Year 10 - 2023/2024 Support Thread

[QueenMabby]

Hi all

A new thread for those needing support (or just wanting to chat or rant!) with teens heading into their GCSE years.

@NotDonna yes mine gets merits- they are definitely harder to get at new school- in the old one they handed them out for anything. They never tell me when she gets a merit- just tell her houseparent which I find really odd..

well done @QueenMabby dd - she does sound amazing. @SB1971 we’ve definitely had a lot of parents evenings like that in the past- I just tell both dds that you can’t be everyone’s cup of tea.

some swift movement from dd’s teachers after parents evening - she’s had a reading list for English and a new book of maths challenges for her and the other two bored children from the maths teacher. Quite impressed by the speed on this.

@minisnowballs - glad your DD's teachers moved swiftly. Hopefully now she'll have more to keep her going. My dd has always had extra "stretch and challenge" books for maths and has one for chemistry too this year.

We also her merits but are not notified of them. They're pretty common but I can see them if I log onto our parent portal. Commendations (worth 5 merits) are rarer. DD's had a few over the years but not many.

Ds2 got his report, a few coasting, a few very low grades, and a few average ones. None as high as you guys. I am a bit worried.

@Oblomov24 - don't worry. If he's coasting then there's room for growth. It's still early days. My DS was very up and down at this stage of GCSEs but the development they make over these two years is marked.

This is the first time they have to learn content AND how to present it and apply it for public exams. It's a lot but they do get there.

@Oblomov24 there’s a few high flying kids on this thread and it’s hard to not compare (including with older siblings). Do they get effort grades? You’ve mentioned before that he’s quite laid back so I’m guessing he’ll be prone to coasting. How does he feel about the report?
As you know my DD1 is a grafter! Works her backside off. DD2 definitely laissez faire (but most kids would be compared to DD1), but she upped her game for A levels. She did ok in her GCSEs but she’ll say herself that she didn’t work hard as so many of the subjects (ie 9 out of 10) weren’t really what she was interested in. But she definitely worked more for her A levels as they were interesting subjects and she had an aim for uni. I think in yr10 it is all quite daunting but also seems irrelevant unless they’ve got a particular aim and thus motivation. DD3 struggles to be motivated - she’s seen her sisters work hard and achieve so I’m hoping that’s a good role model.

Thanks both. I know, I know!

He's quite indignant.

He's like : that's not fair or true, for example, I got given a 5 for RE, (he then went rummaging around in his book /subject storage unit, to pull out said recent test, to prove a point). See, see: 18/24, grade 6. (Which is indeed true). So why the 5? (Which I myself thus had to agree was odd). Do I thus approach teachers on these subjects?

I did try to praise him. This is good. Good. Lots of greens. This is good. But a couple of yellow coasting. Let's look at those. Plus some have low grades, let's discuss those.

Trying to be fair. But he's hacked off.

My ds was exactly the same @Oblomov24! Always unfair, the teachers' fault for not teaching them something etc etc. Even now at A-levels stage his answer as to why he's got something wrong is often "well we weren't taught that" or "it was a stupid question". In reality he's a massive perfectionist and effectively self-sabotages so it doesn't feel (to him) like he's failed as he can just say well I didn't work for it.

At this stage in year 10 he was wildly inconsistent with grades.

Actuallyiof your ds is getting 4s and 5s now and there's scope to improve his effort then he's probably well on track for a decent set of grades next year.

He needs to think about where he wants to do A levels (if that's what he wants to do) or Btecs and see what he needs to get there. GCSEs are ultimately just the key to the door to the next phase of education. A friend of mine always says that it doesn't matter if the key is brass or solid gold - as long as it opens that door!

@Oblomov23 honestly my older daughter was just the same... I suspect he'll more than pull it out of the bag when needed - the 4s and 5s show that he can definitely do it...

Grade predictions in Y10 are really, really approximate. Often more to do with teacher perception than anything more solid.

