Year 10 GCSE revision courses

[moomin2024]

Hi Parents, was just wondering if anyone here has sent their year 10 child to any holiday GCSE revision courses in the London/Hertfordshire or surrounding areas? Would be really interested to hear your thoughts on whether they were any good and if you felt it was worth the investment.

Thanks so much

I would wonder what a y10 revision course would cover, as schools teach the syllabus in different orders ....

I was wondering whether there are any revision technique courses or perhaps if anyone had experience of a course similar whether they felt it was worth while.

Did you post about this before OP? I agree, not clear what such a course could do beyond very general work for subjects like maths and MFL. Topics and texts will vary and there’s still lots to do in year 10. Revision of what’s done so far is a great idea but a student should be able to do that. Lots of YouTube help out there. And you can subscribe to revision websites like Seneca too.

No this is my very first post to mumsnet. Thankyou for the recommendation on the Seneca website, will definitely take a look.

Revision techniques - I would expect school to be guiding (I bet they are even if your DC says not). Your DC should be trying different techniques in all their end of topic tests to work out what works best. Should have been doing this since y7 really.

Ideally
. active rather than passive (make notes, try to explain, try to write without looking at notes, not ject 'reading through and saying oh yes')
. making revision cards / mind maps as topics finish so they have resources ready for y11
. learn, then come back after a day, 2 days, week to really embed
. work out whether online eg seneca actually works for them or not

Schools do lots of revision and post a ton of links for pupils to revise along with knowledge tables etc

All they have to do is read online PowerPoints for each subject they were taught in lessons and look at the specifications online for the relevant subject and what's required in the exam

It couldn't be more handed to them on a plate at GCSE level

Read

Read again

Make notes

Make flash cards

Buy revision flash cards on Amazon for Eng lit books like Macbeth or An inspector calls

Makes notes on each character - relevance of character

Memorise a few quotes

all sciences and combined have flash revision cards by CGP for each exam board

I did most of DD1's revision 1-1 with her, (dyspraxia, writing issues, and couldn't stay on task otherwise).
So eg

5 properties of metals.
I would give her the revision card to look through.
I would take the card back, and get her to try to tell me the 5 properties. She might get 3. So i would say the other 2. Then she would try the 5 again. Repeat until she could do 5.

Then move on to eg covalent bonds and repeat the above steps.

Then go back to metals.
Then go back to covalent bonds.

The go on to ionic bonds.
Then metals, then ionic, then covalent, then ionic.

And so on and so forth.

Then maybe come back next day, or 3 days later etc

I wasn’t recommending Seneca btw tho others rate it - mine never used it. Just flagging that it and other such exist.

But I agree with @TeenToTwenties if it’s about revision techniques then it should be active and in a way that works for them. Reading imho is not great.

Good ideas inc picking a topic, what do you know about it, what do you need to know - make notes and get someone to test you. Past papers and exam style qus good. Eng lit - notes on character and themes. Which books have they done?
MFL - check they know verbs and are keeping up with vocab learning.
etc etc

DD2 tried seneca in y9/y10 before covid ended her GCSEs. It was infuriating as it needed correct spelling which she couldn't do. We also had to remove/reduce parental controls due to youtube links. Might have been helpful had she been able to spell.

I liked the CGP revision guides especially for science, nice and clear.

Thankyou so much everyone! Great advice & tips!

The main thing is your DC needs to be revising properly now for end of topic tests (and for end y10 exams). They need to be working out what works, how much effort it is etc.
Otherwise you will be one of the parents posting on MN in a year saying 'my y11 doesn't know how to revise'.

Yeps this @moomin2024

It's so valuable to pull together notes, revision cards, details of topics and bulket points about themes for the things studied in year 10 - science topics, Eng lit texts, MFL topics and grammar, history topics, whatever they study. Will stand them in really good stead. Much better than sending them on a £££ course they don’t absorb or use. You may need to get involved and that’s fine. Or you may not. Also fine.