How much work is your Y11 doing each night?

[tactum]

Are your kids prepping for GCSEs over and above set homework yet? If so what are they doing?
DS seems to rattle off mediocre homework in about a third of the time and I think he could start prepping notes etc for final exams. He disagrees.

They all disagree! I’m not 100% certain ‘revision’ isn’t FIFA to be honest.

He is meant to be doing 4 x 30 minute slots. This includes homework (i.e. if he had homework this would count instead of revision), but tbh he is not getting much homework. he is sort of doing this (not always 4 subjects, not always 30 minutes each). He has 2nd set of mocks in 3 weeks though, so more of a focus than others will have.

The 4 x 30 minutes is roughly what my Y11 was doing as revision in prep for mocks, which were just before Christmas.

We are now in the lull (ha, if you can call it that!) between the results for that set and a second set of mocks in the spring, so he is really only doing set homework at the moment which he appears to polish off in half an hour or so.

I am not pushing for more at the moment tbh. General consensus on other threads seems to suggest that if you get them to start too early they'll have burnt out and lost the plot by the time it's the real thing. So I plan to wait until the second half of this term and then get him going again on the 4 x 30 minutes a night in the run up to the next mocks. Whether it is a plan that will work remains to be seen

Two hours four school nights a week and about four hours on each weekend day.

At the school where I work (but don’t teach) the received wisdom is that Easter is too late to start revising, they should be making their notes etc now. By Easter they should be consolidating that revision, doing practise papers etc. My eldest DC is only Year 9, so I’ve got two years before I need to enforce this myself, however.

I would definitely be expecting them to do flash cards or mind maps of everything they have already fnished. The more they do now the less hard hitting revision they will have to do later.

If they finish school at 3.15ish what time are they home by? What time do they go to bed. Remove an amount of time for dinner and some relaxing.

Once you have worked out the sheer number of hours they have at home it is not unreasonable to expect them to do at least some work towards revision at this point.

Mine had mocks immediately after Christmas so had very heavy revision all over the Christmas 'break' followed by two weeks of exams.

They haven't finished the course in any subject yet so are still getting regular homework. Sometimes that homework will be more revision based - eg questions from past papers, and they are expected to do a maths paper every week on top of maths homework.

She is still exhausted after the Christmas revision/mocks session and I really don't think revision at this stage would be beneficial - particularly having to squeeze it in after doing homework. She is also learning lines for her final GCSE Drama performance in March.

Major revision will begin after she has recharged her batteries over Feb half term.

DS did his 2 years ago and didn't really do any revision until Easter and got brilliant results. DD will start earlier because she is more conscientious.

He barely does his homework!

I'm trying to get him to do between 20-40 mins of Seneca a night. It doesn't always happen.

Another one with a DD that had two weeks of mock exams after heavy revision over the Christmas 'break'.
She is doing about 2 hours of homework on school nights, Saturday is downtime and a couple of hours on Sunday.
No more revision planned until half term.

Mocks were October, then a bit of a lull to Christmas. Second mocks w/c 24 Feb. Revised a bit over Xmas. Loads of homework since as well as revision. If homework then that ‘counts’ as revision for that subject. Mocks only in core subjects in feb ie all sciences, English maths and RE but French is setting a huge amount of homework. Have had to abandon geography PE and history at the moment although he is doing small amounts of those. In general revision looks like this:

Monday: science revision after school class. Sports practice 2.5 hours
Tuesday: sports practice 5am to 7am. Maths tutor after school. Evening off.
Wednesday: sports after school
Thursday: minimum two hours revision or homework
Friday: as Thursday
Saturday: sports practice 5am to 7.30 am. Revision or homework 3.5 hours
Sunday: 3.5 hours homework or revision. Gym
Rest of the time is Fifa. Not a socialiser but definitely keeping sport going. Post mocks will carry on as above but more spread of subjects.

Signed up to my gcsescience this weekend which was mentioned on another thread, which he really likes.

Gosh no way is ds doing 2 hours a night and 4 at weekends. In fact I doubt he's doing any revision per se. Revising over Christmas (not heavy, but consistent), followed by mocks and I feel he needs a bit of a break until after half term.

We're going away for the week and thought he should try to do a couple of hours a day then, not sure what as it does feel too early to be actually revising. Form teacher said yes, definitely working over half term but not 'full days like Easter holidays'.

Sigh, I don't remember doing any revision until May half term, but then again I'm so old I did o levels.

aiming for 2 hours/day, 3 over weekend: but with revision homework (they are getting a lot of that) counting towards the total. We had mocks earlier than most schools so have had the first mocks/results/parents evening round already and they have had a break and are starting prepping for some of the second mocks (for key subjects). DS is in space of making flashcards and working through the subjects at the mo - then we test 5 cards every supper time. Some subjects he's well through ito his flash cards (esp sciences and comp sci) - others he seems to have made very, very little progress (history, Spanish and English - there's a clear theme! I'm assuming Easter onwards should be testing/mock papers/recapping ....

