Any advice re screen time fir year 11s and how to keep the noses of lazy but bright kids to the grindstone without making them stressed about GCSEs? [Edited by MNHQ at OP's request]

[OneHamm3r]

Just that really. Dreading this year and could go with some advice on how to handle it all.

Mine were independent for revision early on during school and remained stress free for exams but that was through luck of their personalities and schools rather than our parenting skills.
IMO a great part of exam stress is from the consequences of procrastination and therefore setting up a routine that facilitates revision earlier rather than later for those who don’t self regulate reduces rather than increases stress later in the year. If I had a perfectionist DC I would be discouraging revision until the Easter holidays.

One The basics of revision timetable are:

1.1) make a list of all topics to be revised / practice papers to be done - NB expect to revisit topics and allow time for that too
1.2) estimate against each topic time to learn / do papers / review
1.3) add up total time needed

2.1) think what hours can/will realistically be spent on revision on school days, weekends, and holidays (inset, half term, holidays) [be careful to include some whole days off, time for socialising etc]. Allow for rest breaks at least every hour if not every 20-30mins.
2.2) add up revision time available

3. compare time needed v time available and adjust so they roughly match (either by reducing revision, or upping time)

4. block subjects against slots so that everything is worked on (not leaving one subject out). Try to do hardest subjects at most productive time of day. Think about 'rewarding' hard subject with a more enjoyable one etc.

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5. a) When sitting down to revise make sure you have an AIM and some way of knowing whether you have SUCCEEDED. e.g. Write notes on Lady Macbeth - output is the notes; learn about DNA replication - output can you write down / say the steps without looking, or be tested by Mum. b) Tick off topics as they are done, so they can see progress c) Allow flexibility, such as swapping subjects around. Also allow to change free slots, but generally extra time off should be earned by revision in advance not promises to catch up

You can get fancy software to help you do this, or you can just use something like Excel, or do it all on paper.

ideally you will have revision notes / mind maps etc already for the y10 work. If not then that should be first priority from now.

Going to sit down today to work out revision timetable but overwhelmed with what we should do.

Mocks are in Nov, saw on that AIBU thread teen you said all flash cards etc from year 10 should be made and subjects understood. So should we try and cover everything from year 10 in the run up to Nov making cards etc. He has 3 x science books now and they have some small end of ch questions and big end of unit spread questions. Should he leave the latter for the real thing?

Just not sure what to try and cover before Nov.

Sorry, rambling.

Do you know anybody with DC who are a couple of years older?

Could they talk to him about how they wished they had worked to their full potential rather than coasting through GCSE and not getting the grades they expected

So a sort of "do as I say rather than do as I did" it may help him to realise how he can help himself

I know the system has changed in marking but the working harder when capable is still the same

I make my DDs revision cards for them. (Which I know removes one of the benefits of them going over all the material, but both have SpLD which means any cards they make aren't very useful.)

For science I use the CGP revision guides. I find 1 page generally translates into 1 or 2 cards.

What is needed really depends on how the child learns, and their level of understanding. Some need simple cards, some need mind maps. Some like loads of colours, others nice and plain.

For maths I have a card on adding & subtracting fractions. Top set kids won't need that!

NB I saw last week in WHSmiths some playing card sized CGP revision cards for various subjects. They were in sealed boxes so I couldn't look at them, but they could be helpful perhaps.

Priority is learn the topics to be covered in the mocks.

Then after mocks look through the papers to understand

• where were topics not understood (and then rectify)
• where was learning insufficient (and why did revision fail)
• where was learning there, but exam technique let him down (and understand what the issue was)

This sounds so much like both my dcs, especially the younger one. It's not much help to hear that some children are so mature that they can self-regulate their screen time and get brilliant grades without much push from parents, and not sure why there is criticism for needing to have more control on these issues when we all know that children grow up at different rates.

FWIW here are a few things that have worked (a bit) for me:

Screen-free evenings witih everyone in the family joining in. We do this one evening during the week, depends on homework timetable. Last year we did Monday, this year we're doing Friday. I think it just gives them a break from being online all the time & helps them learn to fall back on other resources to entertain themselves. It does cause a fair bit of moaning in our house too, but I think the benefits outweight that.

Handing in all screens an hour before bedtime.

Tightly supervised homework. I know you say your home is very busy OP, but is there any way you could schedule even an hour or two a week when your ds could work quietly downstairs e.g. if your other dcs have evening activities, or could you or your dh take other kids out on Sunday morning for an hour while other one supervises homework? Or could you sometimes sit and read a book in ds's room while he does homework? Otherwise I like Drabarni's suggestion of giving specific bits of homework/revision to do and keep checking that it's done within a certain timeframe.

I think the ways to deal with procrastination vary from person to person, so it's worth thinking about whether there are changes that might help your ds work harder. I say this as a procrastinator myself - I work from home in 20 minute blocks and give myself little rewards in between - quick walk around the garden, cup of tea, couple of minutes on FB, etc. One of my dcs prefers to blast through homework (not very carefully) straight after school to get it out of the way, so I try to get him (reluctantly) to see that as a first draft that might need extra work to finish (e.g. there might be a short paragraph where a page is needed, bad punctuation, or things cut and pasted from Wikipedia). At the moment I check it and tell him what needs more work, but hopefully he'll learn to do this himself. Other dc is more like me & needs 'rewards' for sticking to the task.

None of these is a perfect solution but they've all helped in some ways.

I find the micro managing of revision suggestions a bit shocking tbh.

DS brightbutlazy needs all 7s min to stay in sixth firm with mates

We've taken away Xbox and he only gets it one night at the weekend currently

The rest is up to him. He will allow zero input or interference from us, closes down if we ask re revision etc

I buy him what he needs, lever arch files, revision cards etc

I suspect he's calculated the minimum he can do to get a 7

Alpen That's fine for a 'bright but lazy' that is doing something. Probably not so much for an 'average but lazy' who is doing sod all.
Plus there is no way your son really knows how much work he needs to do to get 7s... And you might not be 'micromanaging' revision, but you have taken steps to facilitate it by removing the xbox.
Some would call that managing him too.

We all do what we feel is right for our particular children.