And the indignation is good - means he will want to prove them wrong -

Nothing wrong with asking about the RE grade if you think it doesn't match up. DD2 had a grade for Biology that she said didn't match her test score. Groused about it all half term, then when I finally asked at parents evening it turned out they'd just given her completely the wrong one. Human error more than possible.

Also agree that A-Levels are a gamechanger - exams in things you are actually interested in!

@QueenMabby A friend of mine always says that it doesn't matter if the key is brass or solid gold - as long as it opens that door!

oh my gosh I bloody love that!!

Personally, @Oblomov24 I wouldn’t say anything to the teachers. He may have done some grade 6 level work, but maybe they think giving him that grade now will allow him to sit on his laurels. Plus it may have been a one off. He will absolutely know where he is putting effort in and where he isn’t. It was very obvious in a previous report where there was a lack of effort for DD3 and I said it wasn’t acceptable. It doesn’t need to be 100%, 100% of the time but certainly 75%, 75% of the time. She had been taking the piss. And has turned those particular subjects around.

I did consider contacting one of her science teachers after her recent report who gave her ‘satisfactories’ for effort but a 7+ for attainment. She’s bottom set for everything, a kid like that doesn’t get 7’s without any effort. Seriously 🙄 But I told her this, convinced her that I know she’s worked seriously hard! And maybe it was an typo. I’m picking my battles with school so I’m letting this lie.

Happy Mother's Day everyone! It's been a weird one here with dd away. She's done me a card and sent me a text but it still felt a bit odd. Hope you all had good days.

Mother's day was a bit meh in our house yesterday. Didn't do much at all. Did go to the park with DS and played basketball which was nice. He's so much taller than me now, so it's a bit of a one way situation! DS has got 4 assessments this week to revise for plus homework so it's been one of those weekends, although we did get out to go watch Twelfth Night.
Got the 2nd data capture for DS on Fri. Slight improvement on the first one and all grades were 7-9 with maths, music, physics and PE being above average and the others just under the cohort average. So the average grade is quite high presumably.
He's got a piano exam in 2 weeks too, so it's a bit stressful till the end of the month. Can't wait for this half term to be over really.

Mothers Day was quite full on at ours. DD2 was back from exeat and brought a friend from abroad, plus I had both DD1 and our ward, my mother in law and another older friend of ours who comes to ours weekly so is virtually part of the family. It was good to have a houseful - my mum died last year so being busy made it easier.

DD2 then went back to school so I'm bereft! I do hope this all gets easier some day, but so far it doesn't!

Big hugs @minisnowballs. My dd is only away on a trip for 6 days and I have a permanent hole in my chest! Sorry to hear about your dm too.

He's like : that's not fair or true, for example, I got given a 5 for RE, (he then went rummaging around in his book /subject storage unit, to pull out said recent test, to prove a point). See, see: 18/24, grade 6. (Which is indeed true). So why the 5? (Which I myself thus had to agree was odd). Do I thus approach teachers on these subjects?

In my school, we are not allowed to use the results of one test as an expected grade.

In DS's school they use cumulative test scores for the reported grades. So, it's all the end of topic test results up to now. He had a low score early on for geography and even though he's done much better since, the report says he got a 6 even though he got 7/8s since.

End of another term. This year is going by so quickly!

A good set of grades for dd on her report.
She has her one GCSE looming and will be starting some revision for that over Easter. Her older brother has A levels this year so we're stuck at home over the Easter hols as he's on a revision schedule.

I'm hoping dd starts some other subject revision too as she has end of year exams in all subjects the week before May half term. She actually has a proper gcse exam that week too so not sure how school are going to manage that.

Are everyone else's dcs off or so done still have lessons next week?

