Starting Year 11-GCSE2021 (title edited by MNHQ)

[indy69]

Good morning Mums,

My DD will start her GCSE journey this September. MN always has such good advice that I thought we could have a new thread to support each other. My DD has 4 options apart from English, Science AQA and Maths Edexcel. She has Art and History - Edexcel, and Psychology and Economics - AQA. It wpuld be lovely to know what your DC are doing and we could share resources here. I look forward to meeting you all on this thread. We have 4 weeks to go to start of term and a ton of homework to finish. My DD is feeling too lazy to do anything at the moment, but I guess they have earned the break. I will start reminding her next week about the work. Thanks

It won't help with 'explain why' questions or ones where you have to manipulate stuff first, or ones where you have two similar formulae (resistors in series or parallel springs to mind), or ones where you have to know to convert from grams to kilograms first. So it rather depends how complicated the questions are with the 1-9 GCSEs compared to how they used to be with the letter ones.

These pdf exampro qns are repurposed for 9-1 GCSEs. Older son used them in his 9-1s and he gained 8s and 9s. These along with the mark schemes really help.

Portico How are you accessing Exampro, are you a teacher?

No, I BBC am not a teacher. Some were emailed by the school, and I also googled and found random exampro documents on the web. Over the years I just collated them.

BBC is a typo

Portico, please could you let me know what u googled for exampro. We are really struggling with exam style science questions. Would appreciate a pointer in the right direction. Many thanks

Physicsandmathstutor is normally good for questions

Has anyone started to receive mock results yet from those who have sat them over the last two weeks?

Not yet, they are moderating the results and we are due a letter on Friday, last day of term!

I hope DS gets his this week, but unsure as they quarantined all papers for 3 days before marking them.

DD won’t get her results until January.

DS doesn't get his until January either.

Hoping we won't get any results until January-then we can just forget about them & face the music in the New Year.

DD doe not get them until 14 January.

Dd has just had 2 weeks of mocks and very surprisingly got Music and Maths back today and is apparently getting Chemistry tomorrow.

English and History she won’t get till Jan as the marking will need to be moderated. Looking at her timetable (they only have 3 lessons a day - 2 x 2 hr and 1 x 1hr) I can’t see her getting anymore this year.

She was v stressed so it’s nice to have two back and with pleasing results.

DDs last days of mocks is tomorrow, she had three today and is in a very bad mood!

Some who did the exams on the original timetable have started getting results, not expecting any of hers back before Christmas I wouldn't have thought.

Had an email today that the worst affected kids from multiple isolations will be offered tutoring from the governments National Tutoring Programme, she will get 15 sessions in Maths which is her weakest subject. Depending on her mock result I might also get one of our maths teachers at my school to do some weekly tutoring, it's definitely a confidence thing for her.

We have also been told we have an online parents evening in January.

Did two 6th form applications at the weekend too so something else off the list!

Hi all
What is “moderated”.
My son has done his mocks, abd gets his report on Friday. Do we know what is meant by moderated?

'moderated' for mocks usually means the HOD checking that a teacher hasn't marked too generously (or not enough) especially if teachers have all marked their own classes rather than 1 teacher doing all section A, and another all section B. Only needed for things like English & history which are more subjective than maths & science.

@portico

Hi all What is “moderated”. My son has done his mocks, abd gets his report on Friday. Do we know what is meant by moderated?

Moderated is when uniformity of marking is checked.

E.g A school may have 5 English Lit classes in year 11 and each class teacher will Mark tgeir classes paper.

The papers would then be moderated (by a group of teachers or the HOD) to check tgat each teacher marked uniformly and tgat tge marks are comparable between classes.

DS received two results today and he’s pleased with them, long may that continue!

@UncomfortableSilence I’ve never heard of the governments National Tutoring Programme. Good to hear that the govt are trying to do something about it. How much time has your DD had off and did her school do no sessions whilst isolating?

Moderation is going to add to the quarantine of papers isn’t it? Possibly another 6 days.
No mocks at DD2’s school until 6th January - DD1’s mocks took a week or two to be marked but that was pre COVID so we can add 6 days onto that as they’ll quarantine test papers before and after marking. If they have to be moderated my a second teacher it’ll be nearer 3-4 weeks.

Sorry quick link as off to work but have a read through this.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/catch-up-premium-coronavirus-covid-19/catch-up-premium#what-catch-up-funding-is-for

Available to all schools, online provision was ok, she's had three isolations since October some have had four other year groups a lot more.

School are offering it to those that have had the most isolations this year I believe.

Looks like mass quick covid testing is going to be happening in schools from January. I know our 6th form used them last week and then put all the students on online learning from Monday this week.

DS1 isn’t even doing his mocks until the middle of January so all of Christmas is going to be spent revising!!

Same here @ihearttc - at least they’ll not have any excuses to not knuckle down - no parties, no outings, no mates over.... just revision. Happy teens. Happy Christmas. Great! 🤣🤣