Writing mocks at an exam center and what went wrong

Posted on September 9, 2024 by ofamily

We are busy preparing for more IGCSE exams in October/November so we decided to sit another round of mocks. Now I know mocks are an added expense for home educators and the cost of paying for exams is already expensive so sometimes mocks just seems like a wast of money (I get that) but this last round of mocks made me even more convinced that they can be a really worthwhile experience.

Our week of mocks involved 2 exams on Tuesday and 2 exams on Thursday, both at the same exam center. The morning exam starts at 9:30 and the afternoon exam starts at 1:30, but the kids are suppose to sign in 45 minutes before the start, they then wait in the waiting room before someone comes to walk them to the exam room. And this is what happened…………

First morning exam, we get there at 8:45am (time requested), I sign her in (the rule is kids under 16 need to be dropped off by an adult but if they are over 16 no adult is needed) and then we sit and wait. While we are waiting I notice two other kids arrive and when they go to sign in, their names are not on the list, both kids say they are writing English Language (which is what my daughter was writing) but there is no record of them (they did have confirmation that they were writing that day so the kids were correct). The person at the desk disappeared and a short while later a manager arrives and starts discussing with the kids what exam they are writing and then hurries off to sort it out (clearly the kids were not on the list for that day and no exam paper had been prepared). This sort of thing always worries me and is one of the reasons why I always walk my daughter in.

Anyway the time comes and they call the kids in, I leave thinking everything will be fine because she was on the list. But when my daughter sits down and is ready to start her English Language paper she discovers they have given her the History paper (she was suppose to write History on the Thursday), she sticks her hand up and tells them it is the incorrect subject, there is a discussion because they believe they are correct, she does not back down so they go check their records and realize she was right and they have print off an English Language paper for her (remember everyone else has started their exams by now). But the paper they then give her is the AQA GCSE English Language paper and she is writing the Cambridge IGCSE English Language paper. Once again, she stick her hand up and explains it is the wrong paper and they go off a second time to try and find the correct paper. She gets a third paper and finally she starts her mocks.

Now I have been in a coffee shop unaware of what happened and walk back to pick her up at 11:30 (2 hours after the start), at 12:00 she emerges escorted by a manager, clearly a bit shaken and the manager informs me that after the exam she ended up trapped between 2 sets of locked doors. (Their procedure is that someone is suppose to walk the kids back to the waiting room but because she was the last one finishing, due to the fact that she needed extra time because they messed up her papers, no one walked her out and she was just left).

We have a quick lunch, then I go and drop her off for the afternoon exam paper, thinking nothing else could happen. Well….. The afternoon paper was a 2 hour paper consisting of 2 long written questions. In the first question you get given texts which you need to read and then write about (so you need to read the texts to know what you are writing about). The paper she was given had the text blanked out, so she raised her hand and told them and they went off to fix it, at 3pm (half an hour before the exam finished) they gave her the correct text. So she ended up having 30 minutes to do an hour question. This was clearly their error and they should have give her extra time. But at this stage she was rushing and did not even think of asking for extra time, as you can imagine doing a one hour question in 30 minutes is not going to get you the best results.

Okay so that was our first day of mocks.

Second day of mocks, we arrived and no-one was waiting with a list to sign the kids in. I phoned and left a message and someone came down to ask what we wanted (got the impression we were not expected, they looked shocked that we were even there). I made the person go and double check that they had the correct subject and correct exam board, she did me that she double checked and she told me everything was ready. Okay so I thought fine no issue today.

The paper she was writing on the second day was History. Two topics and for each topic there were three questions. This time they had the correct subject and correct exam board but when she turned the page over and there was only 1 of the 3 questions, the other 2 are missing, so again, hand up and tells them there is an issue, this time they did stop the clock to make sure she was given the correct time and only started it again once they had given her the missing questions.

And then the second paper of the day there just just a delayed start time but no issues with the paper.

So out of the 4 mock exams papers that she wrote there was only 1 paper where she had no issues.

What do I think about mocks after all of that?

In a perfect world all of those things should not have happened but this is not a perfect world and people do make mistakes. So the fact that my daughter had all of these issues with her mocks and she dealt with them, standing her ground when needed, was not what we would wish on anyone writing a set of exams but if something does come up in the real exams I now have no doubt that she will know how to handle it and she will not back down.

Mocks are expensive and I know not everyone can afford them but the experience that we gained during this set of what to do, when she can ask for extra time and the confidence that it has now given my daughter, confidence that she can deal with exams when everything goes wrong, was worth the money.