@QueenMabby Ds doesn't finish until Thursday. He's got several tests next week. He had 2 mock GCSE's in the school hall this week, maths and chemistry. It seems never ending tests at the moment. As usual he wants to be in the top few pupils with results. I do wish he wouldn't put so much pressure on himself. He's always revising. Ds2 is home from uni at the moment. He claims he never did any revision at ds3's age and is telling him to stop. It is his 15th birthday tomorrow, he has a few friends coming round. So I have a cake to make today.

Not done til thursday here - thankfully DD2 has sacked off D of E silver which would have meant spending her whole easter weekend on expedition as well. Can't wait to have her home for three weeks. Music parents evening Monday (just the instrumental teachers this time) and she's got a few tests left this week plus the Symphony concert.

DD3 finished for Easter yesterday and DD2 home from uni for a couple of weeks. I’m also delighted that DD3 isn’t doing DofE so I’m taking her & DD2 overseas for a few days. I’ve a broken ankle (no cast just a boot) so that’ll be interesting.
Her report was good with a significant improvement across all subjects but she has been working her socks off so it’s well deserved. I’m hoping she can sustain this for another 15 months, as it’s been a LOT of testing. She used to really struggle with attendance but these last few months she seems to have turned a corner. No doubt the spiral of happier, working better, good result, happier…
In some ways the constant testing has been useful in giving her frequent revision and honing those skills. Luckily she’s not a perfectionist or prone to anxiety like many girls at her school, whose parents are getting quite concerned. It does feel a bit hot house. So a few days away will be fab!

@NotDonna sorry to hear about your ankle. Hope you're ok.

Dd has kicked off revision. Started with Greek as that's the one she's taking for gcse this year but has all the other subjects in too for end of year exams in May.

She used the "automatic" timetable on getrevising.co.uk which is a good start but needs lots of tweaking which I did with her yesterday. Fortunately once the slots are in you can drag and drop them to different days.

Her revision is planned as follows between now and May:
Greek - 12 hours for each paper (3 of them)
English - 6 hours each for lang and lit
Other subjects - 8 hours each.

It's an experiment to see what this number of hours results in for grades and can then be dialled up or down as necessary for mocks and the real thing.

Dd is certainly a lot more analytical and scientific about this than her big brother ever was!

Macbeth the Fiennes stage version is showing in local cinemas in May if that helps anyone.

The cinema version looks good! DD has finished her Macbeth now and I think starting on the poetry and ‘of mice and men’. Or maybe they’ll start that in September. She hasn’t got too much Easter homework by the looks of it - just a bit of maths.
That sounds like quite a few hours to fit in between now and May @QueenMabby when at school full time. Or do they get revision leave? Or is she boarding and has ‘prep’ time? She sounds very dedicated to her studies, good for her!
DD is at school 8am til 7pm Tues-Fri & Sat 11-5 (sports) so fitting homework in is hard enough never mind revision. She’s already said that she’ll drop one of her sports in Sept but that only frees up 2hrs. 🙄 The downside of doing GCSE PE is that she can’t drop anything else.

@NotDonna - she's on about 4 hours a day 5-6 days a week during these Easter holidays then once she's back she'll just do one hour on a Monday and a Friday and then at the weekends. That should be enough.

She's at an indie but no boarding. Does music every morning so early starts and currently after school/evening commitments Tues-Thurs. Greek's been a huge time sucker and she'll lost that in May/June so we'll re-evaluate her other clubs then.

@QueenMabby wow - she is keen. DD2 informs me she has 'some drama' and one test when she gets back but she's already revised for it and it's an easy topic. I'm still trying to get my head round how little work she's doing - she now gets grade cards every half term and yet again they're all As and A+s so she doesn't think she needs to do any more. So it's mainly just music practice here.

Three weeks holiday. She ought to do something!

@minisnowballs - to be fair there's no way dd needs to do as much as she does. It's just that (a) she really quite likes studying and (b) I'm keen for her to develop good habits early on so she doesn't crash and burn if when it gets hard enough that she actually has to study for good grades.

She had a physics test the last week of term that she'd forgotten about so had done no revision for. She got 100%. Can't persuade her not to work though!