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.

@DataColour Ow. good luck to him - hope the arm holds up! DD1 is doing her A-Level mocks at the moment and keeps injuring herself doing aerial dance (surprisingly hard on the arm muscles) and then complaining of the pain.

The musical is West Side Story - amazing, of course, but I honestly think she'll be lucky to get chorus as it's a seriously talented bunch of kids. They asked in the audition if she can do an American accent - she said no, but she can do a Puerto Rican one as we used to live in Mexico - but she also thinks that isn't really appropriate (and i'm not sure anymore - it certainly wouldn't be here in London but it's a very different place).

Not sure DD is doing that much work in the evening @QueenMabby - and she has a concert tonight we're going down for so certainly none today. Think there may be some consolidation to be done over her long summer hol while we're all still working.

@DataColour - well done on your DS's cricketing achievements - sounds like he had a great game! Hope he's not suffering too badly. Best of luck for him for his exams today.

@minisnowballs - West Side Story is an epic one to do. Fingers crossed for your DD's audition. I Feel Pretty is one of DD's grade 4 singing pieces for her exam next week - hopefully that means both are fated to do well!

Dd has a Latin test today on her set text and is also doing the Junior Physics Challenge at lunchtime.

@DataColour - dd has always been an early riser (even now she's usually awake and up before 7 - often even at the weekends and during the holidays!) so it makes sense for us to schedule in stuff before school. She doesn't do a lot of competitive sport which always takes up so much time so there's that. Ballet and tap are an hour and a half a week with no extras unless around exams or show time and her netball is an hour and a half with a match only every couple of Sundays as there's a large group and she doesn't get selected every week.

She does always need to be "doing" though. She finds school holidays stressful as she doesn't like not being productive. We often have to sort her out a project to do or a general routine for every day so she feels she's achieved something - she can't relax otherwise. I think she's inherited this from my mum. It's exhausting!

Wow, everyone is so busy! Thanks for all the suggestions of which apps etc your dc like, this is very helpful to me.

DD3 finished end of years now and beginning to get results. No 7/8/9’s here sadly. She did worse in maths than last year and cried bless her. It’s disappointing as she’s been studying so hard. One question was an equation plus another equation but on her paper the plus was faded and looked like a minus so lost 4 points there (apparently). I’m hoping the poor results don’t make her despondent and think ‘what’s the point’. She was quite down about it last night. Both her big sisters are home for summer & were really encouraging so I’m hoping she can keep going.

Oh bless her. It's tough at the start of gcse years when school suddenly start getting "real" on grades/marking and there's the inevitable drop. There's still plenty of time for the grades to come up as they progress through the content and get more practised at answering exam questions.

Good that she has her siblings around to reassure her. There's already a rumour going round DD's year that some people got a "U" in maths and that the year group average for biology was just under 50% so I'm sure your dd is not the only one to see grades dip at this stage.

Dd gets her grades today too. Apparently FM grades are low and about two grades lower than the main maths grades. Am braced for the fallout!

@NotDonna sorry that your DD is disappointed with her grades. I don't think it's an indication of much really, there is lot of time for improvement, hope she remains positive, although she must feel like it's the end of the world right now! Glad she's got her sisters for comfort.

@QueenMabby DS is doing FM too but haven't had any exams in it this year. It would have been interesting to know how he is doing in it.
Your DD sounds amazing! DS is also an early riser, even at the weekends, but he just goes on his Xbox!

@minisnowballs Oohh West Side Story! That's great! Hope her concert went well last night.

Oh @NotDonna - certainly we had that in Year 10 with DD1 - the teachers do 'get real' and want to scare them - it is often about exam technique at this stage I think. We're dreading the return of DD2's maths exam. She says it was really hard and she revised the wrong bits. It's often the first time that they're faced with them all at once as well, and learning to prioritise. Hope she feels better soon and her siblings are helpful.

@QueenMabby I suspect your DD has done very well, but I understand the angst - the rumours don't help do they.

