Current Year 11 2021/2022 support thread pt II

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

All welcome.

Easter here now for 2 weeks. DD was down to London with friend yesterday and off for a week with French MIL on Wednesday. Think her first real exam is French speaking quite shortly on return, she has not done any French lessons and says 88 year old MIL will be practising with her, though MIL only does food talk.

I am just here doing my chemos, 3 weekly one today, we have been gifted a nights hotel stay and meals next week by a cancer charity after chemo 4 just hoping well enough to do it even if its just a change of beds. On the day it was this week I had to go in for emergency bloods due to heavy bleeding but hopefully can get that under control. DD will stay here and pet sit and DS will have his own room. The silkie and the rabbit have been squabbling today so DD could be busy, suspect rabbit has been trying to eat the silkies food and land grab again, its not the land he's after just the food but he headbutts his way to it, tastes better than his identical food.

Really hope you get your night away @Silkierabbit - you definitely deserve it! Hope dd settles a bit too now she's in hols.

Easter break for us too although have just dropped ds off for his first real gcse! ICT practical paper. 2 1/2 hours long. Send positive vibes!!

Good luck to your DS @QueenMabby hope it goes well.

Good luck to your DS @QueenMabby. DD has her first MFL oral at around 3pm today (if they don't run desperately late like they did in the mocks - problem with a surname towards the end of the alphabet). Second one is tomorrow at a bit before 10 (not so many doing French).

Good luck QueenMabby

Really hope can get away too, need me to be well enough and DS to be calm enough to be able to leave the house but he does love his food and likes hotel stays so hope that part will be fine. DH will drive so that bit is easy.

DD is mainly out at the moment, 1 day in London and 8 days in Paris, at the gym or with her boyfriend so at least her social life is fine. And means I can concentrate on the chemo, 9 more weeklies to go plus rest of this week if can tolerate it.

Good luck Naem

Yes good luck @Naem 's dd! Hope they run a bit better to schedule this time around.

Hope the MFL oral goes well @Naem

All the best to @QueenMabby's DS and @Naem's DD - exams already - eeek!

DS has his French oral pretty soon, mock the day they go back to school (postponed because of staff illness last term) and then the real thing the week after. He is in school today finishing off and submitting his drama coursework and then they have rehearsal for the performance (worth 20% of the grade) which he thinks is two weeks tomorrow.

It all feels very real now, I did get him to do some revision yesterday so hopefully he will be motivated to do some each day these holidays. We don't have too much planned apart from meeting up with family Easter weekend.

Good luck to DD and DS @Naem and @QueenMabby. Hope all goes well. DD has her Spanish oral the week after they get back from the Easter hols too.

It was DD’s 16th birthday on Saturday. We were in Liverpool for it. She had a day of shopping on the Saturday with her cousins and then a lovely day in Chester on Sunday. Back home yesterday and she managed to do all her revision sessions yesterday and the same today. Then she has a few days out with friends. I think she’s balancing socialising and revision time quite well. Although having said that she does have a gig, a party and a theatre trip next week so maybe less revision going on next week.

DD a bit miserable, because the role play involved a travel agent, and she didn't know what a travel agent did, even in English! We have never used one. She figured it had something to do with travel, but she was really thrown, and just said where she was going on holiday, not understanding that the travel agent was supposed to help her arrange it (so didn't ask her to do this, which is what she should have done). She also picked a place to go where there aren't really any historical sites (new world), and then got asked what historical sites she wanted to see there - so got really confused and could only think about mentioning some historical sites in England.

And her friends got much easier role plays, it was just luck of the draw, so feels she really underperformed.

The prepared speaking questions went well and one photo card, but apparently she got a really hard one for the second, and she knows she could have done so much better on the role play if she had had the background knowledge of what a travel agent does.

DD just got her maths mock back and she was over the moon. She needs a 5 to get to 6th form. Her predicted grade was a 5 - her mock came back a mid-7 thanks to revision she's been doing and practice papers. it's spurred her on to work harder on maths revision to try and attain that 7 or even push for an 8.

She's also finished her Art GCSE now completely so assuming they'll be able to use that time for other revision.

@Rollergirl11 We're trying hard to balance revision and social life or just downtime as much as possible. I tell her to take days off and weekends make sure she's not at it for 8 hours a day, I don't think that's effective anyway!

@Naem Sorry she's a bit down, it probably went better than she thinks but that doesn't stop her beating herself up about it now!

Sorry to hear DD not pleased with how her oral exam went @Naem It's hard not to dwell on the negatives but fingers crossed she did better than she imagined.
I've actually just checked with DS and he doesn't know what a travel agent is either!

