"Expected" Progress Between Y11 Mocks and GCSE

[kara123]

DS1 had quite a shock when he looked at his mock results and this has got us rather worried Prior predictions were all As with a B in French and this goes back almost 2 years. But after the mocks his predictions dropped by about 1 grade across the board. After this wakeup call he's certainly working a lot harder and smarter (i.e he has timetable) than before so I hope he does much better than the new predictions. We're just wandering how much progress one can realistically expect between mocks and the real thing (roughly 4 months). Perhaps other parents have been through this predicament

[copella]

Kara123 it is possible to increase grades by quite a lot. My DS went up by 2 in his real exams from some of his mocks. In one subject he was a consistent D but got an A in the real thing. I made him sit pass papers, which I then marked and together we went over the examiners reports and the marking sheets to see where he went wrong. We noticed that although he knew the information he just wasn't writing it in the way he needed to get the marks. His answers were often hidden in waffle and so I got him to practice being more concise. We went over sample papers of students who got good grades so that he could see what was needed. He also sent papers he completed at home to his teachers, most of whom were really helpful and willing to mark and go over them with him.

So don't you or your DS be downhearted there are I think 10 weeks or so till exams start which is quite a lot of time to start going over papers. I think it is this practice which helps as there are only so many questions on the same subject which can be asked.

[kara123]

Dear Copella, Thankyou for your words of encouragement which are greatly appreciated. We have also seen waffle in his answers so we will definitely enact your ideas to address this. Fingers crossed.
-kara

[PurpleDuck]

We went over sample papers of students who got good grades so that he could see what was needed. He also sent papers he completed at home to his teachers, most of whom were really helpful and willing to mark and go over them with him.

We will be going through this next year, Copella - where did you find those sample papers which achieved good grades, please? Thank you

[Peridot]

I felt it was actually beneficial that my son didn't do as well as he'd expected in his GCSE mocks, as it made him sort himself out, uninstall the games on his computer and get on with revision. He also did a lot of past papers but I couldn't tell you where he got them from as school gave him that information. We didn't organise or get involved in any of his revision, just kept prompting and encouraging and asking how he was doing. We did make sure he had a comfortable space away from the rest of the family to revise, and as we got closer to exams I also made sure he ate properly and tried to cook a lot of his favourite meals. Good luck!

[Peridot]

Sorry, the point of my post being his grades improved enormously between mocks and the real thing!

[scary mum]

We went over sample papers of students who got good grades so that he could see what was needed. He also sent papers he completed at home to his teachers, most of whom were really helpful and willing to mark and go over them with him.

We will be going through this next year, Copella - where did you find those sample papers which achieved good grades, please? Thank you

They are on the exam board websites - papers, mark schemes & examiners' reports. The school should point them in the right direction.

[copella]

Thanks scary mum. That's correct. You can find all thus information on the exam website and it's all free. Do speak to schools as well. They will also have Graded examples to hand out to pupils if asked and they will go over papers for them.

[doodles]

Ds's mock results weren't great, in fact a couple were bad! but they rather shocked him into action and he pulled it out of the bag.

He did plenty of past papers which he downloaded and without any parental prompting he actually went into school everyday during study leave and worked at school. It was disciplined, quiet and there were teachers about who were more than willing to help.

Good luck.

[Guest55]

It's certainly possible to both improve and get worse!

The next few months are crucial - as mentioned above, students need to look on the mock as an opportunity to see what they need to work on.

Some topics will need total revision from scratch - ask for help from a teacher -

Some topics need tweaking - they haven't explained clearly, they've not used key vocab - these areas can be improved quickly using past papers.

Some questions were answered well and these topics need to be be kept 'ticking over'.

There are lots of good revision resources on the internet. Lessons will be geared to revising areas of the syllabus the class have found hard [by analysing the mocks] and by pointing the class at ways of improving answers. I use anonymised questions from 'old' classes and get Year 11s to mark them - amazing how it helps them realise that examiners need to be able to read what they have written!