Year 9 expectations

[DeborahVance]

How much work is reasonable for a year 9 to do?

My parents were never involved with my revision, I just got on with it, but I'm realising that this approach is just not working for my DS.

I find it very hard to see what he should be doing as everything is online, and it's also hard to separate screen time from school work. He's bumping along on top sets but I don't think he's particularly secure there and he's never particularly loved learning.

What do others feel is realistic for their year 9s?

End y9 exams can be used for setting in GCSE and for deciding who can do triple science, so for exams as much revision as needed to learn content to be covered in exams.

Also v. important to start learning how to revise in y9, rather than y11!

Yes, these are the things I'm worried about. I just don't know how to support him other than saying do your revision. It's so different to when I was doing it and sat down with text books and paper and pen

You can check the output of revision, in terms of:

• what do you have to learn?
• what are you revising today / this week?
• then test them verbally.

1. Help him put together a revision timetable if he hasn't already done one. It's a skill he'll have ready for mocks and GCSEs.
2. Ask him what he would like from you to support him. Without this, you're fumbling in the dark.
3. Check his understanding of why the Y9 end of year exams matter so he grasps that lack of application now may restrict his choices next year.
4. Get him to talk to you about which subjects he loves and which he dislikes, then have a conversation about what he might want to do post-16 so there is a point to his learning.

The best advice I can give is to get informed and see your role as supporting him. Youtube has lots of free advice, this teacher here talks through all of year 9 maths, pause the video, get your son to write down his answer, then check if he got it right.

There are others for year 9 science and ultimately youtube was where my children got a lot of support from for revision.

Finding out what works for him revision wise too, mine thrived on flashcards but hated mind maps. You can look up how to do these on youtube. There are teachers but also top achieving students who share what they do. Although lots will be related to GCSE the way they revise might help your son figure out a good method that works for him.

If he has any tests he has previously sat and has them in his school book where could he improve? He should have gone over the tests in class and written in the correct answer or extended his answer, usually in a different coloured pen. Plus his school book has all the work in from this year that he has covered.

Thank you, this is all really helpful

My DD is year 9 and we did our test week in Jan and have been doing options since then,

She enjoys a revision wheel and mind map. I also got her a white board and she did a knowledge dump of a particular topic and then refers back to her book for knowledge gaps.

She does struggle with getting motivated for revision as she is bright and retains info really easily but she did put the work in for these tests and got some fabulous results

Sorry, I don't understand the question?

Not when they were y9, which was pre-covid for both of them.

In y9 mine did homework as set by school, and then in the run up to end y9 exams I helped them revise as much as each was individually able in a sensible volume per subject. So we did revision timetable, made some revision cards for science (which was already GCSE content) etc.

DD1 was able to take this forward to GCSEs. DD2 missed y11.

@MissSandy We're fine thanks, mine are both officially adults now.