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.

@DarkAcademia - my dd is an early waker still so she's usually asleep by 10. No late night studying here!

She's pretty full on with extra-curriculars, music practice and an extra gcse that she's doing off timetable (two after schools a week) and taking in 2024 so homework and revision slots around all this so not much time for TV etc. she does go on the PlayStation for an hour or two on weekend mornings but otherwise not much.

@GCSEherewego My DS sounds exactly the same regarding attitude to school work! He's knows he needs to do his homework so he will willingly do it, only he needs to be TOLD to do it. Once he's told he's fine though. With revision he's quite relaxed about it, and will do it when bribed with more Xbox time. He's ont lazy either, but definitely needs telling and getting him to organise himself. He's waiting for an ADHD assessment as he shows quite a few symptoms, such as being disorganised and forgetful.

@DarkAcademia DS gets in at around 4pm, school finished at 3pm but he walks back veeery slowly with friends, mucking around in the park, comes home covered with mud usually! He goes on his Xbox till around 5pm when I come in from work, and then I have to drag him downstairs, get him to eat something and then it's either homework or revision and if neither of these needs to be done it's music practise time or it's music practise in the evening if there's homework. 2 or 3 evenings a week it's running and cricket club so that takes up the majority of the evening on those days. So homework and revision has to be done on other days, and weekends. At the moment extra curricular activities are prioritised outside of school hours, but I guess this will change next year.
We are not that pushy on the revision so much, except for science perhaps, as he does seem to need a bit of extra help with that as he tends to lose focus in class and hasn't always understood the concepts. Apart from that we aren't that insistent on hours and hours of revision. And he won't do it anyway. DH is against lots of school work in the evenings, he's a teacher and he is generally anti homework, but will make them do it if it's set. Both DCs did next to nothing regarding homework at primary, not that they were set any anyway as it was a relaxed school, just lots of reading. Those were the easy days!

I have a friend who makes her DCs to work extra revision during school holidays even when there's no tests looming and I always come back from hers feeling bad that I don't insist it of my kids and that I'm failing them. But kids need a break as the school day is pretty full on for them.

oh yes, DS is an early waker too, no lying in teenager here! He's up before everybody even at the weekends, so he lights off at 10pm for him during the week and a bit later at the weekends.

DD definitely has more homework this year, generally around an hour a day though she often does it on weekends.

Can I ask whether your kids are all due to do work experience in the summer? And have you (DC) started organising this yet? DD is due to do 4 days, I think, and has put together a CV but is waiting to add her volunteering on before deciding where to send it. So nothing will happen until January I expect. Her school will try and help but encourage parents to use their contacts!

We have long day here, he gets up at 6 to catch bus at 7.15. School goes from 8.30 till 4pm. He's home by 5 then does homework or DofE stuff for maybe an hour or so a day. He does about 6-8 hrs of homework in weekends which is when annoyingly we want to do stuff together. I think he purposely leaves it so he has excuse to stay home....

I try really hard not to get involved in his studies, he's proved to me that he has it all under control and I hate getting into fights about it. It's hard not to meddle tho.

He mentioned a work experience thing last week. He's into engineering so I'll try find him something in that field.

I didn't even know til this moment that Year 10 work experience was a thing!

DS has work experience middle of July and I've arranged for him to go and work at my friend's architectural firm for a week. They are used to work experience students and will keep him busy with a project I have been assured!

No work experience here thank god! Sounds a nightmare to organise! I think school suggest some is done in the summer after the L6th year but nothing's pushed.

Yes, work experience in Y10 for us.
And yes, he's organized it, but only because his mate said "my Mum works in a really cool place, and I think you should go there for work experience".
tbf it is a really cool place, and will suit DS's current ambitions. There has been nothing from school yet about sorting anything tho.
We didn't do a CV (what can they put on it?) but did write a letter outlining academic stuff, and how his extra curricula stuff is heading in the direction if the company. It was 3 or 4 paragraphs long. He got a message back a week later saying he was in the diary, and to turn up at 9 on the first day.

Someone else asked about evenings:
Get in at 3.30. Music practice and a snack. Then he claims he does "all" his homework - maybe half an hour tops, slobs about a bit, and is out 7-9 4 nights a week, plus quite a few weekend days.

Wellcome to the newbies.

Ds brought home a mini report today. He's not happy with the grade attainments. He said no one in his class (top set) got higher than 7's. Then there are target grades. Ds's are all 7 and 8's. Again no one had anything higher. So it's obviously a general marker they give them all in the higher sets. They are still good grades to me. We have parents eve in early December.

