Year 11 - 2024-2025 Support Thread

[QueenMabby]

Hi
A continuation for those of us with DCs going into year 11 - GCSEs are looming!

Aww, @QueenMabby - she sounds a sweetie. Also they know her anyway so hopefully not too much trumpet-blowing required.

DD2 has a horrid week ahead. She has her technical music assessment today - which seems to terrify them all- it's all scales and studies and actually they're very nice to them but it looms large, then tomorrow she has her academic scholarship interview day.

I just know she's absolutely going to bomb this as although she is very academic and her English head thought was a very strong candidate for it, putting it in the same week as the tech assessments is a massive disadvantage for her as a specialist musician. It seems to be a whole day involving three different test papers sat in three hours during which she is 'welcome to step outside for her half hour voice lesson if she wishes' (but presumably she then gets less time). Plus three interviews.

Then Thursday is her lunchtime solo concert - also a big deal, and Friday she has a music competition. Saturday is the Sixth Form open day. And her history coursework is due in Monday.

Her houseparent emailed me yesterday saying DD wasn't coping so well and is a bit poorly, which is unsurprising. The temptation to go down there immediately was strong. I think she'll be OK - and houseparent has made her a brilliant timetable to help her get through it. But AAAARRGGH. Why put it all at once?

Ooof @minisnowballs that sounds terribly busy! What a crammed schedule. I'll be sending her positive vibes this week!

Dd has a quieter week this week - lots of tests though. Latin vocab today and then Spanish vocab later this week, biology and a history fact test.

Hope everyone's mocks are going well.

Poor mini snowball dd, that does sound too full on!

Yes that is super full on!

DD is slowly becoming a bit more relaxed as her Physics mock went really well. I have a feeling she didn't actually do much revision and instead found the 2024 papers and memorised the answers but she's saying otherwise so!

She's got only 5 more exams (and French speaking) but the 2 longest ones are tomorrow - English Lit (1hr 45) and Computer Science (1hr 50) so she is absolutely dreading that. She's also trying to convince me to let her stay at home on Thursday as she has no exams and wants to revise for her last exam, Biology (she has it on Friday) but I am not sure how productive she will actually be 😁

Well done to all those getting through their mocks today- sounds like steady progress @theorangecounty - I'd let her stay home ! As if things weren't bad enough down at school I got a text from DD2 at 10 saying she'd fallen down the stairs at school (medieval stairs leading to cobbled street, so slippy, but she's also clumsy) and hurt her hand. She did still do her assessment (fine, she says), but then had totally forgotten she was also playing quintet in a woodwind concert directly afterwards. I have no idea how they've managed to put her in so much in a week. Poor kid.

@minisnowballs Yes I think I will!

Oh I'm so sorry for your daughter - that sounds terrible and it is such an exhausting week for her. They really should have managed that week better

@theorangecounty it is good for them to practise studying at home too I think before they get study leave for GCSEs - it is a skill (I have two skulking round the house at the moment as they have A-Level mocks- one much better at self-motivating than the other). To be fair, DD2 is absolutely her own worst enemy - signs up for everything, doesn't think about how she'll manage- the school probably isn't used to her level of 'enthusiasm'. She is, fortunately, energised by doing music performances so will prob feel better once this evening is done.

When we have mocks they are all off timetable so only have to go in for exams. Bloody pain in the arse for sorting lifts (the buses are rather unreliable) but a good practice for the real thing.

Hope dd2 is ok @minisnowballs.

I hope DD is ok @minisnowballs and copes with her full on week-that does sound pretty intense!

DS said day one of mocks was ‘alright’ but ‘hard’ - could mean anything really. He did work quite hard last week/ couple of weekends, so let’s see. He is in school right through to May half term, including mocks.

I like it when my dc say exams were hard. It usually means they've had to slow down and concentrate and they often end up doing better than in exams they've found "easy"!

Hi all,

Hooe everyone ok. DS bit stressed and realising he didn’t spend long enough on revision and also some of his methods weren’t effective. He is young for his year I think he might be overwhelmed/ in denial about the huge amount there is to do,

One thing I think might help (for March mocks) is a checklist of topics for each subject and then he keeps an ongoing check of where he is on topics. I was trying to get him to do this in front of revision books but thinking we could print lists and have them in one folder for him to code. Anyone know where I could get these? Need a balance between enough detail but not totally overwhelming.

Thanks for any thoughts.

Still no mocks for my Year 11 here- only for my two A-Level students - who are cluttering up my house and not going into school.

@elizo on the checklist, my DD1 was given them by the school with tick boxes to measure how secure she felt on each topic. School may well have them downloadable if you ask? If not you might find googling the exam boards and checklists will pull them out from other school websites where they might well be available. If not photocopying the contents pages of the revision guide might do the same thing.

DD2 had her Sixth Form 'scholarship day' assessments yesterday. I suspect she was 'different' if nothing else.

