How to help your year 10 teen get ahead for year 11

The GCSEs are coming to an end and I could not be more relieved. This year it has been very different for me. For years, I have helped hundreds of teens through their English exams but this year my own daughter was also doing them.

It has really opened my eyes to just how much pressure our teens are under:

  • The pressure to prove two years’ worth of learning in just a couple of hours
  • The pressure to meet their own expectations
  • The pressure to meet the expectations of family
  • The pressure to meet the expectations of their teachers
  • The pressure to do as well as their friends.

More than anything though, it has opened my eyes to just how much information teens need to memorise in the current exam system.

Of course, I was aware of what they need to memorise for English Literature. They need to know quotes for characters and themes from 3 different set texts. They need to remember quotes from 14 poems and be able to compare them under a strict time limit. Already, that’s A LOT.

But add to that the formulas they must remember for Maths and Science.

The facts that they need to remember for humanities subjects like RS, History and Geography.

The tenses they need to be able to use for languages and the huge volume of vocabulary.

It is not surprising that by the time they get to the exams, they are often feeling pretty overwhelmed and frazzled.

Quite simply, this learning cannot all be crammed into the couple of weeks prior to the exams. The information needs to be drip-fed over time so that it is in their long-term memory, rather than just their short-term memory.

If your teen is currently in Year 9 or Year 10, now is a great time to set this up.

This is the system I set up at the beginning of year 10 with my own daughter and it really did help to alleviate some of the pressure at the end of year 11.

1) Help your teen to set up a filing system

 It sounds simple, but many teens just don’t know how to.

I find the most effective way is a lever arch ring binder per subject with subject dividers for the individual units. Revision is so much simpler when everything is in one place and your teen knows where to find it.

2) Put your teen back in the driving seat of their learning

Sit down with your teen and create a folder on their computer (or your computer).

This is even better if it’s in cloud-based storage so that they can access it via their phones or a school computer.

Within this folder, create a sub-folder for each of their subjects. For each subject, find out from the school which exam board the school is using for each subject. This information is often on the school website.

For each subject, download the specification for the exam and save it into the relevant folder. These are freely available on the exam board websites and easy to find. Download a few example past papers for each subject and save them in the folders. These can also be found on exam board websites.

This will put your teen firmly back in the driving seat of their learning. Whenever they are unsure of what is expected of them, they can check for themselves how they will be tested on it in the exam.

3) Help your teen to create a revision timetable

 If your teen makes a commitment to themselves to revise for 15 minutes per day each week for 7 days per week, that’s an hour and three quarters each week…which is over 90 hours per year!

Many teens leave their revision until year 11 and end up cramming it into the final few months, which is boring and stressful.

Just 15 minutes per day over 2 years makes revision easy.

4) Check in with your teen once a week

Once you have helped your teen with this initial set-up, your involvement could be fairly minimal. It might be useful to check in with them at a particular time once a week just to make sure all is running smoothly. It’s normal to hit a few bumps in the road and if they are identified and acted on early, they can usually be resolved quickly and easily.

If your teen would like support to set goals, remove learning barriers and learn how to revise their way, I still have a few remaining spaces on my mentoring programme for September www.charlottenooncoaching.co.uk/teens-in-school