GCSE options - Y8! Eek!

[SweetMarmalade]

Ds school where apparently triple science has to be taken as well as the usual Maths and English.

Ds currently loves History and Geography, hates PE, doesn’t have the skills to take Art, doesn’t really want to take MFL, although his second review for German was really good considering he hardly revises (surprised the teacher).

So I’m unsure how to guide him from here!

Are History and Geography going to be intense taking both?

Gah!

Anyone else feel like they don’t know the best way to guide their dc?

it's daunting! try finding out what exam boards the school follow for history and geography, as you can then check the amount of coursework (if any) they have, and that can give an idea of the workload. history is very content heavy (i'm not too sure about geography, neither ds or dd are taking it) but you might find it is fine to take both. might be worth talking to his head of house for advice

Thanks @sleepismysuperpower1 I will check this at GCSE options evening. These are the type of questions I wouldn’t know to ask.

DS is doing both History (AQA) and Geography (OCR B). He's year 10, so only started in September but he's not finding the content too heavy yet, and there is no coursework for either as far as I'm aware 👍

Ds1 did his GCSEs last summer.

History is essay heavy, and there is a lot of factual data to learn. Ds did OCR so I can only comment from that, but something like Living under Nazi Rule is chronological, so it starts at a particular date and you work through the years under different topics such as democracy to dictatorship but you have to know names, dates and numbers of votes etc.

Whereas Elizabethans jumps around date wise, so Catholic Threats takes place over 20 plus years meanwhile other stuff is going on that overlap these dates. It can be confusing. There are 3 papers and 5 topics.

The thing about GCSEs is, choose stuff he is good at, and hopefully that he likes. A good attitude toward learning and understanding this is just about numbers on a piece of paper at the end and the higher the numbers the better. You may not like something, but if you know you could get a 7 in it rather than loving something but probably getting a 4, then surely the not so great subject is a better bet.

Ds1 didn't like English Lit until well into year 11, but it is compulsory. He understood the more he worked at it, the better his marks were. Now he is doing stuff he loves for A levels (maths)

I would sit down with him with the options booklet/info and work out what he is good at and what he likes. Hopefully some subjects will appear in both columns.

My son did both history and geography aqa and edexcel syllabus respectively. Work load was heavy but no heavier than a language which he didn't take. Hes now doing both at a level. My daughter also year 8 had options evening tonight . Another one not doing a language but both history & geography. She has dyslexic tendencies and the French writing is just too much. Now need to sort out the art / dance dilemma!

Dd also does history and geography (year 11). History has the most content of all her subjects but she likes it and is good at it, which offsets the workload. She thinks Geography is fairly easy, but boring in parts. She’s also doing Spanish.

Definitely don’t do creative subjects if they’re not his thing. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with two humanities (dd is doing RS too so that’s three) if they’re your strengths. No one thinks two or three sciences is ‘too much’, it just seems to be humanities that this is said about!

Thanks so much for all of your detailed replies.

I have to admit, it’s something that I feel has landed on us suddenly but of course it hasn’t. I’m just not sure how Ds will cope with topics such as History as his revision attitude leaves a lot to be desired, although he’s extremely interested in WW1, a topic which they’re just heading into.

We’ll see. He’ll have to pull his socks up if he wants to achieve well, although he’s worked damn hard in Maths to go from set 4 (based on SATs) to set 2. He achieved better in English SATs and therefore has been expected to do better in this subject but he’s coasted a bit. His school don’t set for English in Y7&8 and I feel this has had a knock on effect because of some disruption in the class. The school will set for English from Y9, although I’m hoping these sets are fluid?

One more review to go and then the hard(er) work begins