Hope your DS got on okay with his ICT @QueenMabby

Well done to your DD on her maths result @CornishGem1975 I'm not surprised she is spurred on to achieve a 7 or even higher.

My DS is very miserable at the moment, it's actually making me dread study leave as I'd rather he was in school with friends. I've never known him so grumpy. He is doing revision during school hours and then having the evenings off so I'm trying to get him to make some plans to see classmates as otherwise he'll just be watching Netflix or gaming...or eating me out of house and home!!

Glad DD had a good birthday @Rollergirl11

@naem ahhh your poor DD that sounds like a tough one. I just checked with DD and she says she would have really struggled with that concept too. It sounds like she managed to get some relevant dialogue/vocabulary in there though so I’m sure that will count for something. DD absolutely hates the role-play section. She has social anxiety and struggles to ask people things at the best of times let alone pretending to tell someone in Spanish that her suitcase has been stolen and she needs to go to the closest police station! 🥴😬

The thing is, the Oral is usually one of her strengths. She would have been fine if she had had a clue what this person did. And because there are multiple options, she feels she had it so much harder than any of the others, it just feels so unfair.
Hopefully the French goes better tomorrow!

Hope it goes better tomorrow Naem and hope she isn't too thrown by it, is a bit of a strange one, think my DD would know as we use travel agents but only for a package and the historical thing really depends on destination so that's a bit pot luck really. Though if she is good normally at it hopefully its not too bad, seems harsh to lose marks for not understanding the English part. It often seems a bit set in the 1980s for these things. DD is off to France tomorrow, she has her oral on return after Easter but has never had a practice one, well not since year 9 when she stopped French lessons. She will be chatting to French MIL but she only talks food, if its on food she will excel, anything else could be an issue. Actually I have a feeling the oral does not count to the grade this year, its on certificate but not part of the grading due to covid. Bit like the English speaking.

To be fair, I doubt my teens would know what a travel agent did. I've not used one in probably 20 years!

I’ve discussed with DD - she did seem to have a vague idea about travel agents which surprised me.

@Naem - I'm sure your DD's done better than she fears. Sounds like she had an unlucky draw though. Was that Spanish? What board?

@QueenMabby - no, not Spanish, obscure community MFL. DD not a native speaker, but offered in the school because there are a number who are. Think I had better not say. Just occurred to me that maybe mentioning about the travel agent is revealing information about the exam (ie at least one bit of information about one role play, although there are lots I believe) - but since nobody else on here is likely to be doing that MFL, hopefully I am not doing the wrong thing.

That does seem unfair with the travel agent! Ds 's mfl seems to be all about tech. It's quite a chunk of the grade and he hates it:( What are your kids actually doing to revise? Despite years of urging ds always refused to make revision notes/flash cards though we have the cgp ones. He's doggedly doing past papers and making notes from videos and the material from school. Just got offers for a sixth form but none of us have seen it, no visits or anything til enrolment day! Trying to think of some fun to liven up these work days but all ds wants to do is zone out with Netflix.
Best I can do is provide endless £ for snacks.

DS hates his MFL (Spanish) but it's a requirement at his school to take one for gcse. He also has past papers, some sites the school uses and I got him the cgp book that has audio files for listening practice. Not sure that he does a huge amount of revision though. Like you @aramox1 I just supply snacks and hope for the best!

It's his birthday today so no revision apart from a little bit of prep for his second ICT practical tomorrow.

French went much better, I am relieved to say. DD much prefers the French, partly because she feels that the department is much more professionally run, and partly because it is disconcerting to have so many native speakers in the class (when they bother to show up to class, that is). When she originally picked her GCSEs, she took the other MFL because French clashed with media studies in the pools, and she thought she wanted to do media studies, so she took the other MFL as her MFL. But after a bit of media studies, she decided she didn't like it, and wanted to switch to the French, and luckily that was allowed. Languages has always been a strength though, she picks up vocabulary and phrases really very fast, so such a shame about yesterday (but not necessarily out of date professions)

That is, she doesn't necessarily pick up vocabulary in any language about out of date professions!

DD has gone to the theatre to see Blood Brothers this evening with a group of friends. It’s a set text for Drama and is playing in our town. She mentioned it to the drama teacher a couple of months ago but she didn’t do anything about it until a couple of weeks ago and by that time DD had organised her friends, got me to buy the tickets and then they all did bank transfers to her and she paid me back .

There was an official school trip last night but the tickets were right up at the top - Dd and friends happier to be a little further down.