Ds doesn't turn his light off until 10ish on a school night. A bit later than I'd like, but he always gets up on his own so I don't say anything. He doesn't set an alarm but usually showers 7-710am. He comes down for breakfast as 7.42 I've absolutely no idea what the random 2 mins is for and why it isn't 7.40am. He leaves at 8.20am. The bus stops at the top of next doors drive. He's always first there. Ds2 used to be a nightmare, he was never up, I'd have to nag. He'd go in the shower at 8.10am and rush about drying, dressing and eating and leave almost missing the bus each day. So I'm glad ds3 is more organised, but he is a bit regimental.

My other two didn’t have work experience in yr10 so hoping DD3 doesn’t. It’d be a tough call as few employers would want them so young. I think we’d really struggle to find a useful opportunity.
DD does sports at school til 7pm everyday bar Monday. So mostly home quite late, dinner finished by 830, bit of faffing, maybe some homework or revision. She has ADHD and keeping her focused on getting organised for bed is tricky - she’s up at 640am and gets the train to school. Her sports start at 5pm so she has an hour in late stay to do homework but I think she struggles to concentrate.

We don't have a parents evening till April!

DS has had a mixed bag of results recently. He thought he did well in Geography but got an average mark. Did surprisingly well in RE (surprising because he's usually towards the bottom of the class in this subject) and got an 8. I said it's because we watched Life of Brian at the weekend before the test! He got pretty poor results in a PE exam and had to resit. He claims he didn't know there was going to be a test that day as it wasn't in the calender/to do list on Google classroom, which was actually true, so he didn't revise for it. Annoying when that happens, as he works off a list and if it's not there then even if he was told in class, he WILL forget about it unless it's on the to do list.

We haven't been told how they go about predicting grades for GCSE's. There's no end of year 10 exams either, just tests on topics for each subject. Is this usual?

We definitely have end of year exams. Usually the last week before the MY half term holiday. Also no parents' evening for a while - March I think.

I have no clue about predicted grades. We didn't get any for ds as his was the first year out of Covid and no-one had a clue!

Mind you DD's Greek teacher did tell them all on Saturday that she expects them all to get 9s so there's one I suppose!

Lots of end of topic tests here and dare I jinx it by saying she’s revising and doing well! She’s seeing the correlation between study and results, which is helping motivation. They’re not given grades just the usual percentages. I think we’ll get a report at Christmas, then parents eve in spring. I’m hoping the Christmas report gives her results and the median scores so that there’s some context. They definitely have end of year exams in the first week of June immediately after half term.

My daughter had a few tests earlier, not sure if she has more before the end of term. I think we get a report and then parents’ evening next term too. Our school reports always give the median and which quartile they are in which is interesting.
My daughter puts lots of work in to both homework and tests and it pays off but her dad and I are worried that this is out of balance with other areas in her life. She hugely lacks confidence and doesn’t have friends that she sees outside school except for a handful of old primary school friends. I think it is becoming more apparent to her now her sister has started at the same school in year 7 and is socialising happily with girls outside her primary friendship groups and I think she is quite lonely too ☹️

I’ve contacted her form tutor to discuss this to see if school can support in any way but wondered if any of you had any good ideas as to how to help build her confidence and self esteem? It doesn’t help that I am often distracted by trying to support her brother with SEN or that her Dad is very cautious and limits the things he wants her to do 😬

I would suggest out of school activities. Would also help with the work balance.

My dd has a group of friends but they don't always socialise outside of school. She has dance friends and music friends that aren't at school that she's met via her hobbies and she sometimes meets up with them in the school holidays and there is at least a WhatsApp chat thing going on most of the time.

Hopefully your school can help too. It's tough. My dd went through similar earlier on in her school life.

Parents evening. It was like speed dating for an hour, trying to find each teacher at their desk, for five minutes, and I honestly felt mentally exhausted! And starving. Couldn't wait to get home for my dinner!

I had written to his tutor asking for feedback prior to this and I'm glad I did. I got really good info. The 5 minutes at parents evening isn't enough.

So two weeks ago, when I got his tutors report from all the teachers I sat down and I said you know this really isn't good enough, you need to pull your socks up and make more of an effort and they all said he really really had, and was on fire, and his homework was much better and he was doing much better, so I'm really glad I stepped in. I normally leave him just get on with it, but I had my suspicions that he wasn't quite pulling his way so I stepped in and I'm really glad I did.

