Year 10 2024/2025 - come and join!

[36and3]

A thread for those with kids beginning their GCSE course next month.

Dd is my oldest so this process is a first for me. Her options are: triple science, Spanish, history and food/nutrition.

We've spent the summer organising her room. We've bought revision guides and files etc for every subject and she's excited to get started!

Would anyone like to join me for the ride?!

Parents evening was this week, annoyingly only able to get 4 appointments, there’s only 28 in his year, I didn’t think I’d need to be on the booking site the minute it opened!

Common theme of not really working hard enough, often late, often off task. We’ve had words and asked his tutor to put him on report as last year that improved his attitude. He makes it so much harder than it needs to be and he’s not clever enough to pass without working hard!

We only get a parents' evening in the summer term this year! It feels a bit long as the Y9 one was the autumn term so we'll have over 4 terms with no teacher interaction. I guess if there was something of concern, they'd be in touch.

That is a long time @Stowickthevast. I'm looking forward to Thursday. I know the school would be in touch if there were concerns but I also want to be assured that he's not coasting.

Good luck @RealHousewivesOfTaunton sure it'll go well! Our parents eve is in a couple of weeks but we've already had one pleasing grade card so no real concerns - I hope!

DS and I survived parents evening last night. His predicted grades are all 7-8 so that's good. As expected, the general feedback was "stop messing around and do your homework and you can get a 9". He now has a homework and revision timetable and a permanent scowl.

I think we might have the same DS @RealHousewivesOfTaunton

It's frustrating, isn't it? The phrase "you can lead a horse to water..." springs to mind.

DD seems to be covering the same topics in year 7 as DS is in year 10, although obviously at a more basic level. I'm experimenting with resin so she and I made model animal and plant cells at the weekend. They may end up on the MN FB tat thread once GCSEs are done in a few years 😁

DH took DS to a Christmas Carol Dickensian feast/play yesterday. DS turned down the opportunity to wear Victorian costume but he stayed awake for the whole thing and seems to have enjoyed it. Hopefully he'll retain something for his next English lesson.

DS off to Germany today, school drop off at 7am, find out at 6:30 he’s lost his coat..! He realised this at the weekend but didn’t think to tell me.
Mind you I’m here at work 40 minutes early, have I got anything done? Nothing. ADHD is strong today.

Dd finishes on Friday for Xmas. Parents evening last well really good, currently on track for 8s and 9s

Stumbling along here is probably the description.
DS1 doing English Lit a year early (his whole year are) and paper 1 is at the start of January. I am panicking it’s all going to go horribly wrong. He gets extra time due to ASD but the problem is he can’t focus for that long! One practice question sort of ok but totally wipes him out. 3 in a row…..Plus he’s winding himself up into a panicked state about it and also not focusing on revision because of all the distracting disrupting Christmas stuff around.
Trying to stay calm and supportive- not helped by parental health issues atm.
Glad your DD is doing ok @36and3 and hope you found a coat from somewhere @wonderstuff !

Would rest breaks not be better than extra time @Walkingbkwrm ? Take a minute and refocus after each question.

He took his big sister’s spare coat, it’s not as warm, but I’m sure he’ll be fine.

It’s so tough to decide @wonderstuff . We tested that last year but he takes too long to refocus after a break and he was losing so much time after each break before he got his head in gear again (apparently you have to pick one, you can’t have both). Depending on how it goes we might reappraise for next year’s exams though as he has been a bit better at that recently.

@Walkingbkwrm you can have both! However it’s getting the balance between having enough time and prolonging the agony, especially as there are so many exams to do and often 2 in one day. I do exams access and if students are having regular rest breaks I limit them to 2 minutes no less than every 30 minutes. It can be a really tough decision and there really are far too many exams!

English Lit seems a crazy thing to do early. It's really hard!

Hello all, wondering if you can help. I want to encourage my DS to write notes for the topics his done this term. What's the best way to do this? How are your DC's capturing notes? Is this through workbooks or are they using school books?

My DS is writing flashcards for some subjects. For others he's supposed to use his exercise book.

Would anyone be interested in taking a pair of tickets for An Inspector Calls off my hands?

They are for the matinee show at 2.30pm on Wednesday 28 May at the New Wimbledon Theatre.

Seats are stalls A16 and A17 and they were £45 each, any reasonable offers considered!

We're now going to be away over the May half term

Ah we've bought tickets already thanks! Also saw a Christmas carol at the old Vic yesterday - was amazing!

Off we go into term 2! Dd has exams after Easter which will be treated like a first round of mocks I believe. She's had so much homework over Xmas it's been mad!

Happy NY! DS still has two INSET days before he's back. We've been trying to gradually easing him back into normal routines, but he's resisting. He has homework to tackle tomorrow but I'm back in the office so will have to check his progress in the evening.

Happy New Year all.

DD is back today and I'm tomorrow. She has spent so much of the holiday doing Art coursework the workload is phenomenal. She also has some tests coming up these next few weeks.

Her first report before she broke up was really good. So she's feeling good.

Hope it's good term for all your DC

DS has Y10 exams March/April time. He doesn't seem to be getting much homework, nothing for computing for instance and he is looking to do computer science at Uni. However, he has done all the other homework he had over Christmas.

DD gets hardly any Computer Science homework either. It's her favourite subject so she would happily sit doing that one!

Yes, would be good to know if there are any apps or tutorials he could work on for coding. He puts together things in Roblox Studio and Blender and did work on a Unity Junior Developer program, however it was not working properly on the website. There must be self-learning stuff they can do.