DD2's concert was excellent last night - it is my favourite one which has the 'fun' ensembles in it, not just the ones on a pre-professional track, which takes the pressure off massively. She was positively glowing afterwards - and we got to take her away with us last night and do the school run from the local Premier Inn after a huge breakfast. She was pretty pleased with that!

Who doesn't love a Premier Inn breakfast??!

@DataColour - all the year did 2 maths papers with the FM cohort doing a different (harder) second paper. Dd found it really hard but said it was more like maths challenge word problems rather than "proper" maths! We'll wait and see. Years 7-9 get grades A star down to E with only year 10 getting the 9-1 grades. Last year dd got a full sweep of A stars but I know that won't translate to a slew of top grades this year!

My daughters have had end of year exams since yr7 so they’re used to revising for lots of exams at the same time and being in the main hall. So DD3 can’t use that as an excuse 🤣
But, from a girl who only 6 months ago hated school, didn’t see the point and although would do homework it was minimal effort, there’s been a total 180’ transformation. She’s suddenly very mature about it all, organised and incredibly keen to do her best and willing to put the effort in. No clue why this is but it’s fabulous timing. It means she’s more likely to reach her potential (won’t be 7, 8, 9) but that’s absolutely ok!

@NotDonna - reaching potential is the best though. It's all we ever want for our children isn't it?? So glad your dd seems to have impeccable timing! 🤣

Not Donna hope she is ok. I think schools do things very differently. I was out with my PNG last night at a cheese and wine bar, of the 5 of us, 4 had already got ye 10 exam results, whereas my ds2 doesn't sit them till next week. As I said I'm expecting 5's and 6's and encouraging him to push to achieve a 7 or even possibly an 8 in the real thing, but I'll let him off with a 5 or 6 in his Spanish and RE, because they are his least favourite. Many last night already had 7's, 8's and one 9.

But (re your dd aswell) actually one has to question, what does that 9 mean, so early, is it a realistic evaluation? How can a year 10 child really get a 9, when they are only 1 year into a 2 year syllabus and haven't covered a large proportion of the syllabus yet. All I mean is that maybe her school set more realistic papers and gave slightly lower grades, to show where the children were at atm. Did your other 2 dd's tell dd3 that similar had happened to them?

@Oblomov24 My DH who's a secondary school/6th form chemistry teacher says the grading system at this stage of their GCSEs is guess work mainly, hopefully an educated guess! May not even be consistent between subjects in the same school, let alone different schools.

My thoughts exactly Data!

@Oblomov24 I’m not sure how they do it tbh. Schools have huge amounts of data and can probably say with a reasonable degree of certainty which children will achieve what. I’ve no clue if that data is used for end of year exams, or if they say last year a 5 in maths gcse was 50-60% so give a child achieving that percentage a 5. I think giving 8/9’s will be pretty certain, if they are looking at the data.

In DD1’s yr10 (6 yrs ago) some teachers would give a grade ‘if they sat the exam today’ , whilst others would forecast. Ot wasn’t always clear who was doing which.

@NotDonna - ours did that too with the Year 10 exams for DD1 - it just seemed to be down to the individual teacher - which didn't help anyone. Literally no idea how DD2's school is doing it- they keep sending us stuff about 'benchmarking' but it doesn't make much sense to us, especially since DD has changed schools, systems, exam boards (you name it) and never took SATs in either Year 2 or 6 so is utterly data free as far as we can see!

I think our school takes all the marks for each subject and then grades them on a bell curve across the year group. At least for end of year exams as they're quite formal.

End of term general "grades" are a lot more variable between subject and between teachers.

