GCSE supporting - to half term, and beyond!

[SheilaFentiman]

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

@Covidisdrivingmecrazy gosh that must have been scary for you! Hope your dd found the History exam ok.

Dd is home, all I got from her is ‘fine’ when I asked how they went. She’s exhausted, no exams tomorrow, hooray!

That's really awful. I'm sorry your DC had a rough day.

@ReformedWaywardTeen that sounds awful ... so sorry. Poor DD. That would throw anyone.

DD has just returned. Apparently maths was 'good' but last question she just divided it into a square and some triangles and got no further.

History Cold War was great but she thinks she waffled too much on Elizabeth's Government. I've suggested she has an evening off!

@ReformedWaywardTeen horrendous that they missed Maths off her timetable. I wonder if it would be possible (if it's even in her interests) to get that mark disregarded from her grade. A special consideration 2% or so is not going to touch the sides.

History shows on DD's timetable as 2 separate exams. Something to do with how they code the options. I wonder if your school uses a similar system. For us though, one is only 2 mins long so you can see it's "fake".

Another Edexcel IGCSE here. DS agrees with the consensus here that there were a couple of questions which everyone in his year group found difficult, so, yes, that's reassuring.

DS2 maths Edexcel, said it was good. Maths is his subject
History he said he had no idea on some questions, he's missed so much of the subject it's a write-off tbh.

@ReformedWaywardTeen for DS2 English is his nightmare subject. The SENCO has told me to argue with 6th form to do his A Levels if he doesn't get the 4. DS2s maths teacher is very keen for him to stay on and is senior management, which may be helpful as well.
DS2 History exams look like 2 on his timetable, it threw me off

DS loved the maths paper but he has been teaching himself the Alevel syllabus for fun (weirdo) so understood the harder stuff like the last question. History less good as they only just finished Power and the People in time and he wasn't confident on it. Hopefully the first paper will bump him up enough to get a pass at least. Only 6 exams to go and DD finished her alevels today so pressure is off for one child!

DS had AQA Maths in the morning and Edexel History in the afternoon today.

He thought Maths was OK. But History was always his Achilles heel and said he didn't like it as some of the questions were weird.

Ds never finishes all the questions in Maths but got a 5 in mocks. Going by the 2019 grade boundries you need an average of 17 marks out of 80 in the higher papers to get a 4.

DS2 said Maths was ok apart from the final question which he didn't know understand at all!
Love to know what it was as he's pretty good at Maths.

He said History was ok....his stock answer for most papers so could mean anything 😂

Well my dd found maths ok which after disaster of first paper which was good. She said the last question (if that's the squares and triangles one) she found ok but lots of her top set friends found it really hard although got there in the end.

History she said was 9.5/10 but its a favourite subject. They do Cold War and Anglo Saxons. She did say there seemed to be a lot of people just sitting there with head in hands not doing anything though.

That's awful.

She seems ok. Said she was panicking revising and forgot start time . I can't wait until this is all over. She has no exam tomorrow then "just" biology Friday so an evening off is in order

DS says this one was almost too impossible. He did attempt it. Edexcel Higher.

DD had both maths and history AQA . Maths was “really good” history a “bit rubbish “she said. She is hoping to improve her grade a little in the third history paper next week.🤞

Do you not just find the area of the square and then 4 little triangles and add it all together or am I missing something?

@Hellocatshome

I think that's what my daughter said she did - I want to say the answer was 4 but I may be wrong......

Yes you do find the square and triangles. It also had to be expressed in a particular format with an integer, brackets, a root and a^2 - I can't recall it exactly, but lots of chat online.

The big square will be (1 plus root 2plus 1) squared (root 2 using pythag)
Ech of the 4 triangles is a half times 1 times 1

Add together.

DD has finally returned exhausted. Thankfully no exams tomorrow. History this afternoon. She had a nightmare with the keyboard (allowed to type) which got stuck in caps lock mode so had to go outside with an invigilator for 20mins while they sorted it out. She said it was ok and she got in the zone when allowed to return but has only got home at 5pm and off out to dance in a minute. She's going to need a lie in tomorrow.

Said the only question she made up an answer for was about some Bishop or another.

I think in theory that could be on the Foundation paper in as much as there is no 'hard' maths in it, but it is 'seeing' it that's difficult, especially towards the end of an exam.

Oh see I am a simple woman. I would have just done 3 x 3 for the square and (1x1)/2 for each triangle so my answer would be 11. But then I did GCSE maths a long time ago.

The tiny triangles have 2 sides of 1 each, then their hypotenuse is sqrt(1 squared + 1 squared) which is root 2.

So the big square becomes 1 + root2 + 1 on each side.

You do have to realise there are loads of right angles around.

If you look at our kitchen floor then you just know it, but otherwise each angle of the octagon is 180-360/8 = 135, so the remaining bit is 360-(135+135)=90.

DS1 has settled and is now studying for the non calculator further maths paper tomorrow