Year 11 - 2024/2025: And relax! Support Thread for the summer holidays.

[QueenMabby]

New thread to carry us all through the summer as we transition from dealing with stressed teens to dealing with bored teens!

Oh, @frozendaisy- the “ it’s too short drama”!!!! I feel so sorry for you! Haircuts now scare me. I took a DS, in winter, to see my hairdresser who he chose to start going to after a “ nightmare” at one of the myriad of barber shops in our market town (!), sat happily chatting to her and me, I thought he was paying attention to his precious fringe… BUT we left, it was dark, and walking to the car, I lost him, he had legged it, having decided he hated his fringe …. I tried to find him, as I had to get to a meeting, the local PCSO (rare as anything as we don’t even have a police station in town anymore ) heard me shouting him, asked what was wrong… I brushed it off but as I mentioned DS ND he took down details and very quickly asked for permission to mobilise “ missing person” alert and “ all officers surrounding towns will drop everything and come”……. Which was obviously great……..but I was pretty certain alone time would calm him on this occasion and declined…..knowing DS would absolutely EVER speak to me again if that happened….and found him with DH who’d come to pick up. So! I share your pain!! I refuse now…. All you can do is keep reminding “it’ll grow!” ( aka the equivalent of saying “ calm down” to a stressed person!). 🙀

Yes, the old “ I usually go out at 6.30 am”…..! Bless. Mine has his hours all over the place, too. How is he doing otherwise?

Well, good luck with the hair 🍀 !

Dd is getting more hours at work, which is a good thing.
She's also making an artwork.
She had a good time yesterday with friends and has a garden party next week 😀
Not much talk of college and grades here

Oh the hair. DS is completely chilled until we have a hair disaster!
DD is doing her bridging units as we speak. Ploughed through maths last week. Doing phycology this week (she did it at gcse so it’s ‘ok’). History last. Think it’s because the opening sentence is ‘look over your gcse course on x’. Different school, different syllabus!
I told her if she did a subject a week, she’d still have a few weeks left at the end and we are away. This seems to have worked.

DS's school have only set bridging work for physics (and biology but that's the back up if he changes his mind on physics). We were expecting some for chemistry and maths too. I think if they don't supply it on results day (when he has to give final confirmation to the school of his A level choices) then I'll order the prep for A level books that I've seen on amazon. He'll have a week or so to look at them at the end of the holidays.

Is anyone’s Dc expressing worries about being able to do well in their A level subjects ? I’m trying to figure out if DS has imposter syndrome - he has some very clever friends - or if this is common ..he’s predicted 988 in his chosen subjects and got 877 in his mocks

Does he give a reason for being worried? He must know that 8s and 7s show they have a very good grasp of the subject and can go onto A level. Many A levels require a 5 or 6 at GCSE, the more challenging ones require a 7.

When he says "well" does he mean getting As and A* at A level?

Well, the mocks were some time ago?
And he would have had lots of targeted revision at school.
For A level I think 7s or over are necessary to achieve high grades at a level.
Which isn't to dah you couldn't get Cs at level with lower gcse grades.

isn't to say

@rosemarble yes I think he probably does - he’s at a Grammar School so that’s probably having an impact ..Some of the kids are pretty exceptional - I’m probably overthinking it ! .. I keep telling him that he’s going to be fine when he can abandon the subjects he struggles with and concentrate on those he’s good at .

For A level I think 7s or over are necessary to achieve high grades at a level.

Oh I disagree with this. I am pretty sure my son will do far better at A level than GSCE purely because he only started working after his appalling winter mocks. It was too late for him to cover the work to get the 8s and 9s he's capable of in his strongest subjects, but now that he's motivated and will hopefully have better teachers and smaller class sizes I think he'll fly.

So if he doesn't get 8s or 9s it'll be 7s?
Which is what I said...😀
Some kids get a hell of a shock after mocks and really pull their socks up - my older dd did.
The leap from gcses is huge imo and especially in stem subjects.

Older dd had a friend who got 9 x 9s at gcse.
Dds profile was a it more...spiky 😀
But she got 8s in her a level choice subjects and 3 x As at a level so it all worked out.

Yes - it is one of the reasons DS has had doubts about Physics. He’s also questioned whether he should be doing Further Maths too.

I think the environment he’s in has a part to play - it’s a selective independent and he’s surrounded by some exceptionally clever kids. In his GCSE maths set they expected all of them to get a 9, but he always said he ‘wasn’t as good as the others’. Taking to the teacher I established that this was because he was getting grades in the high 80s and into the 90s when a handful of others would regularly get 99/100. We’ve had to talk quite a lot about how the sample is skewed and the grades he’s getting are exceptional too!

It’s also not helped that some kids and their parents (definitely not us) talk about anything less than an A at A level as ‘failing’. We’ve had quite a few discussions about that too!

God, that sounds horrendous – so good to hear he bounced back from the accident. I imagine you will be feeling all the emotions next week! I hope he gets what he needs, and your DD too. Must've been a tough time for her, having to sit exams knowing her brother was injured.

@SuperTrooper1111thanks. It was in February. To be honest once they realised he wasn’t paralysed, and ‘only’ broke his back, the hospital tried to send him home that day! He stayed for 2 days. He went back to school the next week on a see how it goes basis. He made it in every day. Bless him. DD was unfazed really.

@mojobrojothat sounds tough for him, but sounds like the others are under a lot of parent pressure which can’t be good for them. I’ve heard of some parents saying they won’t support their kids at uni unless they get Oxbridge!

Your DC sounds very similar - same concern about Further Maths here too ! All we can do is keep encouraging I guess .

Further maths is quite a unique a level to be fair so I expect teachers have been emphasising the fact it is only for the top mathematicians. If a student was expecting a 7 in maths I wouldn’t want them doing further maths a level. I say this as someone who did maths at university. It really ramps up at each stage.

Sorry to keep harping on about DS. He did FM but dropped it to do AS. He did find it hard as he hadn’t done physics and the mechanics got tough. The good reason to do it was he was with the clever people and they did normal maths in year 12 and FM in year 13. Trying to get DD to follow the same model but so far she’s not doing it! FM AS was the exam he found the ‘calmest’.

Does anyone else have potentially large class sizes for A level? Dd said at induction day there are 34 in her Maths class. I don't envy the teacher's marking. There's another class with fewer pupils but this block has the sciences in it so is the more popular group. Science and Maths seem very popular compared to English, MFL and Humanities where there are 8 to 15.

I wonder if they are assuming some won't make the entrance grade?

I suggested that but she said a lot of the really clever ones are in there who are taking Maths, Chemistry, Physics and possibly Further Maths aswell. I hope she doesn't feel intimidated as dd is doing Maths, English lit Music and German.

Our college splits them into roughly 15 per group. I don’t know if A level teachers mark maths though, I seem to remember marking myself at that stage.

Bloody hell! I know teenagers spring back from injury but going into school every day with a broken back is something else! What a superstar. And your DD too.

@labradorservant
Bloody hell!
So glad they are ok!