DD and I were at a Sports Award Event on Fri eve. It’s was a lovely sit down dinner with a fabulous speaker, Sue Antiss, talking about gender equality in sport. It was so much better than I was expecting and even better still as DD won awards for two of her sports! Yaay! Which definitely cheered her up.
@DataColour did you get anywhere with PE video clips? Does he race in a velodrome or is it road racing? I can imagine the latter being a nightmare to capture! DD3 also doing PE, luckily none of hers are summer sports. I’m going to ask to see what’s she done today as I’ve no clue where she’s at with it and whilst I’m sure the school will be reminding them, it’s very much up to the students. I think she’s also got some English coursework so need to remember to ask if she’s up to speed with it.

@NotDonna - well done your dd! It's also reminded me that we have a Sports Awards Evening coming up and I need to check if DS wants to go. Dd is not sporty so would never get prizes for that!

Ds2 did gcse pe. Those who didn't do sport out of school were taken to a place with climbing walls and were filmed there for one part, they also filmed them playing table tennis at school. Ds was on the school football team, again filmed by the pe teacher. So that might have all worked out well. But ds2 was 2020 exam year, the year they were all cancelled due to Covid. So I don't suppose the footage was ever viewed by examiners.

@NotDonna Not really got anywhere yet. Despite email to PE teacher, no reply. But he has told DS in person that he doesn't know the criteria for cycling and for DS to look up the exam board for it....ridiculous. I don't want to inflame matters as this teacher is a bit of a bully anyway and in year 9 humiliated DS in front of everyone when he didn't want to take part in rugby as he had a grade 6 piano exam the next day. He doesn't help the PE teacher reputation! DS will have him till end of year 11 and DD will also be entering year 10 next year, but fingers crossed she will have the female teacher.
Anyway, DS is doing road cycling. DH can film him easily as he's a keen cyclist and they've already done some filming and looking at videos that got top marks posted on youtube and DS is more than capable of that. DS and DH are going on a few cycling trips over the summer, so the plan is to get it all done.
What's your DDs sports?

@icanbewhatiwant thanks for that info. DD is thinking of doing table tennis for her group sport. She has 2 strong individual sports, running and bouldering, but she is not a teams sport person, so struggling to think of what she could do. Luckily, her best friends is also going to do PE GCSE and dont' have a team sport, hence thinking of table tennis. We have a couple of parks nearby with outdoor table tennis, and when and if the weather ever gets better I'll take the girls for a try out.

I've just realised that our school is only doing one mock exam for year 11, end of Nov. Is this normal? I thought they'd have 2 mocks before the real thing. They didn't have end of year 10 mocks either. Seems unusual to me.

@DataColour PE teacher sounds horrible - what a shame. DD2 is awful at PE (obviously not doing the GCSE) but the teachers are so kind to her. There is NO need for humiliation... that sort of stuff scars them for life.

DD1 had two lots of mocks, and endless other tests. Does seem light - though definitely more like it was in my day, and I guess we did OK with it. With lots of papers in class it might be ok, but leaves the teachers with less evidence if anything goes wrong and they can't sit the real thing I suppose.

@DataColour - we only get one set of mocks. Ours are in January directly after the Christmas holidays. I think multiple mocks is quite a new thing.

The PE teacher sounds awful.

Ds has a full timetable of mocks starting next week. 2 on most days. Then more mon-weds of the following week. The week after that is work experience. So a busy few weeks here.

That PE teacher sounds awful @DataColour
I find deciding how much to get involved so difficult with school,ultimately they are still children and need us to advocate for them but also I do worry about the ramifications of doing so in terms of their treatment.
Good luck in making some progress with it all.

Hello all, I was on here some months ago (and on the Yr 9 thread, albeit under a different name). I took a break from MN but am back.

I need to read back through all your posts but I see others have been or are doing mocks. DS’s school started three weeks (!) of GCSE mocks today; the mocks started today but he doesn’t have one until tomorrow.

A little while ago I bought DS and his 19 yo sister tickets to see Doja Cat, and they’re going tonight… the night before his first mock. Not entirely a great mothering decision but his sister has just finished her A levels after a very difficult few years, DS has asked me, and they wanted to go together. He has been revising though.

A special 👋 to @QueenMabby who I’m also on the Yr 13 thread with!