Year 11 - 2024/2025: Half way, half baked, half term!

[QueenMabby]

Continuation of the year 11 support thread. Go!

It’s so hard. But it very much backfired when I tried to help/nag! So I have to trust this is the right way.

I think it is still helpful to
be hovering around in the background and feeding them..

Sometimes I try reverse psychology- ‘oh you’ve been revising so hard, well done’ (when he hasn’t really).

@frozendaisy whatever works to get them where they need to be ……. Still slightly jealous though 😀when DS was practicing for 11 plus we used to snuggle in my bed while we worked through stuff online I just made sure he properly reviewed where he might of gone wrong! I so miss those times.

@OhCrumbsWhereNow that sounds more like my DD who is doing her A Levels - I totally sympathise/ empathise with you.

@Sisublondie i hear you, and can relate to all that with both my DC! Less is more seems to be the only option but hard to take a back seat!

@VivaDixie thats my fear could I have done more to perhaps encourage him to let me do more but once he makes his mind up…..

this is a huge important stepping stone to next stage. Hopefully they will look back later or when they have their own kids and fully appreciate the support you gave.

Hello everyone hope half term is going well.

Dd had a geography consolidation session at school today (Tuesday), which she forgot about and was reminded by friends so had to drop her off and pick her up for that. Beyond that I feel her motivation and drive has really nose dived since leavers day and I actually don't think it was a very well placed day to have in the very middle of exams. Especially for sensitive souls like dd. 😟 I'm in pms mode so been achey and knackered for the last couple of days and having two other bored dc and crap weather doesn't help either !

I think I might ask her tomorrow if she wants to go over anything with me, biology and English are the usual suspects. Laying in bed feeling the mum guilt also for not doing enough! 😖

Motivation seems to have nosedived here, in many boys, particularly. Met with some mums, they all said the same. A bit worrying.
We both took pleasure in binning a tonne of old paperwork last night though.

I thought half term and a break would be a good thing. Decided it’s just taken her completely off the boil. There seems to be zero motivation at the moment.

For the big, fact filled learners (I’m looking at you History and Biology) I sat on DC’s floor for hours and hours, repeating facts, testing them etc. I worked on the assumption that exam techniques are vital, but without any facts you can’t write anything. It did work, but it was a real slog for both of us.

Yes I think it has with DD too. She spent the day bejewelling a top she’s wearing for Billie Eilish - it took her most of the day - zero Vietnam revision afterall. It does look amazing though. She said last night that she’s going ‘to crack on’ today. I’m not saying anything as she does need down time and doing the top would have been quite therapeutic.

Same here!

DH and I agreed that it was completely fair to let DC have the weekend (Sat/Sun) off. Then it stretched into the Bank Holiday Mon off. So we said to DC that they should get back into revision on Tues morning, all agreed.

Tuesday came, DC lounging about in dressing gowns doing god-knows-what on their iPads. I reminded them about having breakfast then starting revision and got snapped at. Eventually got them to eat breakfast, by which time it was practically lunch. Then DH reminded them about revision and he got snapped at. He's not used to being snapped at because he's the indulgent good cop parent.

Finally got DC to start some revising. One lounged about on the sofa with a Geography text book. The other stomped up to her room and slammed the door, apparently to do a Maths past paper. Barely any time later, she came back downstairs and said "I've done a whole paper, can I stop revising now?"

Gosh we’re all in the same boat a bit. Makes me feel a bit better. I agree - they were so exhausted at the end of term that I assumed a few days off was the right thing for a reset.

I even did my reverse psychology on DS - oh you’ve been working so hard why don’t you take at least Saturday off..

That stretched in to Monday - but he went out to see his mates so I thought - oh well, it’s good for his mental health.

But he never really gets going until the afternoon. So now it’s Wednesday, he’s done one geography paper and I doubt anything will happen until this afternoon again.

The only good thing is that maths isn’t until the 4th. So he has a few days at school before that. Hopefully the urgency will kick in soon.

Though I’m wondering whether having a half term in the middle of all the exams is a good thing after all…!

I'm not throwing anything out until results day (just in case. Don't believe it will be needed just don't want to temp fate).

DS had the weekend off, but is now back to revision.

It's a fun house here, DS doing Gcse's revision, DD2 doing year one A level revision for her exams next week and DD1 waiting to find out if she has passed her degree in the next few weeks.

My daughter took a well needed break on Saturday, Sunday and Monday but did a few hours of revision yesterday on History and Maths. She plans to do more History and some French today. She won’t emerge from sleep til at least 2pm though and then stays up late. It works for her so we’re leaving her to it.

