Year 11 2023-24

[Maxus]

Anyone else got kids starting year 11 in September?

No Y11 prom here, just Y13. Which is a great relief to both me and DS.
We have mocks Thursday and Friday and then the full week after half term. I'm quietly dying inside 🥲

All schools here are 11-16, so prom is this year, girls have decided against the limo (thankfully) so just a dress to sort (which we aren’t allowed to discuss yet).

Half term for us and we’re in Tenerife, dd spent most of the flight studying and has a few hours to get in before the end of the week, but studying Spanish in Spain can’t be too bad right?

My DD is dreading prom. There's nothing she'd hate more, but there's peer pressure to attend. She's an introvert who's social anxious. She hates to think of anyone looking at her or judging what she's wearing. She wears nothing except leggings and hoodies. Doesn't wear skirts or dresses, ever. She's never worn makeup or groomed other than basic showering, washing hair etc.

She's conscious that she's not one of the popular kids. She doesn't see herself as pretty. She's self conscious about her spots, glasses, braces. All of the prom talk is worrying her more than the exams.

I'm keeping it low key at the moment, but I know she's soon going to have to face making a decision to attend or not. And then deal with the fallout from that decision - finding an invisibility cloak outfit or working out how to avoid all of the inevitable prom chat for the next 5 months.

I wish they weren't having a prom until Y13.

Ds hasn’t decided if he is going to bother going to prom. Said he’ll let me know nearer the time . Which basically means he’ll probably tell me two weeks before 🙄 and if it’s a yes I’ll be scrambling around last minute.

Dd is having a prom, but it's very lowkey. She says that a lot of people wont be going actually as its in july so lots of people on their holidays. Its not really a hot topic iygwim

DS' school is having a prom but we're already on holiday so he can't go. I think he's quite relieved at not having to decide whether to go or not!

He's had three interviews and three offers which is promising. Still to hear from three, although his friends haven't heard from these schools either, so it's not just DS. He does seem to have finally settled on a subject combination though - thank goodness! Now he's moved on to debating whether to do an EPQ or not.

Got a feeling my DS will be the same unless I want to discuss £000s for a car hire just for an hr he has no interest waiting to see what his mates do. DD still got years to go already thinking about the dress 😂

Anyone else's child doing Electronics? Managed to find all the dates for DS exams apart from electronics. Not listed under exam board DS told me.

My DD has 2 weeks of mocks straight after half term, last round before the real ones. They get the results just before the last parents evening which is at the end of March. Luckily she seems to be quite motivated to revise this round. In November she needed much more nudging. This week she is doing 8 study sessions each day, one for each subject where she has mocks this round. No mocks for Eng Language and Add Maths, they last sat those in November.

I panicked when she first said she wanted to revise for all 8 subjects each day in half term, but some are shorter (e.g. 30 mins of German, 45-min History) and some are longer (1-hr Biology, full Maths paper on drfostmaths, etc.).
Last session each day is Art, which she loves and finds relaxing - she listens to her playlists on Spotify and starts drawing/painting/annotating.

She stops around 6pm and after dinner either goes to a friend's house or dissapears in her room and watches Netflix on her tablet.

DS has had 4 hours of science and an hour of English tutoring, then short bursts of history and computing. Slightly even up on RE which is a worry but I think he feels spread thin with so many subjects. He is trying hard but I think he needs to to get passes. He told his brother to start now and don’t wait for year 11! Good advice 🤪

Half term here and ds has mocks in the core subjects when he goes back. Looks like it’s the Paper 2s for the sciences. Luckily his girlfriend is away this week and his male friends are either away or studying so we are not having the usual arguments about his social life being more important than exams! He has really got his head down and feels a lot more confident.

His prom is at the end of June and we tried a few suits on the other week. Not thinking about transport yet - but I am hoping they'll be ok with the bus!

Mocks start tomorrow. English Lit flash cards still on going. HT will be fun 🥲

Good luck to all students with their mocks starting next week!

DS also has mocks starting next week but has not done, and plans not to do, any revision. He revised for the November mocks as he needed these grades for his sixth form applications but says he's just going to use February mocks as revision in themselves. They're only revising in class now as they've covered all the course content so I can't think of a good argument to change his mind.

Mocks next week for ds. It’s the only official set that they do in exam conditions, though there’s been plenty of in class testing and they’ve already sat quite a few of their GCSE papers for some subjects.

Prom deposit is paid, we’ve not thought about a suit or transport yet!

Good luck to all the DCs taking mocks next week.

Been lurking for a while on this supportive thread but time to step out of the shadows! DD very stressed about history (which she wants to do at A-level) as she just can't nail the timing. So much content to get on to the paper in a short time. Any tips other than writing really fast?! Good luck to all for upcoming mocks.

@MrsHamlet pls can you help? DD just got a 4 in eng lit mock. Is predicted a 7 and has had a tutor since Sept! also only got a 5 in eng lang, predicted 7.with not that long until actual exams, what should her strategy be to improve? especially eng lit. thanks.

it's AQA

@humtv on what basis is it a 4? Grade boundaries used for mocks are rarely very useful.

Feel free to send a pm if it helps.

pm'd you. thanks

History is proving much harder than we thought in our house! We have been practicing past papers alongside the mark scheme which I hope will help in his mock next week. Some of the initial questions don’t need as much detail was the main thing I found.

@MamOfTwo I think history marks are all about getting the structure of the answer right (as well as knowledge of course). You don’t necessarily have to right a lot but answer the questions in the way the mark scheme wants. Can you look at your exam board’s mark scheme?

*Write not right

Good luck to all who have mocks this week. DS has a few more to go. Found all the dates of his exams so printed out and handed to him he has been revising in between seeing mates.

How are the Art takers getting on? I was hoping DS would get a lot done over half term but the procrastination is too strong! Looking forward to the panic on Tuesday night when it finally dawns on him that his first artist research and response pages are due in on Wednesday. 🙄