Starting Yr11 Gcses 2020 Support Thread [Edited at OP's request]

[OrangeCinnamon]

A continuation of a Year 10 support thread
previous thread

Last thread was great and supportive as some of us tried to navigate year 10 and some very helpful peeps steered us through.

I had assumed your DD's mocks were straight after half term piccolo, which even so, that level of suggested study was OTT. Amazing how schools differ in their approach. It also makes me feel how lucky DD is here with her school's attitude - asked to relax, work gaps where subject teachers have identified if behind, and are running at least 4 school/sports trips over this holiday that includes Y11s.

Good luck to those with exams coming up, whatever their approach to study is, especially for those whose 6th form places depend on these mock exam results.

crazycrofter, there's no way DD could do that amount. Her ADHD means she needs to work in short bursts with frequent breaks, so even 4 hours worth would take 5 or 6 in reality. Also, she could easily faff for the entire and try to claim she'd worked for 6 hours, so I'd rather she judged her revision by how much she actually learnt, rather than how long she spent.

@Alsoplayspiccolo ah yes, I remember now - we discussed your dd as my ds has recently been diagnosed! At the moment (year 9) revision for a test takes ds no more than an hour and he thinks he’s worked really hard, he definitely couldn’t keep going for hours on end either!

There can’t be a one size fits all approach, we’re all different. I also work in short bursts even now but I’m quite effective. Just focus on her actually learning stuff, not on the time put in.

As she’s got until Jan, that should work well. Dd appears to be reading out whatever she’s learning at the moment and she’s been at it for about 3 hours! 😮😮

DS currently ploughing through Biology revision/past paper this morning. Then Geography & French this afternoon which is good enough for me. He has social plans tomorrow and needs to be on my good side if he wants a lift!

Glad DS isn’t alone with adhd working hard on revision here 🙂. Looking forward to the thread gathering momentum.

Golly Red thats one heck of a schedule!
DD has hers in Jan but seems to feel that its not all papers which strikes me as odd.

@RedSkyLastNight wow that’s a busy timetable for mocks.

DD parents evening was this evening. I actually wrote some questions down before going as usually when I get there I revert back to being a student and end up like a rabbit in the headlights! It was a bit of a mixed bag but got all questions answered so that was good. All teachers were emphasising that revision should be ramping up between now and exams with focus on daily short revision. There seems to be lunchtime revision sessions that DD hasn’t mentioned or attended but she’s always busy with orchestra, choir etc she can’t fit it in as well. One teacher mentioned Saturday revision sessions closer to the exams which sounds useful.

I am still dubious that anything revised now will stick until May, but then I was always of the ‘night before’ variety at school! It worked for GCSEs in those days. To be fair it didn’t work so well for my A Levels!

Redsky has your ds covered all the material yet? Dd has a whole history topic (1 of 4) to get through after the mocks in Nov! I’m not sure about her other subjects...

I don’t think she’s had a timetable for mocks so not sure if she’ll have 2 papers per subject or just one. She applied for a sixth form college yesterday and put in her own predicted grades! She’s gone for 3x9, 2x8 and 4x7. Fairly ambitious! The college doesn’t ask for high grades so it’s fairly meaningless anyway.

There has been quite a lot of research to show that repeated short revision sessions over several months is more effective than one or two long sessions just before the exam. I think it's called distributed interleaved practice.

DS has been revising some topics over this half term. He will come back to them several times again before May.

The "distributed" part means that he plans to revise e.g. magnetism several times, spaced out between now and May.

The "interleaved" part means that he uses a range of different strategies each time he revises it, e.g. explaining concepts out loud, defining key words, practising answering questions.

This is all new to me, as I was very much a last-minute crammer.

Redsky has your ds covered all the material yet?

No, but in most subjects they reckon they have covered enough for them to have a decent attempt at all the GCSE papers. In some subjects they are not setting 1 paper (e.g. in Geography, they are not doing the Human Geography paper as they have still quite a lot to cover). He has even more papers for actual exams ...

DC's school talk a lot about the forgetting curve and are also plugging the little and often approach. So approach for mocks is to review material, then do some practice questions on the topic a few days later, then do some mixed practice questions a few days after that. Plus he has two sets of mocks so I anticipate he'll be doing this all over again for the next set. I think DS appreciates the approach because he likes things being split into small chunks!

I agree this approach is foreign to me as well, but thinking back to when I had GCSEs I only took 9 subjects (DS has 11) and 1 was fully coursework and 2 had a high element of course work (DS is doing music which is 60% coursework but everything else is 2 or 3 exams). Plus I simply had far fewer papers. (e.g. in maths I had to sit a foundation paper which I found ridiculously easy as I was aiming for an A, and 1 higher paper. DS has to sit 3 higher papers). Looking at the volume of stuff he simply has to know, I don't think last minute cramming will come close to cutting it.