I told him that historically maths paper 2 is the most difficult - I have no idea if that’s true but decided it was the only way, no the quickest way, to break the bank holiday NoRevision break.

He tried “it’s usually my best paper” (you can interpret that as ‘well see I need to revise even less then’)
“super this past paper should take you no time”

(he likes maths so you might want to insert another favourite subject in if you want to try this tactic)

One grumpy teenager at kitchen table, staple gun out, cheered up A BIT after toast and a can of fizzy caffeine, but was a lot more back in the zone.

I reckon I could have a stab at a psychology of teenagers paper after all this!

Actually no the psychology of the male ego of a teenage paper, minoring in interpretation of teenage grumpy protest mumbles interpretation!

I’m a psychologist and I’m not sure I’d dare try that one 🫣 Far too complicated 🤣

And even though it was a battle to get him back into work mode, and it was, before he did any maths paper 2 past paper, he was protesting, so I said, look if study isn’t your thing you can think about training for a trade if you like, once you start work there are no random days off. 5 weeks holiday a year not this all July/August, if you work like a bastard at say training to be an electrician by the time it would take you to get a PhD you would be top notch and earning well.

If you have a problem with all this perhaps academia isn’t your thing. Blah blah mummy lecture blah blah

Because he does get all of July, all of August and half of June off. No one else in the house will.

I added he will enjoy that time off more knowing he went into these last exams as prepared as he could.

And historically he knows once the mummy lecture starts it doesn’t stop until he does whatever sparked it off in the first place.

And he knows, I think, that I am not doing all this for me, AQA exam board have no interest in what I know about the development of Birmingham’s blue zone.

Me, him and his little brother have to go out soon to do little brother’s monthly delivery round. There is a convenient snack shop located at the end. (We all helped with his on Sunday) so that should start the day off with them in a better mood (they say hello to many pets they have got to know)

And tomorrow morning I have promised to go and get some new trainers in the morning

Would a walk early help anyone? You can have a chat without the house atmosphere pressure, get some VitD.

@frozendaisy
Be careful what he wishes for, my electrician says he does more paperwork than anything else and barely has any time off. On the plus side going by his daily rate he does earn a good salary.

The anger is real here. I just gently suggested that DD2's choice of video on 'specialised cells' might not be the right one for GCSEs given that it is delivered in an american accent and just contained the lines 'do this if you want to gain a distinction'.

Reader, it was unwise of me to suggest this...

On the other hand I guess she IS revising. We're incredibly fortunate that revision is taking place in the sun in her grandma's house and frenchteacher grandma is on hand to talk about 3D trig using a box of tissues and a pencil to illustrate the angles. I have NO idea about any of it so am exceptionally grateful.

DS went for a sleepover with mates on Friday so spent most of Saturday asleep on our sofa. He then got himself organised on Sunday and made himself a timetable, giving himself yesterday off for his sister’s birthday. We’ve just got the sciences/maths, history and music to go now.

I’m his study buddy for history - we read through everything, chat about it all, make flash cards for the key dates/events/people and look at example questions/answers. I’ve probably been doing an 30-60 minutes a day with him on that since the Easter hols. It was quite relaxed for the first paper because we could do little chunks each day, but we’ve got to step it up froM today or we’re going to run out of time for the other two papers.

He’ll sometimes chat biology through with me as that’s his weakest science. He just squirrels away with the others on his own. Not sure he’s really revised maths for months - it’s his best subject so I hope he’s not too complacent - but he assures me he’s just making sure he doesn’t use up all the past papers too soon.

I think he’s in denial about music. School have organised a revision morning in a couple of weeks though, so at least he’ll do something on that before the exam!

He wants to work for space physics!
And the only way to get there is academia. Hence the, if you aren't interested in revising then perhaps academia isn't for you mummy lecture.
We of course have no problem supporting him in whatever he would want to do. His best mate is leaving school to go on a trade course.

But if he wants to build spaceships then he needs to get a GCSE in maths basically.

I have to get a just woken up teenager to put suntan lotion on shortly

Nailing him down to do some maths revision later should be a doddle!

Lots of you seem to provide a lot more active support than I do.
I've provided the books, made sure his room is kept reasonably tidy, kept things calm, helped him print past papers etc, but I'm leaving the actual work to him.

I work full time anyway, but even if I was more available I don't think I'd be doing more.

I have made myself more available in the evenings I suppose, just to be around.