How much revision to give my ds

[rainbowsRcool]

Hello all

My son is currently in year 9 and I am currently giving him 1 hour and a half of revision then I let him go on his PlayStation. Some say this is too much but I think this is about right because of how important his GCSE's are. What do others think?

It's not about lowering it, it's about encouraging him to do his homework within the set time frames, and revise for any specific tests. As others have mentioned he could perhaps look at creating some flashcards for each topic as it is completed, if HE wants to.

As many of us have mentioned, this age is about having a range of interests and activities as well as academic work, developing his skills and passions and becoming a rounded person. He should also have time for having fun with his friends.

Just to reiterate as well, any revision needs to be driven by him. He needs to decide for himself when and how he revises. He may need to fail a few tests to motivate him to develop his own study style. We all differ in how we study and revise - some of us are slow and steady, bit by bit each day, others of us are more intense, and prefer to go all out closer to an exam.

Is he struggling at school? I would strongly suggest that you seek advice and guidance from his teachers, who will be able to talk to him about revision - when and how to do it. What does he do apart from study and play station?

As everyone else has said, you don't need to give him anything. His school will be giving him homework and he will need to revise for end of unit tests or vocabulary tests or whatever. What could he possibly be revising? His exams are more than 2 years away. He just needs to be studying what he is set. Revising is what you do to prepare for an exam - going over whatever you have learned. Now he is learning.

You shouldn't give him any. He is old enough to take ownership of his school responsibilities.
Let him enjoy this year at least then encourage him to apply himself in preparation for year 11.
Completely OTT.

His school will be giving him homework and he will need to revise for end of unit tests or vocabulary tests or whatever.

That, of course, depends on the teacher. When he was that age, I was certainly "encouraging" my son to do revision for certain classes where there was no evidence of any homework being given. Teaching style and standard differs enormously between teachers. In year 9 he had a particularly lazy Physics teacher who literally hadn't given any homework at all during the first few weeks of the year. At half term, I persuaded DS to spend a few hours "revising" what they'd done in lessons and doing some practice questions - it brought it home to him that he could barely remember most of what they'd done, let alone know it well enough, so it acted as a bit of a wake up call for him to do something every week, even if nothing had formally been set.

My experience is that you can't rely on teachers to set enough homework - some don't set much because they don't want to spend the time marking it. Other set very "loose" homework such as "read the next chapter" which is very easy to forget or ignore. Teachers can sometimes also be the world's worst for lack of preparation and suddenly announce a progress test the next day, leading to panic revision that evening.

If the teacher seems to be giving regular, structured homework (and it's being marked), then fair enough, no need to do more in year 9, but if there's no sign of that, then I'd strongly suggest some encouragement to do revision for those subjects to make up for lack of formal homework. After all, if the teacher had given them homework, they'd have to find time to do it, so if they don't then it's perfectly reasonable to do revision instead.

DD is at Putney High in SW London. I'm not sure even this much revision would be expected of her...

He is old enough to take ownership of his school responsibilities.

But that attitude doesn't help we he crashes and burns with a handful of crap GCSE grades. At that age, they're too young and immature to be responsible for things which may affect their entire adult life.

My year 9 does extra maths and languages - anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes a night.

But she finishes at 3 and is home shortly afterwards, it’s a standard comprehensive where top third do okay, there’s been very little to no regular homework, she been negatively affected by maths teacher shortages and there a possibility she’d be made to sit maths GCSE early with perhaps not the entire syllabus having been covered – it’s an issue in Wales, she used to doing extra work as she struggled in primary at times and our experience there was we weren’t told about problems till they’d got very big and her doing some very night means we can jump in with help very quickly, she struggles with languages and little and often helps and there’s an expectation articulated at option evening that all the children have been doing welsh since they were 3 – which isn’t the case with us.

So we have reasons to do something in these areas – rest she doing okay with and there’s background information at home on – TV documentaries – radio 4, audio books and you tube.

I have started to pick up study guides – as I can’t afford to do that all at once – and as English department said books and plays that would be covered I got the analysis books for those and will get versions of the play’s audio/film so she’s aware of the more obscure texts being studied. Beyond getting them I’m not expecting anything to be done with them yet – it’s more they are there if needed.

So I’d have a careful think about why you think this is needed and where to do any extra work.

If he’s at a competitive school, private or gramma school or good state school with history of good results, or he gets regular homework or is doing fine in all subjects I’d think about if you really need to do anything extra.

Ds1 is in year 11 and Ds2 is in year 8.

When Ds1 started covering GCSE content at the end of year 9 he just made flashcards/notes whilst it was still all fresh.

This has paid dividends.

Learning isn't just ploughing through text books, it is reading around the topic. We use YouTube and films for both History (Elizabeth, Gun Powder Plot) and English Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility as it gets them used to 19th Century speech. Plus lots of things give context to when poems were written. There is a wealth of information out there and it is fun.

It isn't about a particular amount of time working on something, it is working smart. A child can read a text book for 1 hour (passive learning) and not actually take anything in. He could do 20 minutes of flash cards and have a useful way to test himself.

Personally, as long as he is doing the homework set by school and contributing in class, don't sweat it. Ds1 is predicted all 7s and above for GCSE, so he is high achieving.