Another thing to bear in mind is that they are very likely doing revision in some subjects during class time already-certainly this is the case with my DS’s school. Maths for example they have finished the syllabus now so effectively every lesson is revision anyway.

Always a balance to get it right for your individual child and some will need/want/be able to cope with more revision than others! But I do agree with whoever said it’s important to keep sport or other activities going where at all possible too.

Last year DD2 had a revision class after school or at lunch pretty much every day from Christmas onwards. Homework was 80% revision. I trusted her to get on with it and do what was needed - she put in a lot of extra effort for Maths and the sciences, worked hard on MFL and Humanities, did very little in English Lang except practice papers. She knew her strengths and weaknesses and at 16 they really need to learn to stand or fall by themselves.

I don't think there is a magic amount of revision that will guarantee results - it's different for each individual.

The set HW takes priority since most subjects won’t finish until nearer the Easter break. HW which might include bits of revision takes approx 2 - 2.5 hrs x 4 week nights. I feel that it’s enough. DS does music Fri evenings which doubly serves as downtime. Sat is mostly sport/DoE volunteering, the latter of which he completes this month which releases some time and Sunday is the only day everyone gets a lie in! He is doing a little Tassomai on the school bus which hopefully keeps him ticking over on the sciences. So, no time for serious revision until Feb HT and even then, none of the subject syllabuses have finished yet. Some may finish mid March at the earliest but most are literally due to finish just before they break up for Easter. Have many already finished most of their syllabuses already?

Ds is doing zero revision at the moment. School have told him he should be doing 3 hours a night. He has 26 exams in the summer.

Ds has autism though which has only recently been diagnosed. He also has some mental health issues. He still struggles to understand the point of revision and finds planning and organisation very difficult.

School don't offer any revision classes either at lunch or after school so there is no real support there.

It's been a difficult year so Dh and I are not putting the pressure on him at the moment. Ds will not reach his potential but we are more worried about him than his results.

Same here pun. Our aim is to actually get ds to sit through all his exams without a meltdown/panic attack. (He walked out of two of his mocks).

One thing he does find helpful is Seneca. He tolerates that.

No revision going on here, just homework. I'm biting my tongue until after half-term. Currently does sports practice 4 nights a week & matches Sat & Sun. That will have to ease off as we head towards Easter.

Good luck Com. Hope your Ds can manage the anxiety around the exams. Are his school helpful? I've not actually heard of Seneca before. Ds uses a laptop for some of his exams but they let him do all his mocks in the smaller room. This helped him feel less pressured and anxious.

I do worry when I read about those that are doing so many hours of revision! I guess we are mindful that Ds's autism means that he copes with things in a different way to others.

It's balancing what he can cope with and making sure he's not spending all his time on the computer avoiding all study as he would be more than happy to do that!

It varies - probably averages 2 - 3 hours a night, but he's managing his time and did exceedingly well in his mocks. He's a very driven child, and has already got a 9 in his maths which he took early so he knows what he needs to do. He does a lot of extra curricular stuff too and for as long as he is managing to keep on top of it all, I'm trusting him to know when he needs to do more, or drop things he's doing when they get too much.

2 hours of study (h/w or revision) each evening, 3 to 4 hours of study on Saturday. Nothing on Sunday (volunteering/part time job).

My DS is 4th year (yr11 in NI - would be yr10 in England/Wales) and is doing about 2-3hrs each night plus about the same on a weekend. His school has said that by Easter of 4th year they should be doing 20hrs of independent study a week - a combination of homework and revision.

DS makes a lot of notes - because they use these booklets in class now and therefore don’t make their own notes, he writes up what they’ve done that day by way of revision. Sometimes it’s long hand notes, sometimes it’s things like mind maps or flash cards. Obviously actual homework gets done too. He’ll also do practice essays for English/History etc.

Our view is that if he works his butt off now then he can enjoy half term/Easter/the summer without having to do much work as he’s been so consistent through the year.

By 5th year the plan is to work hard during term time until Christmas (mocks are in December) and then have a month to have a really decent break and then back at it until June.

er... nothing.
ok, yes homework, but that's it, and always very last minute, veering towards the bare minimum.
I'll always encourage but I'm not going to fret.
DS is one has to make happen whatever happens.

He didn't do that much revision for GCSE computing (finished end of yr10) and still got an A. So I think he'll get what he needs for college, doing things 'his way'.

Not very much tbh. But worked v hard over christmas and mock results were on the whole good.
I get the impression we're in a bit of a lull now as the teachers assess where everyone is, i'm sure it will ramp up again after half term. I'm surprised at her exam timetable, the bulk are before May half term. I thought there would be a few before and the majority after.

DS is doing half an hour of Tassomai a day, maths tutoring once a week and then everyday we sit down and go through one topic, watching Youtube videos and adding to google docs notes for anything he finds difficult.

If I didnt do it with him nothing would happen but it really is exhausting. If I had the money I would just get more tutoring in for English/science and have done with it.