lazydaisy Posted April 20, 2008 Report Share Posted April 20, 2008 My daughter is taking her GCSE's this year, starting tomorrow. She is clever, but not organised. All through her time in High school I have prompted her to get her homework done and not to leave things to the last minute. I have told her that I am the worlds worst for leaving things to the last minute, so she did not think I was expecting her to be perfect. She has had a Geography project which should have been finished on friday. She did not go to school on Friday because she had a tooth out the day before and she felt rough. I told her that she had the whole weekend to get the project finished, and did not let her come out on any dog walks so she could get on with it. She told me at 9.30pm that she has a Welsh speaking test tomorrow, has not done enough revision for it and has not finished the geography project -aggh!!!!!!!!!!! I am so fed up of her time wasting, she had the easter holiday 2 weeks ago, and did nothing, despite me telling her she should start revision. I have given her the "your old enough to sort out your time and get things done" talk, but it does not seem to have made the slightest bit of difference. She has A's and Astars predicted, but the way she is going I dont think she will get them!! She dosent realise that she is messing with her future. Am I alone with this problem, are all teenagers like this. Is it obvious that I am stressed?????????????????? ps - I did'nt get any help with my school work and revision. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tisaann Posted April 20, 2008 Report Share Posted April 20, 2008 Son goes back to school tomorrow after 2 weeks holiday and NOT ONCE has he revised. He was doing well at school until it was made into an Academy a year ago and now hates school with a passion, even to the point of not wanting to go on to further education. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blackmagic Posted April 20, 2008 Report Share Posted April 20, 2008 My older son , whose bedroom was a tip, always had his school and college projects finished within days of being given them. At college he was handing in the finished project when the rest of the class were handing in their first drafts. My nephew never finished anything until the last minute. My sister was often typing up college work for him into the early hours of the morning that it was due to be handed in. His work all had to be typed - no word processors in those days - and he couldn't type. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simikins Posted April 20, 2008 Report Share Posted April 20, 2008 My daughter is doing hers at the moment so far she has done 4 exams, next batch are in May. I'm really lucky that this time last year she did her rebellious refusing to do her coursework stage, my niece had a good long chat with her just before she took her mocks and it worked she has put 100% effort in since then, her teachers are really pleased with her and her mock results were very good, it has finally sunk in that she needs good results to have a succsesful future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sherlock Bones Posted April 20, 2008 Report Share Posted April 20, 2008 I don't have kids so i can't really comment from that aspect... but i can from my own. When i was at senior school, I used to have great grades. In fact I used to come second in the class during all the exams, which were twice a year. I suffered with maths, i didn't understand it, though I scraped by. I never revised much. I did a bit, but certainly not as hard as my elder sister or my friends. And, one year, just before my GCSEs, my parents and teachers told me I didn't try hard enough, that i never revised and therefore i'd never pass my exams. So, I thought, stuff em, if what I did wasn't good enough, then I wouldn't bother revising. After all.. no one thought I tried, or revised, so why should I? I dropped grades through the floor. All hell broke loose. The next year, I was told I'd never manage to recover my grades and my dad thought it was so impossible to do that he promised me he'd buy me a dog (which i'd wanted since i was born and wasn't allowed) if i came first in the class. You have never ever seen anyone revise so hard. I came 2nd by 1%. I was gutted but my friends wrote to my dad and told him how hard i'd worked and, as a result, he bought me my first dog, Tanzi. Anyway, the moral of the story was: I DID study; I just didn't need to do the same amount that other people did - it just sort of went into my head anyway so revising all day, i was simply reading over and over stuff i already knew - others interpreted it as laziness and failure to work. I was ridiculed even when I did study with the promise of something that my father thought was impossible for me to obtain: yes i worked hard after that but only because I knew impossible was actually fairly easy for me to obtain and the ridicule was too much to bear. I swore I'd never do the same to any child of mine, because I still remember it so vividly. So, don't dispair - it might be just that your daughter doesn't need to study - and even if she does flunk grades, it isn't the end of the world cos we do pull ourselves together eventually. PS Tisann it put me off further education too: i went back to uni when I was 21 and made amends then and got a degree as a mature student. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Godin Posted April 20, 2008 Report Share Posted April 20, 2008 Kai did his GCSE's last year and is now at college working towards becoming a plumber, he'll finish his VRQ1 in June and I already know he's passed and he's already been offered his place on the NVQ2 course starting in Sept Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phoenix Posted April 21, 2008 Report Share Posted April 21, 2008 my daughter said over breakfast this morning (1st day back after 2 weeks off) i've not done my homework Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cycas Posted April 21, 2008 Report Share Posted April 21, 2008 I don't know if they all are, but the ones I taught History GCSE were. God they were hard to motivate: you'd talk them through what they were doing, and why they were doing it, and why it was really important for them to work on it NOW, and they'd all agree and buckle down for about 15 minutes, then the idea would slip through their little brains and they'd forget what they were trying to achieve. Again. And yet they all agreed that they were interested in the subject and I did my level best to make it engaging for them. It was like trying to train rabbits. I don't know how people teach younger teens longterm, it would have me jumping in the river. Get them to A level and suddenly the ability to focus is so much more advanced, that one summer after GCSE seems to make such a huge difference! One trick that you might want to try (if you have time) is getting her to explain to you what the subject is all about and talk you through how she is approaching the project and what she has to do step by step to finish it, asking lots of questions. Most people like talking about what they are doing, and explaining things to a numpty parent (or teacher) is an excellent form of revision that doesn't feel like work because you are talking, not writing. It also helps you identify things that you don't quite understand and forces you to clarify them in your mind. However, how you then get her to execute the plans you have made using her little GCSE-age butterfly-brain to produce a finished project, I don't know. I was often tempted by the idea of using a baseball bat... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
safneo Posted April 21, 2008 Report Share Posted April 21, 2008 However, how you then get her to execute the plans you have made using her little GCSE-age butterfly-brain to produce a finished project, I don't know. I was often tempted by the idea of using a baseball bat... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lazydaisy Posted April 21, 2008 Author Report Share Posted April 21, 2008 do you have a spare bat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tisaann Posted April 21, 2008 Report Share Posted April 21, 2008 Mmmm how convenient. My son phoned me last night at 9.30pm to say that he would be a bit late home as he twisted his foot whilst coming down the stairs in his mates house and it was all swollen. I offered to go and pick him up but he said he was almost home and when he came through the door his foot was already the size of a balloon so it looks like another week off for him....... probably with no revising either Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dognabbit Posted April 23, 2008 Report Share Posted April 23, 2008 Sorry when I saw the title of this thread I read it as 'Anyone else have chicken taking Gcse's this year?' Fell about laughing at my own stupidity and chickens taking exams..... ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
babsc71 Posted April 23, 2008 Report Share Posted April 23, 2008 Sorry when I saw the title of this thread I read it as 'Anyone else have chicken taking Gcse's this year?' Having just marked my students mock exams I fear that chickens could do better........ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lazydaisy Posted April 23, 2008 Author Report Share Posted April 23, 2008 Having just marked my students mock exams I fear that chickens could do better........ do they start to revise earlier than humans? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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