Current Year 11 2021/2022 support thread pt II

[StColumbofNavron]

Thread for those with Y10s finishing July 2021 ready for Y11 in Sept 2021.

All welcome.

Unless things go extremely wrong for DD then she will be fine with the grades needed for her chosen A Levels. She is unsure about whether to stay with current school or to go to a different school - there are advantages and disadvantages for both..

Hey all, I seem to have dropped off the thread!

All good here, DD got her mock results back last week and she’s done really well. No revision going on at the moment but they do have more assessments coming in March. Not sure if they will be another round of mocks or not. DD says they are still being taught content up until the Feb half term. Then after half term they will stay on for a 7th period for an extra hour each day for the core subjects.

I made a calendar of DD’s exams based on a timetable that someone posted on here a while back. I think it was the AQA exam board. Am I right in thinking that all the different exam boards all follow the same timetable? So English Lit will be on the same day across the boards? If that is correct then there are only 4 days when DD has 2 exams on the same day. The rest she has only one per day.

DD had got into a good rhythm for her revision for her mocks. She was doing 40 mins per subject and aiming for 3 subjects per night and 4 subjects at the weekend.

@Rollergirl11 Yes, the exam boards coordinate so all maths paper 1 are on the same day no matter what board they sit. Otherwise it would be chaos and schools would choose all subjects from the same exam board.

DD started her counselling almost straight after I signed the forms, today is her second session and she did say she found last week useful.

@PugInTheHouse I do hope you have a pug in your house. We have two snorty snoring puggos. I’ve got one on my feet at the moment and the other is shouting at the binmen.

@MrsPnut haha yes I do! He is out with the walker at the moment but spends his days sleeping on my feet or the edge of my laptop, he loves shouting at everything when awake they are the funniest little pups!

Forgot to say that we have online parents evening tonight which I much prefer to be honest. No queuing for ungodly amounts of time for a particular teacher! Then DD has her “leadership interview” next week. I have no idea what that is or what it’s for but can only assume that it’s something to do with her sixth form application.

In other news we went prom dress shopping at the weekend and DD has chosen her dress and is relieved that it’s all done and dusted!

Are there any DC’s on here going to Reading/Leeds festival in the summer? DD got her ticket as a Christmas present (as did most of her school it seems). I know it’s become a bit of a rite of passage to go after their GCSE’s. Haven’t really let myself think too much about it but know I will start to get anxious about it the closer it comes!! 🥴

@MrsPnut thanks for confirming.

@Rollergirl11 DD is heading Boardmasters with a group of about ten girls. I’ve booked an Air BnB nearby with a friend, just in case. The thought of them going alone makes me feel sick; the lockdowns mean I feel she’s gone from being a little girl to a woman without all the bits in between.

Mercifully DS1 has no interest in festivals, though I know some of his friends from other schools are going to Reading I think. DS2 is a musician and significantly more sociable so I will probably be pulling my hair out this time in two years stressing about it.

Mocks still ongoing here! Mostly done - 4 or 5 left and he finishes early next week.
DS is definitely staying at his current school - we’ve not even looked anywhere else. He should be fine grades-wise and if he has any blips from these mocks I think it’s likely to be revision technique rather than anything else. He hates writing so getting him to do full on practice papers is tricky but I’m getting there!
We don’t get predicted grades either which really gives me the rage. Not sure if that’s general school policy or just because of the uncertainty around covid but either way it’s frustrating.

@Rollergirl11 my DS got his LeedsFest ticket for Christmas...there's a certain amount of fear but we are not too far away if he needs to come home early & he has a good track record of walking away from trouble. He's definitely not staying on the Sunday night though, when I gather it becomes a bit anarchic. In fact, I've threatened to get a day ticket for the Sunday myself as I love Arctic Monkeys but at the moment they're sold out...

Oh wow I hadn’t thought of festivals, I always think of DS2 as very young. DS1 went to Reading, he came back early as he felt rough and had COVID. It is good for them to go but not easy on us mums. DS 2 isn’t that sociable so I don’t think I need to worry about him so much.
We are getting mock grades back now, he’s done well but they have another set in March so not much time to relax.

@HelloDulling ahhh yes I hear Boardmasters is actually far better organised. Apart from last year when everyone got Covid! I think DD would have liked to go if it weren’t for the fact that we usually go on holiday for those dates. Good idea though you being close by!

@legosnowqueen yep same here we are only about 40 mins away from Reading so I can pick up at a moments notice if it all goes tits up. I have also said that I don’t want DD to stay on the Sunday for Riot night and people burning tents and gas cannisters. Arctic Monkeys are her fave band so she is made up to be seeing them!

DD had interview for Kings Maths School today though think she will go to one by here as its too far. I have another operation tomorrow, got cancelled at the nhs hospital and nhs moved me to private so I hopefully will at least get better sandwiches. Lots more treatment after that.

