidays so fingers crossed these two days off won't jinx her!

Has he tried bbcbitesize double?

He did in the early days Iambuffy, think he has been sticking to the revision guides lately though. That's a good idea, thanks. I think he needs a different focus so he doesn't run out of steam. He might be able to measure how much he is retaining with the bitesize tests.

teenmum have you tried Seneca? That is free (or used to be, and I think it still is for everthing other than the primium service, which I don't think we have paid for). DS uses both that and Tassomai - i think he feels it helps in different ways. Certainly last year he said he found Seneca very useful, particularly for biology - he said it really took him through the eye, which he found tricky. It might be good for physics too. I am not sure how much he is using it now, but he is now solidly into revision, rather than trying to understand, and so is using revision books and practice questions and papers more.

Meltdown here today, when it struck home that his French oral was only four days away. DH will be really relieved when that is over, and he doesn't have to ask daft French questions all the time, and then query the answers. We had a neighbour over for dinner on Friday (lady across the road, lost her husband a couple of years ago and her grandson), and she speaks French (amongst several other languages), so there was a bit of conversation going on in French, and I was quite impressed that DS was pretty much maintaining it (only once did he not understand because the lady was speaking too fast). I don't speak French at all, but did study it until the equivalent of Year 10, so I get bits, and was quite happy to sit back and let DS practice - it was only really because DD couldn't understand at all that we had to switch back into English.

Binkom :(

oh Bimkom...hope he's feeling better today?

Thanks all. Seems better today (just been doing a long session with DH, who was saying he had done really well). Problem is that it is so much based on luck. In the mock he got a really difficult question (how to recycle, I think). If he gets something he knows something about, it will be so much easier.
His is the last mock of the day, at 3.15 (our usual surname result- never realised when I married a man whose surname is at the far end of the alphabet what an impact it has. My DC are always being put in the back row, and being last up for anything because the lazy way of ordering everbody is by surname!). He is a morning person, and would much rather have had it in the morning, but it is what it is.

I assume the best approach is to let him sleep in, so it will feel like morning to him, but that might mess up his studies for other subjects.

Oh! Our surname is one of the last ones too! Never realised that issue!

Well sometimes it is an advantage (as when one is not ready, and they don't get through the alphabet on the original day, and have to postpone, the last surnames are always the ones who get postponed), it is the back row that tends to annoy me most, what with short sighted DCs. Sometimes DS , if he was motivated by the subject, point out that he couldn't see the board from the back row, but other subjects he would just veg. And DD, who is something of a dreamer, and much less able to assert herself in the best of situations, just tends to take it.