My advice to any of you whose kids are using exam centers is this – always arrive with time to spare (in case you are not on the list or in case you have gone to the wrong venue – this does happen), make sure they know exactly which exam they are writing each day, get them to double check the cover before they start. Tell them if a question is missing or text is not clear they must ask for extra time while it gets sorted. And if you are worried your kiddo might not stand up for themselves then please, please walk them in and go and fetch them in person so you can hear if something has gone wrong and you will know straight away if you need to step in and assist them (remember it can be very intimidating standing up to adults who don’t always want to admit they have made a mistake).

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Edexcel IGCSE History Russia and the Soviet Union 1905-24 Question Cards, with Answers

Posted on August 8, 2024 by ofamily

While preparing for my daughter’s IGCSE History exam I discovered that there are just not as many question revision resources for History as there are for the Science subjects. And I am not talking about exam practice questions I am taking about resources where the kids can just test if they have all the facts (because lets be honest it does not help practicing exam questions if you don’t know your facts yet).

So I started creating some revision cards for my daughter. Nothing fancy, a simple printout where you cut out the cards.

The idea is you cut the strips and then fold them and glue the two halves together so you end up with the question on the one side and the answer on the back.

There are no cute pictures or fancy colours. To be honest it took me quite a while to create this so I really was not going to spend even more time trying to make it pretty, plus at this stage I think we don’t need to worry about all of that and I did not want to wast money on printing 25 pages of colourful cards.

In total there are 103 questions and I included a few extra blank card templates so if you kid wants to add a few of their own questions they can.

I tried focused on the key points and made sure I have included facts about all of the past exam questions that I have seen.

I have saved it as a pdf so if anyone wants to download and use the cards with your kids you are welcome to do that. However I must state this is something that I created so it is not for anyone to post on their website (you are welcome to include a link back to this post) and you may NOT try and sell them as your own cards.

Here is the download

Lenin CardsDownload

Hope some of you find it useful.

For those of you wondering what resources we used for our Lenin topic – our main student book was this one – Edexcel International GCSE History Russia and the Soviet Union 1905-24

If you want similar cards to these for the Germany: Conflict, Crisis and Change topic you can find them here – Germany Cards

And a set for the China: Conflict, Crisis and Change 1800-89 topic can be found here – China question cards

Admin – I do include Affiliate links. If you follow an affiliate link and go on to purchase that product, I will be paid a very small commission, however your cost will remain the same. I only include affiliate links for products that we use and recommend.

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The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner – another Twilight book

Posted on July 25, 2024 by ofamily

A few months ago my daughter discover the Twilight books and fell into the world of the Cullen Vampires (she is now a huge fan of this series of Books). One of the interesting things about the Twilight series is that there are actually more books than most people realize. There are the four main books which everyone seems to know about, the ones that the movies were based on (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn) but there are also three lesser know books – Life and Death, Midnight Sun and The Short Second life of Bree Tanner.

After reading and rereading the main 4 books we were still wanting more of this Vampire world that Stephenie Meyer created so we tried Life and Death and loved it and then we tried this one – The Second Short Life of Bree Tanner. Now this one was a bit different than all the others but still very interesting. There is a small character in the main books – a young newborn who does not want to fight and is the one that the Cullen’s offer sanctuary to (unfortunately she ends up being killed), that is Bree Tanner and this book is the story of her life after she is turned into a vampire. It is very different to the other books in the series because it goes more into the imagined life of a vampire, and a vampire that is not living the Cullen’s way of life (ie still hunting humans for blood).

Okay honest thoughts – it is not as good as the main books and Life and Death but that is because it is not about the main characters that we have grown to love (we love the Cullen family and honestly would love some books about the other members of the Cullen family). The end does link in to the main series but it is really written about Bree Tanner, her struggle to survive while living in a cruel vampire coven. It is not the happy, good vampires of the Cullen family this is vampires that have been turned with the intention of creating an army, so they are blood thirsty and they do not consider human life. I did miss the sweet Cullen vampires but I also found this an interesting read, because that young vampire the one who did not want to fight and who managed to win over the Cullen’s has always intrigued me so I did enjoy reading her story. I also thought that by giving a backstory to the newborn army you got to understand that they were just young vampires without guidance and really they were the tools of Victoria. So in that way I actually liked the fact that the author choose to add this side story because it does flesh out that part of the story.

