GCSEs 2019 - support thread part 2

[AtiaoftheJulii]

Here we are again

Name change.

Asked DD about History revision books, and there doesn't seem to be any very helpful ones.

History Dept have done their own revision guide for "Germany" but they don't have anything for "Civil Rights" or "Medicine". DD is just going off her class notes, and also reading around the subject. She gets a monthly History Magazine (she does love her History!), so gets quite a lot out of that too.

From a pp - I do hope we get a 2 grade uplift from mocks..... that would be amazing. Hoping for a 1 grade uplift, but would be happy for DD to just not go down .

My DD had her final school report. Excellent all round for effort and behaviour, but requires improvement in every subject due to targets of 8 and 9 and scoring mainly only 7s in her mocks. Got a 6 in one subject which was hugely disappointing apparently. This is the first negative report she has had in her life. I find it a bit sad really.

That's awful:(

Its an average state school and she only got level 5s in her SATs so no idea where these ridiculous targets come from.

nursie How discouraging for your DD. We never had targets, and thank goodness. We only started getting predicted from Year 10, and those have been steadily going up, for us anyway. As far as I'm concerned as long as you are not dropping back, that is fine. If you DD has got mainly 7's in her mocks, then that is a good thing surely, she will in all probability be getting a clutch of 8's. As for 9's, our school doesn't even go there, and this is a selective indie.

She got 887777766 in her mocks, I was really pleased for her. Parents evening tonight will be interesting!

Our school doesn't predict 9s. They only list 8s as target grades if someone is really, really strong in the subject. The 9 is gravy - as it should be, because it depends on the performance of the whole cohort and is therefore outside the pupil's control. DD2 is targeted 8s in English and got a 9 in her English Lang mock last year. She's also in a revision group aiming for the top grades - but the questions still have to fall right on the day.

Sorry to butt in but my DS took gcses last year. In his mocks his highest grade was a 7, had a few 6s, a 5 and he even got a 4 in Physics. He ended up with eight 9s, 2 eights (one of which was Physics ie. the 4) and a 7.

His school definitely mark low in an attempt to make them work harder between February and May. There is definitely time to pull it round. He spent between Feb and Easter hols tidying up his notes and started full on revision during Easter hols at home.

Parents evening was much more positive. Possibly capable of 8 or 9 but 6 or 7 would be a great achievement too. Just a shame the negative comments are in print for future colleges and employers to see. Does anyone know if yr 11 reports are regularly asked for ? Thanks for everyone's comments my Dd feels reassured by them.

That's reassuring.

Ds1 needs 5s and 6s but ideally higher in the subjects he wants to do at a level.

He got 2 8s in his mocks for 2 of those so 🤞

This weekend we are going to sort through his revision stuff and make a plan.

That wont be stressful. Oh no. 🙄

Well one geography mock done and back - 73%, but nobody seems to know how that would translate into the 1-9 grading. Don't know where they got these practice exams from, but DS says that everybody is going to get higher than him on the next two, because somebody has found where they got the exams from. We have had this problem before, there aren't a lot of previous papers around, and what there is can be found on you tube or the student room or similar. DS is mature enough to know there is really no point in trying to access these before, as the only point of doing mocks is to see how you do under exam conditions to help you prepare for the real thing, but most of the rest of his class apparently still haven't grasped this! They have spaced the three additional geography mocks so the are two weeks apart.

Nursie well done to yr dd and I'm glad parents evening went well.

Ok - thanks for sharing. It's good to know all is not lost.

It's hard to know how best to support. Ds prefers to just get on with it but it does all look so chaotic. I've tried helping but he hates that so I love him to it. Tbh with work and home and everything else going on sometimes it's easier to leave him to it!!
Our school have also had pupils getting hold of the exam papers but school have told them there's no point at all in producing false results.

The other stress for Ds is that he had no idea what a levels to do. One day he's leaning to science and maths and the next he's picking English and history! I've just backed right off because he really needs to decide for himself and I don't want 2 years of 'well you told me do these a levels' !!!!

DD2 is absolutely shattered - 9 exams in one week, and on two of those days she had 3 each day. At least she won't have to cope with that in the real thing.

She reckons History and English Lit went very well - her last History was a 5, well below par, but this one was on WW1 and America which is her strong suit. She knows for the real GCSEs she will have to revise hard for the Normans and Medicine.

She's also having maths tutoring from her very mathsy GF and it's paying off - her last mock was in fact a 6 (instead of nearly a 6) and the other two went better than that one. Best of all she feels she can finally work her way through the question to understanding what it is she's actually being asked to do. The wordy questions tend to trip her up.

We've just done a GCSE timetable for ds1 from now til mid June.

His exams seem fairly spread out, unlike the mocks.

He is still under the weather from a virus so not really very enthusiastic!

Yes! DS has just put on what hes done today but nothing in April or may!

I've got the whiteboard down from the loft!

He will be pleased 😂😂😂

Yes, we've got a whiteboard in the study (the tiny box room at the front of the house, really) with TASSOMAI in big letters to try and remind ds

I also invested in some of those Study Buddy subject packs, and they've proved really useful in organising revision. It means ds can easily decide what exactly he's going to revise in terms of individual topics, rather than just saying 'I'm going to do some History today', which seemed a bit overwhelming.

He's got another 6th-form college interview on Thursday - it was meant to be last week but he had food poisoning! Thankfully he's already got one great offer under his belt but it would be great to have this one as well - I'd love it if ds was in the position to make a choice as I think that would really help his confidence which has been pretty much wrecked by school.

What's the study buddy stuff like Maud?

It's worked well for ds because it's broken each subject down into topics. Obviously he could do this himself but it saves time and effort imo.

You buy a subject pack that has every individual topic on little magnetised cards, eg: for History you get 'Causes of the Cold War', 'Germany 1930-39' etc, for Biology you get 'Characteristics of living things', 'Female reproductive system' etc. Then we have a big whiteboard divided up into the days of the week and each day has X number of magnetised cards on it showing him what he needs to revise on that day.

I'm sure some dcs probably don't need it but for slightly disorganised lazy ones like my ds it's been really useful in breaking subjects down into manageable chunks. It also means that you can ensure you've revised everything as long as by the time the exam rolls around you've covered everything in the pack.