Year 10 advise

[rainydogday]

My DD is year 10. She seems to be in middle sets but slightly lower end of middle in Maths and Chemistry. She is doing double science not triple . My question is; how much time should she revise for end of term tests? Or in general? I am sure we only revised for GCSE's literally when we finished school for exams..... When she has had end of year tests are SATs I did help her with revision and it involved lots of persuasion! Now she is nearly 15, I am hoping she may get the gist and get on and do some.....but not sure that is the case. She always does her homework but it's always the bare minimum. How much 'encouragement' do you give. I work full-time and selfishly like down time now they are a bit older. But now worrying I may have ignored or slacked off with the keeping an eye on school work. Any top tips or do I just hope for the best

My DD is also year 10 and currently doing end of unit tests. She’s been doing a good hour or two a day revising for a couple of weeks. She’s had some results in and done really well which has been great for her confidence and motivated her to revise more for the other subjects. I think having really good knowledge of the topics as they go along will really help in year 11 revising for the real GCSEs so worth putting the effort in. School put the fear of god in them at the start of the year but it seems to have been the push she needed as she’s never bothered before (and subsequently not done well in tests). We’re pretty laid back but I have prompted her to revise and helped her find resources to help her understanding (YouTube videos, past papers etc) and made sure she’s learnt everything she needs to.

I think having really good knowledge of the topics as they go along will really help in year 11 revising for the real GCSEs so worth putting the effort in

Completely agree with this. The first topic Ds did in History is the easiest for him now as he revised for end of topic test, then it came up again later in the year and it was just revisiting it as he had put the effort in earlier.

GCSEs are huge in terms of the number of exams, 2 papers for English literature, 2 papers for English lang, 3 for maths, 6 papers for combined science plus usually 2 for option subjects, although History is 3 papers here, 4 papers/exams for MFL because of listening, reading, writing and speaking.

They are already learning GCSE content in year 10, the more effort she puts in now the less daunting it will be when they hit year 11 when they will be doing testing on previous stuff plus learning new stuff. If she made revision notes/flashcards/mindmaps now as she went along she will A) have revision stuff already prepared for year 10 mocks and B) won't have to spend a huge chunk of year 11 making those revision resources. I have had one child go through GCSEs and excelled because of the above.

I am sure we only revised for GCSE's literally when we finished school for exams.....

You will have done GCSEs when they were modular and with lots of coursework / controlled assessments.
Things are very different now, and more akin to the old O levels in structure.

She should be doing enough revision such that she knows the topics she has been asked to revise. She should also be making any revision notes she needs such as cards / mind maps, so that by the end of y10 she has a full set covering everything learned so far.

Have you got the science revision guides? They contain necessary & sufficient information. So you can test her.

If she doesn't try to revise properly now, she won't know if her techniques are working or not.

Thank you for your replies. It's kind of what I thought she 'should' be doing. I need to buy her some more nice stationary to encourage her to actually do it! I am really hoping the school will explain how to revise soon! They keep saying they will. We do have all the gcse revision booklets so I will try and encourage that a bit more. God teenagers are difficult to get on board though.....

There are a number of threads on this board on 'how to revise' that might help, worth doing a search.