No mention of festivals here though I am sure much planning will be going on in secret and will be told last minute.

We had a good online parents evening yesterday evening, in most subjects DS has worked hard & got a good outcome in the December mocks. The teachers did warn that they'd been marked based on 2020 grade boundaries & the expectation is that this year's will be tougher. DS will have a week of mocks in March but no dates yet. I've pulled the real exam dates into a spreadsheet so that we can start to work up the revision timetable together. It's going to be a slog...

Well done to those hearing they have done well in their mocks, good luck to those still doing them. I am feeling that this year is a bit like a marathon or a mountain climb and it will take a lot of energy and encouragement to get DS through it, one step at a time!

Thinking of you today @Silkieschickens, hope your op goes well and the treatment to come.

DS has more mocks in early March and is supposed to be drawing up a revision timetable but he hasn't yet. He has no plans for after the exams, I think you couldn't pay him to go to a festival. He really doesn't like big crowds and mud and generally being outside! He would much rather be at home with his computer. Not even sure he will want to go to the school prom (assuming it happens, we have heard nothing).

@Silkieschickens - hope everything goes smoothly today and that the sandwiches were good! Thinking of you.

@IThinkIMadeItWorse - my ds is similar although I have bought him a prom ticket just in case!

How have everybody’s dcs been getting their mocks results? Dribs and drabs in lessons or more formally all at once whether by paper or online??

Our parents was just before mocks which seems a bit silly really.

DS school had planned to deliver the mock results in one go, much like the real thing. But Covid put paid to that, due to teacher absences which resulted understandably in marking delays, so he got them in classes over a few weeks instead.

@Silkieschickens hope you're okay & that the sandwiches lived up to expectations...the high point of my private op (BUPA through work) was the Molton Brown shower gel

Hope the operation went well @Silkieschickens and that you recover well.
DS got his mock results in dribs and drabs either in person or by email, then we received them in a mini report and last week we had parents evening to discuss. He did well and his teachers were all so positive that now I'm worried he's a bit over confident and can't see much revision happening in the near future 
My DS sounds a bit more like @legosnowqueen and @IThinkIMadeItWorse so thankfully no mention of a festival this summer. He absolutely hates camping but he is a huge Arctic Monkeys fan though so will be jealous of anyone going on the Sunday.

Sorry tagged @legosnowqueen by mistake instead of @QueenMabby

The 2 weeks of mocks are finished thank goodness. Chinese takeout tonight to celebrate.

@QueenMabby results not till February with an official mock results day with envelope to mimic the real results in August.

DS did Latitude festival last year - he enjoyed the music but not the camping and thankfully returned without getting covid.

@Silkieschickens hope all went well with op.

I managed to figure out DSs exam timetable today, it looks ok, only one really busy week but that's the week after half term so should be ok.

He ended up doing less GCSEs than he should as the school messed up the timetable and him and 1 other couldn't get their full options (he would have had to take a subject he'd already stopped in Y9) plus his music exam is 100% course work/practical so he doesn't have a ridiculous schedule which is good. He is a musician and gigs a lot at the moment so it's worked out well as he hasn't had to cut that back too much.

He has a Monday morning exam on the last week so is now trying to convince me he'll be fine going to see Queen on the Friday night then play cricket all day Saturday and all day Sunday before Chemistry monday morning (which is his lowest grade at the moment). If it wasn't part of the combined science and he was taking it separately I wouldn't be worried but don't want him to take any chances. He is predicted 6,6 in Combined Science but is getting 8 and 7 in Physics and Biology so it's Chemistry that is dragging it down. He got a 5 in his mocks, somewhere in the middle apparently so not close to a 6. I'm not really sure how the combined science works TBH.

I guess he has enough notice to make sure he does enough chemistry before the event. It shouldn’t be new material by that point, so just a quick glance at record cards/notes or whatever.

@QueenMabby, Ds started receiving his today in % Marks rather than a grade - not sure why! Has only had 2 full results and two thirds of German. Did well in Physics and Biology and German a bit better than expected. We'll be given predicted grades at parents eve at the beginning of Feb.

Ds thinks it's all over. Sadly, he'll need to look at the gaps now as the next set of exams are after half term.

Hope all went well @Silkieschickens. Even though your dd won't go, it'll be a nice confidence boost to get a Kings offer.

@StColumbofNavron this is what I have kind of said, if he is really on it (way more than now, which is basically nothing) then I don't mind. Heis unlikely to learn very much in just one weekend if he doesn't know it by then. Apparently they finished the science syllabus at end of Y10 so it's all consolidation now anyway. I guess i don't want him to be too exhausted really, it's not necessarily the revision. He is a pretty mature lad so I will leave it up to him I think, I am maybe overthinking it.