Year 11 - 2024/2025: Heading down the home straight towards that finish line!

[QueenMabby]

Next thread. 10 days of exams to go. Looks like we’re all heading into a busy week this week - good luck!

I would not want to be that science teacher! How on earth do you work out quite where to pitch your lesson or know who might even be there that day!

DS/DD's school is very sports focused so kids are always out of lessons for some sports fixture or another. The teachers are constantly playing catch up with some of them. DS isn't sporty, but earlier this year DD (13) had a whole month without a physics lesson because they kept coinciding with hockey/football fixtures - the teacher was chasing her to sit an end of unit test for a topic where she'd missed the majority of the content and the test itself. They then couldn't find a lunchtime that was free for her to take the test because she had yet more hockey/football training for upcoming fixtures. In the end they just wrote it off and she told her to get her brother to fill in any knowledge gaps before the end of year exam!

@mojobrojo - yes there are sporty ones in the rest of the school with similar issues I think. Fortunately (?) DD2 wouldn't know a hockey stick if it bit her on the bum so it's not an issue for her.

I have had THE call after biology (Edexcel, Higher GCSE combined (not igcse). She seems happy. Disappointing lack of Ecology, menstrual cycle all about the menopause, loads on the respiration experiment which she thinks is done with peas but they used maggots - whcih she was disgusted by. Didn't need the equations she'd memorised. Quite a lot on aerobic respiration, and some on heart valves - which she guessed but now reckons she got right.

Have persuaded her that she cannot now 'chill' all day - it's hard to crack the whip from afar.

Oh - and six marker on glucose tolerance- a fave here because her cousin and a v good friend both have Type 1.

Dd reports AQA higher combined biology to have been “a bit meh”. Apparently found 4 & 6 markers tricky but hasn’t elaborated in messages what they were on. She’d been pretty happy after the paper 1s so hoping it’s just a blip and chemistry and physics paper 2s aren’t also like this.

Dd left her phone at home this morning! She does that on purpose but is staying in school this morning for a cello lesson so I won’t hear any details until I pick her up at lunchtime! She does AQA Higher I think so it’ll be interesting to see how it differs from your DD’s Edexcel @achangeofnameisasgoodasarest.

DS muttered something about completely forgetting how dinosaur bones get fossilised - which was Q1 apparently - but it got better after that. Some hormones, some cell division/reproduction and some ecology. Thankfully no carbon or water cycle. That was all I got before he asked if I’d go to the corner shop for ‘nazi germany snacks’ - that’s my afternoon planned out for me then 🤪

Wondering what a nazi snack is @mojobrojo . ,, something sausage based, I'm reckoning. With cabbage.

Same and DS fairly NT as they go. I honestly thought that half term would be a good break and reset but it has been an absolute nightmare. Full on argument here yesterday about lack of revision. He was a total a-hole if truth be told.

Very contrite in the evening and promising to “pull it round” - time will tell…

I have a "very good" from DS - maybe he does have a future as biologist!
I mean, what 16 year old boy doesn't want to be exactly like their Mum, eh?!

‘nazi germany snacks’ 😂

Thanks for the new thread @QueenMabby.
Don’t get bagels @mojobrojo And you need to avoid Tesco and M and S.

Whoop whoop - DS is Type 1 and we were praying for something substantial on diabetes 😂😂

Gotta take the wins where you can because the rest of diabetes is utterly shit!

DS did AQA higher biology this morning and apparently it went "fine". He was in a foul mood this morning. He is moody in the mornings anyway but much worse this morning and nearly refused to go in. Very stressful. He also has PE this afternoon.
Hope Biology went well for all DCs and good luck for those doing PE too.

Depends how authentic he wants to get - I think he'd go for the sausage but draw the line at cabbage😝Our modern history revision has been heavily food-based - we've discussed how they needed wheelbarrows of money to buy a loaf of bread during German hyperinflation, Kennedy called himself a donut in Berlin and Khruschev ate hot dogs in Washington. There's definitely a theme!

We had 'decent' for AQA higher biology. Easy topics but asked in a hard way. More 6 markers than usual. After all that study of reproduction it was on strawberry plants. Question on peat bogs they hadn't studied and one on haemoglobin for T2d when she has T1.

😂 Good advice!

DD said biology was pretty good, got through it all quickly and had time to double check. She’s confused as a question she found straightforward seems to have had a few different answers given by a few different friends, so she’s hoping the usual Tiktok paper rundown will be available later.

DS said bio was fine (AQA higher). Not as good as paper one, or the past paper he did yesterday. He really would have liked to sit the 2022 paper as it missed out on all the topics he found hard and got a 9 on it! 😂 Sadly no such luck with the actual paper! He said it wasn’t a disaster but nowhere near as good…

Unfortunately they had a fire alarm go off in the exam! Not a drill, and they didn’t think it was real so either someone messing about or a fault somewhere.

They had to all go outside in silence, and were kept several metres apart. I gave him a look and asked if it really was in silence or was there answer conferring. He said that fortunately/unfortunately depending on how you felt, it genuinely was silent and completely controlled.

Anyone know if they’ll have to report it to the exam board? If there will be any consequences from it?

He said personally it was ok for him, it didn’t interrupt his flow too much but I can see that if you were in the middle of a calculation etc it could have really thrown them off.

Biology was "good", but nerves are starting about Spanish listening tomorrow. It's her least favourite part of one of her best subjects. Am hoping that the recent school trip to Spain helped as it included lectures on some of the visitor attractions and a day at a Spanish school.

Edexcel Biology - DS just pulled a face at me when I picked him up - I’ve given him chocolate covered peanuts - and told him he did his best 🤷🏻‍♀️

Yes they will have to note it for the exam board and they will potentially receive special considerstion

there will have been no talking as it would have been made very clear any talking would mean malpractice and no marks for that exam they are run very rightly and all invigilators there and social distancing applied

DD is OCR said it was a paper with weird questions!

aqa higher bio: “terrible, left 10 marks of q’s completely blank ran out of time”. She’s a 7-8 student, needs 7 for sixth form. What are the chances if 10 marks dropped like that? So upsetting.

He’s now making a fry up- food is a great mood lifter! And he’s absolutely milking it! He’s got his own stash of bacon, sausages, chocolate milk and chocolate hobnobs!

We’ve agreed he’ll start history revision in an hour. Attempted civil rights yesterday so hitting Vietnam this afternoon.

Thanks. I knew officially that they wouldn’t be allowed but in practice I wasn’t sure how possible it would be. By the sounds of it, it was well controlled. They are a good school with generally lovely pupils and no big behavioural issues, so I guess that helped.

There was all of Y11 in for biology and some y13 doing a levels, tho I don’t know which subject/how many.

You only needed. 112/200 last year to get a grade 7, so it’s unlikely to be a problem.

Have a look a grade boundaries for last year, it’s still very, very possible.