It actually sounded quite fun. She did one essay on 'does music matter?', one on a book that's inspired her (she did 'For thy great pain have mercy on my little pain', which is about Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, except apparently she forgot Margery Kempe's name..d.oh), and a history source test on 15th century Venice. And obviously her voice lesson in the middle.

Two interviews with senior staff during which they asked her to estimate how many heartbeats we would have in a lifetime which she UTTERLY bungled by assuming our hearts beat 180 times a minute (to be fair hers probably was at that point) and some problem to do with buckets of water.

So I suspect she hasn't done all that well really as totally unprepared, but she was happy as she was given 'merch' (school notebook and pen) and got to meet the deputy head she's never spoken to before and have a conversation about what it is like to move from urban state to rural independent.

So I guess it has achieved what we actually wanted it to achieve - she got to tell the school she was serious about academics despite being a music specialist- and really enjoyed getting to know some senior staff she'd never talked to.

Kudos to them for making it a positive experience in what is still a gruelling week!

@Elizo - the spec will have every topic on it. My dd has been through hers and has dotted every topic red, yellow or green. She can then focus on the topics that need most work. Also discourages them from revising their favourite topics/subjects all the time which are usually the ones they are best at!

@minisnowballs - will your dd hear about the scholarship soon? If she's "thought out loud" well then the initial overestimation of the heart rate might not matter too much!

Ds2 finished week 2 of mocks today, maths paper 2 and Spanish.

He's qualified as a football referee, mentor watched his 5th game, and dbs, earning £30 for each 50 minute game seems a very good rate of pay!

Elizo I have battled and battled to get a list of topics for subjects, all fruitless, both school, online, and downloaded syllabus from the exam boards (which are reknown for being user unfriendly). Achieved nothing!

After earlier suggestions I found some online checklists which look quite good, for example

mmerevise.co.uk/app/uploads/2023/04/GCSE-Chemistry-AQA-Revision-Checklist-2.pdf

DS looks tired and fed up. Nearly half way through…

Thank you that's very helpful.

I’ve realised I don’t know if that is for separate sciences or combined. Maybe topic headings are the same??

@QueenMabby I don't know when she'll hear. Apparently she was also asked 'what books really got you into reading?" and she said 'biff, chip and kipper'! . And with the heart rate the teacher asked if she thought that might be an under or over estimation and she said she reckoned it would be an underestimation because people's hearts beat faster when they've done exercise!

She may not be what they are looking for....but at least I suspect she's given everyone a good laugh.

@Elizo well done for finding something - you really would think it would be in the school's interest to find these things, wouldn't you?

Good luck to all those that are going though the mocks and well done to the DCs that have done them already.

DS's ones are next week. He's been working hard, trying out different revision techniques and looking like answering questions is the way to go for him at the moment anyway. Not sure how effective some of the revision has been and he hasn't even started revision for music yet, keeps forgetting to bring home his music folder.

DS and DD (who's in year 10) haven't been getting on well for awhile now, annoying each other etc the usual sibling squabbles. But yesterday they were revising PE together! She's also got a PE test next week on the first topic and it's DS's least favourite topic so she was testing him on it and taught him quite a few ways to remember some of the jargon..! The one and only time they've revised together, hopefully they can do more of that in the future as it sounded as if they learnt a lot together.

@minisnowballs that's such a busy week for your DD! Good luck with the scholarship application.

@Oblomov24 congrats to your DS on the football referee qualification, that's amazing!

@QueenMabby If DS says he found a test hard it usually means he's not done well in it. So I'm happy to hear when a test was easy!

That sounds good @DataColour

Can I ask how much detail people put in revision plans? Subject/ topic/ type of revision? DS has tried a few things but nothing stuck and I think he gets overwhelmed. Want to try to help him for March..

DD's school recommends writing in a subject and having a general idea of what you actually want to study in that period - like if you're going to do exam practice, learning theory concepts etc. If he is getting overwhelmed, make sure he's doing revision in short periods with frequent short breaks.

I find revision plans unworkable a lot of the time. Either DS doesn't want to do that particular subject at that time, not in the mood for it, or he's tired so rather do something less taxing etc. Also, it could be that he needs to do more of a certain thing to get it, which means taking longer, more sessions etc and that just puts things back. We just see what topics he needs to cover and decide what to do day by day, depending on his mood. Perhaps after his mocks we will have a better idea where is weaknesses lie and might attempt a more structured timetable.

I’ve never really found them workable for myself or DS. I am doing a second degree at the moment and I might make a list but a plan soon falls by the wayside, although maybe helps with considering what needs to be done and how much time available, so focuses the mind. For next set of mocks I think it would do DS good to have some sense of what he will do though and tick through topics etc. This time it was v random and I think that made him feel less prepared. Onwards and upwards 😁