GCSE supporting - to half term, and beyond!

[SheilaFentiman]

Making a new thread to support half term revision and the set of GCSEs afterwards!

AQA English was alright according to DS. He'd be delighted with a 5/6, and satisfied with a 4.

@thespy That's unbelievably ill-judged - your poor DD. I hope she is OK.

@TripleDaisySummer agree our school's FM approach is pretty shambolic. It's lucky there's little riding on it; I suppose it might help the kids who do it (who presumably are mostly aiming for high grades) with their actual GCSE a bit too. Back in the day, I did GCSE in Y10 and then FM in Y11, which seems a better idea to me.

Seriously? Wasn't she outed as a claiming to be a Dr when she didn't actually have the qualifications? Seems off for an exam board.

DS2 said English Language was ok.
He was joking about how some students had memorised their creative writing for the exam....I actually thought that was a sound idea and asked him why he hadn’t done it!
He said Life of Pi was used. Unsurprisingly, he hasn’t read the book.......

Or not.......he’s now told me that he only wrote 1 paragraph for question 3 😭

Poor DS got a migraine in the middle of the English - managed not to vomit until he got outside the hall - twice! but unsurprisingly, didn't think it went that well.

The invigilator said they'd put in for special circumstances - apparently he looked so pale, but he's googled and they can only add 5% which is a shame.

He then struggled through French bless him.

Not really a surprise as stress is a trigger for him but we were hoping he'd get through them all unscathed.

He's home and fast asleep now so hopefully be ok for tomorrow.

DD had French writing today and says it was fine. She didn't like the translation much but the writing questions were all the things she was hoping for. And that is another subject over forever!

Your poor lad. Migraines are debilitating.

@AbbyGal poor boy, migraines are horrible, he did great to keep going.

DS found the reading section for Eduqas English Language difficult. He only managed 3-4 quotes as evidence for each question.

DS said English was "good" when I messaged him earlier. He wasn't too keen on the Life of Pie text but his creative writing sounds terrific. I just hope they can read his writing! French he is not so sure about, thinks he got muddled on some tenses. Still, that's it for French, another one done!

Ds said aqa English was good. Totally ignore the advice on writing a description revise the picture wasn't good, but wrote a story about an old man meeting an animal.
I would be fuming if he has had to do about weight loss as he's been through all sorts with his sister diagnosed with an ED as a direct result of Covid and mental health. That's truly awful by the exam board - have they no idea what percentage of teenagers will be affected by this?

We can read 99% of the writing :)

Can I ask about question 4 on the paper with Life of Pi? Invigilator read out that students ‘had to agree with the statement’. It was something about Pi not being afraid of the hyena and zebra fighting and instead finding it funny. No one at my DD’s school agreed with that statement as the passage implied he was terrified. They have been told by teachers to always agree with the statement so my DD cobbled something together. Sounds a bit weird. Can anyone confirm?

@Whatisitn0w DD felt exactly the same about the English paper. She says she only half answered the last couple of questions, then moved on to the creative writing (which seems to have gone better), then had a bit of time at the end to go back to them and add a bit more. She said she felt like she was having to make the same point repeatedly.

P.s. lucky for your brother meeting Patrick Moore, however it came about!

DD said the questions weren't too bad but time pressure probably lost her a lot of marks because she gets really stressed and is overall not the best with managing her time. We're hoping it'll be okay though.

You all seemed to get a lot more detail out your kids for English Language than I did 😂I got “went alright” and I asked what she wrote about “somthung”… she didn’t seem too stressed out by it so I’m hoping it’s scraped a G6 she needs for college! Gone to sports training tonight as it’s Spanish tomorrow which apparently is just going to be luck if she can work it out! She doesn’t need it and the oral part went well so I’m assuming she’ll pass it, but not a high grade.

Sounds a bit odd- the invigilator shouldn't be reading anything out about the paper at all.
DD said the Life of Pi question was OK (she hasn't read the book ...)- daren't ask her any details as I'd prefer not to know! She hated the creative writing...

@Saisong that sounds like DS's experience. He's been told that it's best to agree with the statement given in Q5 but felt there wasn't much that he could agree with and said he made very tenuous links. I suppose if they've always been told to agree it's a risk to decide to disagree in the exam even if you think that would be better 🤷‍♀️
I'm really pleased that your DD's writing went well. DS felt happy with his too.
Good luck to your DD with astronomy- that's such a cool GCSE to have.

She did think that at first, but had got rather bored of the whole thing (with all of them tbh), so I'm not sure how much effort she is putting in!

I will double check about the invigilator- maybe I misunderstood but she has definitely been told to always agree with the statement. How annoying if this time she was supposed to disagree! Hopefully the rest of the paper went well. She enjoys creative writing although is dyslexic so hoping she has actually written in full, correctly punctuated sentences!!

I asked DD if she did a story or a description for the creative writing piece and she said a bit of both 🤦‍♀️.

Unfortunately I think 5% is only for things like death of a parent etc. I googled when DS got Shingles and its normally 1 to 2% for illness as far as I could see.

https://www.jcq.org.uk/exams-office/access-arrangements-and-special-consideration/regulations-and-guidance/

I think it would be 2% - Illness at the time of the exam

Oh well, I guess 2% is better then nothing 🙄

Hope he is ok though, he needs at least a 6 to do A'levels at his school so it would be a real shame if this scuppers him. Roll on August 24th!