He has targets of 7. He got 4's in most subjects, from his recent exam week. At first I was shocked. Looks bad. Plus this is the first year, year 10 where I've ever had numbers. You know what he's working at what is predicted grade is what is target is etc. so I was like 7, but 4! . Before that it was just good or coasting, so this is the first time I can put a number to it.

But they all said they were happy with that (the 4 or 5 he got! ) because they'd only been teaching topics for 4 weeks, had only covered 1 or 2 topics and it was very early days. Some said a bit chatty, needs to focus more. 3 said they loved having him in their class.

So, I'm ok about it all. He's not ds1. I accept that. He can get a 7, or push for an 8, if he really really wants it. Even a 5 or 6 in subjects he doesn't want to do at A'level is good enough for me.

His business teacher said he was quite unworldly wise, which is a bit worrying because I know he is, whereas DS1 is much more savvy and he did business A-level and really enjoyed it so I'm not quite sure what I'm gonna do about that .

Sorry I've not been around other than my first thread ages ago!

Parents evening here tonight too but online - you literally get cut off at 5 minutes so it's pretty efficient but exhausting!

DS is struggling with tests, tests, tests. So many!! He feels he doesn't know how to best revise, so gets stressed and anxious about this, which then means less actual revision as he is just too stressed about it! I asked each of his teachers tonight the best way to revise for their subject and that was really useful so we at least have strategies now for all the millions of tests between now and the actual exams.

I'll try to check in here more often so I can feel a bit more up to date with how everyone else is doing too.

@SuperSue77 my DS doesn't see friends out of school. He plays football for a team so has training once a week and a match on the weekends but otherwise it's up to me to entertain him on weekends or take him to the gym with me etc. His brother is a bit younger (12) so we are still doing activities together like cinema etc but I'd love him to be seeing people outside of school. He does have ASD and struggles socially though so it's not easy for him.

We have parents eve early Dec. Ours is online. 5 min slots. I've got to book it 1st dec. it's usually easy to book, I just try to log on early and tick all the teachers I want to see. I won't bother with religious studies or citizenship, both of those subjects are extras, but I'll see all the others.

Mine rarely sees anyone out of school. Occasionally he has 3 or 4 lads round for a games afternoon, probably about 6 times a year and he occasionally goes to one of their houses. He has a group of 6 good friends he doesn't really mention anyone else.

Ds2 doesn't go out that much. I'm sure ds1 went to more massive parties. He plays football for a team, and also meets up with boys in his year to play football casually. He goes out with closest 4 school friends regularly to get takeaway, go to Thorpe park fright nights etc.

Pleased to hear he’s pulled his socks up @Oblomov23 must be hard not to compare him to your DS1. My 3 DDs are incredibly different so there’s probs less comparing. DD1 is a workaholic, perfectionist which makes the other two look and feel a bit lazy but they’ve seen her succeed so know it does actually pay dividends. DD3 is finally realising this - yippee!
Regarding socialising she has very little free time as does sports Tues-Fri inclusive til 730; sports all day Sat but does sometimes see friends Sat eve and/or Sunday & loves a shopping spree with her mates in our local town or up to London. None of mine saw much of friends in yr10/11 outside school, even DD2 (now at uni) who is incredibly social.

It's good to know that it's not just my DS who's not socialising much outside of school, apart from the occasional mcdonalds/cinema trip. I do worry sometimes because he did hang out more with his friends in year 7 and 8. But in year 9 quite a few of them started vaping and drinking and DS didn't want to so he stopped going out with them. He does running and cricket club and that's his way of socialising as he does have many friends at these clubs and enjoys hanging out with them. He seems to be a popular kid at school, I've no worries there. He's seems happy with the status quo so that's most important, not like he's lonely and unhappy about it.

Not sure whether our school are doing face to face parents evening this year, it's been virtual till now. I don't mind so much really. There's pros and cons to both I guess.
DS has got his second maths exam next week which he seems very chilled about. He seems to be enjoying maths/further maths and said that the lessons are not boring (unlike all the other ones!).

@DataColour I think it’s very mature of him to opt out of spending time with ppl he no longer has interests with (esp vaping etc). Many at this age easily succumb to peer pressure; this says a lot about him. If he’s happy then I definitely wouldn’t worry.

My dd doesn't go out and about with her friends much either. They are getting together this Saturday at one of the houses (not ours!) but that's the first time this term! They're all busy girls and quite spread out geographically so meet ups are not regular.

Dd got three science tests back this week. All over 90% and comically physics was 100%! It's her least favourite science and she's trying really hard not to like it but it's stalking her.