Personally I thought the author did a brilliant job of bringing the world of these newborns to life the way she did. I think it is well written and it adds something extra to the main story. I liked the fact that within the newborn army she touches on the fact that there are different characters, some are just mean but some are actually just trying to figure this all out and are scared. As with all her books the author does manage to make her vampires human (well the nice ones do end up feeling human to the readers). It is a well written story, you get to sympathize and understand Bree and feel sad when she dies.

If your kids have discover and loved the main Twilight books then I would suggest giving this one a go. It is a great “add-on” to the main series. Both my daughter and I recommend this for all other Twilight readers.

Admin – I do include Affiliate links. If you follow an affiliate link and go on to purchase that product, I will be paid a very small commission, however your cost will remain the same. I only include affiliate links for products that we use and recommend.

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You Can Draw in 30 Days – a useful drawing book

Posted on July 19, 2024 by ofamily

My son really enjoys drawing but he is not that keen on me teaching him how to draw so I have actually mostly left him to do some drawing videos online and given him a few tips and suggestions. But about a month ago I suggested that he starts working through this book – How to Draw in 30 Days – which he did and I have to admit that both my son and I have been impressed with the progress he has made in his drawings.

I liked this book because it breaks down drawing into small easy to practice tasks, so my son could just do one task a day and it would just take him a few minutes. This meant he was not getting bored or frustrated and it meant he stuck with it (if the tasks had been too long and time consuming to do I am not sure if he would have stuck with and completed all of them as quickly as he did).

The book does start with some very basic steps like how to draw and shade in spheres and cubes (which although they are basics are the building blocks that you need for more complex drawings), but it does build on these basics and the kids are soon using the basic concepts in more challenging ideas.

Okay each drawing activity is broken down into steps. They explain the steps and illustrate what you should be drawing for each step.

And as you progress through the book so the drawing activities do become more challenging and more interesting. But I must say that I never felt like they included a drawing activity too early or that they included something for which they had not already explained the basics. So in other words the way that the drawing activities progress makes sense as long as you do each activity in order (this is not one of those books where you should jump around, here you really do need to stick to the order and do each and every activity so that you can progress).

Both my son and I have been impressed with this book. We like the way the break the drawings down into the easy steps and we like they way it builds on the basics and gets more and more challenging as you progress. This has been a very worthwhile drawing book and it has definitely helped my son cement some basic drawing knowledge. We highly recommend this book.

You can buy this book directly from Amazon – How To Draw in 30 Days.

Admin – This is a book that I bought. I do include Affiliate links. If you follow an affiliate link and go on to purchase that product, I will be paid a very small commission, however your cost will remain the same. I only include affiliate links for products that we use and recommend.

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Factology Vikings – Book Review

Posted on July 16, 2024 by ofamily

When my kids were younger we spent ages going through a Viking phase in our home education. It was actually really fun, we read all sorts of books and did a bunch of fun activities, so when I spotted this new Viking book (Factology Vikings) I was immediately curious and I wanted to see what it contained and if it would have been something that we would have utilized and enjoyed in our Viking craze.

First impressions – I was actually really impressed with how much they have included in this book. They have divided the book into 3 main chapters – Meet the Vikings, Viking Mythology and then Viking World. And wow within those 3 chapters they have really included lots of interesting information.

The page format is also great, lots of pictures and diagrams with small blocks on information, really great for younger kids (8-12 ages) and visual learners.

Okay after reading it – what I really liked about this book was that it contained all the information that I expected from a Viking book (who were the Vikings, their weaponry, boats, lifestyle, runes a bit on mythology etc etc) but it also includes a lot more than that. I loved that they included information on the clan structure – so explaining who the Jarls vs Karls were. They went into more detail about the forts and buildings (which I have not seen before) and I liked they way they explained about their beliefs, this is something that was important to the Viking way of life yet lots of kids books do not really explain much about it.

I also liked that they dealt with some of the famous Vikings and their invasions/ battles, because this is really how it ties into our History.

And the fact that they talk about the Vikings going East (the Rus) and going to Newfoundland.

I really feel like they included a lot more than I expected or have seen in other Viking books.

I would have loved to have had this book when we went through our Viking learning phase so yes I definitely recommend it for other home educators.

I have not seen this in my local book store but you can buy it directly from Amazon here is my link – Factology Vikings.

Admin – I was given a copy of this book. This is NOT a paid for post.

I do include Affiliate links. If you follow an affiliate link and go on to purchase that product, I will be paid a very small commission, however your cost will remain the same. I only include affiliate links for products that we use and recommend.

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