Yes I’m sure you’re both right. I remember GCSEs being quite easy really and they all had large coursework elements. Both Englishes were 100% coursework! So I’m guessing we didn’t have that many exams?

@RedskyToNight how is ds finding music? My ds chooses options in Feb and I’m wondering if music would be better than German, with the coursework element and also a small class. He’s only grade 3 piano but they say grade 4/5 is enough?

Grade 4/5 is good enough to get high marks on the performing element. So I think your DS would be fine. (My DS is grade 5 standard but going to play Grade 4 level pieces to ensure he can get them as good as they can be).

My DS picked music mainly as a diversion from his very academic other subjects, and this has proved to have been the case and he generally has a lot of fun with it (it helps that he gets on well with his teacher). He really loathes composing though - and it's 30% of the total mark on his exam board. We are relying on the other elements to pull his total up!
I think you need to be a bit careful with the class. In DS's year virtually everyone is very musical so I think the class works well but in DD's year a lot of students picked music thinking it would be a soft option who aren't particularly interested and it sounds like lessons can be tricky (DD is not taking music; this is relayed from a musical friend!).

My DS does music and has hugely regretted it : lots of extra curricular opps but teacher often absent and has now -ahem- left under a cloud. Eventual replacement actually seems good but it may be too late. He really wishes he had taken French now, especially given Spanish may not run at A Level at his school and he is great at languages. Bah. Also, being fitted with a brace which still ahs not come off hasn't helped his playing.

He is grade 4 baritone horn and this is considered plenty good enough. it is all a bit of a pain trying to organise practice with a pianist, though, and now he tells me he has his solo performance in about 3 weeks , which seems very early! He also loathes composing.

On the plus side, he finds the exam stuff pretty untaxing. But we have accepted that his Music GCSE will be lower than his others.

Thanks both of you, food for thought! I think the class will be fine as it’s a grammar school and usually about 5-7 take it each year. I think they have to be a certain level on an instrument already.

The composing is a big uncertainty as I’m not sure he’ll have done it before. To be honest, I suspect he will have his own firm opinions already about what he wants to take and won’t be influenced by me anyway!

DD doing Edexcel music and it’s her favourite subject by far. Grade 4/5 is the expected performance standard although DD is playing a solo grade 6 violin piece as she recently polished this for an orchestra audition so makes sense rather than learning a new piece. For the ensemble she’s playing a grade 5 piano duet with her teacher. The composition part has been slow progress but has definitely been really good for her musical development. There are loads of music opportunities in school with different ensembles and the teachers are really enthusiastic and supportive.

Hello all, just dipping in again as have been away with work a lot over the last couple of months. DS back to school tomorrow, he has maths gcse exams this week and next. I haven't seen a huge amount of revision going on, although he did go to an optional session at school on Friday and there's another one tomorrow. I suggested to him this evening that he might do some work and he said not to worry, he'd just watched a video about the trapezium rule
Other subjects are slightly on the back burner until after these exams, but they have done their history and geography non examined bits and English speaking so far this term and there is talk of mocks week, but I think that's not till Jan/Feb.
He says revision will kick off in earnest during the Christmas holidays - I am amazed at suggestions of 4-6 hrs a day already, he would definitely not be able to sustain that but I am hoping / expecting he will build up to it by the middle of next term.

singingstones
Why is he sitting his Maths GCSE now rather than next summer?
(Sorry if you have already explained this)

@Tumbleton I think his school just seem to think it's best - they start the gcse course in Y9, we are in Wales and have separate exams for maths and numeracy (not sure if that is the same everywhere). The whole year does numeracy now and top 2 sets do maths now as well and then do additional maths in the summer if they want.
They did a few exams in the summer of Y10 too, so must feel that spreading them out is helpful. They seem to be doing loads though - English x 2, maths, 3 x science or double, welsh, RE are all compulsory and then they choose 4 options. DS is in set 2 for everything so could end up doing 13 GCSEs
I wonder if they will be invited / encouraged to drop a couple of subjects after mocks, surely nobody needs that many

Oh and I forgot about Welsh Bacc which they all do. So make that 14

singingstones, as I think I've said previously, both my DC's schools follow the English pathway, despite being in Wales.
Interestingly, DS's school's 6th form requires a minimum of 5 level 6s if following the English pathway, but 7 if following the Welsh pathway.

@Alsoplayspiccolo I guess that makes sense, is that 7 x Bs? They are not quite as high as a 6 are they so that seems sensible to ask for more. DS's school says 5 x Cs but most of the individual subject choices require A or B at GCSE so it depends what you're hoping to do I think. I don't know much about it yet but he definitely wants to do 6th form at his school. I will be an expert when it's DD's turn

Anyone any tips on how to motivate Dd to revise for her mocks, fed up of having daily battles. Her grade predictions are good but she could gain a grade or two if she just did a bit of revision. It’s driving me mad. Mocks this week and next.