Home Education can reduce exam stress.

I am currently away staying near a private exam centre run by NorthstarWorldWide, who do distance tutoring and have their own exam centre. We really like their exam centre because it is small quiet, with only private candidates and its set right next to the Peak District, which is so beautiful.

I really love how for Home Ed teens exam stress can be minimised. We can stagger their exams, so we have sat five GCSE's over six months with two last November, one in January and two in the last few weeks (May). So for each set of exams we have been able to spread the pressure and focus really intensely on each subject at a time. We have also found this good because it spreads the cost of paying privately for exams. Also your kids can take them at any age that suits them.

We have only aimed for five GCSE's for each son, as this is plenty to attain most goals, except perhaps very top fields of expertise like medicine or veterinary science. My eldest is now at a top University studying law and my youngest has several options open to him for September which he can choose from soon. Only doing five subjects really reduces the stress of exams, it also means your kids can pick the subjects they really want to do, except perhaps for Maths and English, which are a core requirement for many further education options, but not all so it's worth checking. GCSEs aren't the only exam option for Home ed, check this link for more information: http://he-exams.wikia.com/wiki/HE_Exams_Wiki

We have also combined exam pressure with fun activities when exams or revision are not mentioned, so this week we have been caving and rock climbing, being in the Peak District really has advantages. It may have been a small tactical error to do rock climbing on grit stone which makes your hands bleed, just before an English exam, but oh well, my son is tough. 😜

The other stress relief is needed for the HE parent, get a bunch of other HE Mum's around you who understand and you can vent to. This is a good Facebook group for this: https://www.facebook.com/groups/HELinksUK.IGCSE/

Exams aren't necessary for every child, but if they are something that suits your child's future plans make them as fun as you can as they can be quite dull, tedious and stressful.

Simple guide to GCSEs...

EXAMS! This word fills us 'normal' home educating parents with terror, it drives us to tears and keeps us awake at night. Not because exams are not achievable, but because the whole system of specifications, exam boards, exam centres, booking procedures are like a black art designed to confuse 'normal' parents and make them believe only a trained specialist can navigate it all.

So as promised to several friends, I am going to write here a starter guide. Keeping it as simple as possible. Its not going to include all the information, but this wiki page is a full guide. So my aim here is to just calm your nerves and get you heading in the right direction.

1)  Pick a subject... Go for IGCSE (international version of GCSE), as this means you can avoid practical papers (mostly, except languages) IGCSE are accepted by colleges. If you are worried whether your chosen IGCSE will be accepted for future activities, go check the requirements for future activities your teen might have in mind.

2)   Pick an exam board......I do this by having a good look at the subject course books available for the subject. You could pop to WHSmiths for the hands on feel, or Amazon you can read reviews. I have made mistakes with texts books, bought some and taken a look at them and instantly disliked them, some are SO boring you want to fall asleep within seconds, others grab your interest and suck you in, so it may take a few tries to find the ones for you. There really is not enough difference between the exam boards to matter which you pick, so by choosing the one with the most user friendly material is one great way to decide.

3)   Find an exam centre....Best way is to ask local home educating friends, who have already used one, this is because they vary greatly in quality and price. Failing this go to the exam board websites (see the wiki page above). The exam boards have links to schools that will let private candidates sit with them. You can talk to the exam centre you pick, you won't need to book the exam until about 4 months before your child wants to sit the exam, its worth chatting in advance to the exam centres, just in case they have special conditions or problems with your chosen subject.

4)  Plan your work... If you are using tutoring (online, distance or personal) your tutor can help with this. If you are going to study the subjects on your own, I find the best way is to look through the full coursework book and work out when you would like to take the exam, i.e two years (can be a lot less, we did ICT in 2 months). Then divide the books chapters to give you time to cover the material and allow a month or two at the end to thoroughly revise. Revision can be done using past papers, as many as possible works best. You might want to stagger your exam subjects, we did a few a year for several years, this spreads the cost and the stress.

5) Don't abandon your teen... Most home educators have several children to work with, all I can say is there are some phases when you will need to work more with the teen who is working towards exams, than your perhaps younger children.  I had a whole year where my oldest child had most of my time, but now he is in College and my youngest has all my time. So it works out in the end. I have also heard of parents getting annoyed at their teen for not focusing and pushing it along themselves. I have found they need help to dig in to a subject, get enthusiastic. You need to get passionate along side them about the subjects they have chosen, find interesting trips and documentaries to supplement basic book work. You may need to change your lifestyle to adapt to having more serious work to do, please adapt, this is only a season and it passes quick. Let your younger kids join in with age appropriate versions of the course work, i.e biology, looking a cell structure, everyone can have a play with microscopes and slides and learn.

6) DON'T PANIC... having a good cry can help from time to time, just focus on the small steps right in front of you, this will help you when you want to hyperventilate.  It does feel like climbing a steep mountain.

But having reached the top, the view from up here, makes it worthwhile.

Week in the life of...

I try to get up before my boys in the morning, not being little anymore they don't leap out of bed at 6am and demand fun, so I need an alarm clock now. I usually assess my day the night before and try and see how late I can arise with out messing up my carefully planned morning routine.

So yes I spring out of bed full of vim and vigour (sarcasm) and start my day with a morning routine of folding clean clothes before leaving bedroom, get dress, carry dirty clothes, my gadget bag (contains essential to life electronic devices) and struggle downstairs slightly overloaded to my bathroom. I put on the washing machine, clean the bathroom, and prepare myself for the day. As we only have one bathroom, if I get interrupted in this routine I get stressy.

Then I go let the dog out into the garden and go start cooking bacon and eggs, or similar for breakfast. Make a cup of tea for me and the boys, plus empty my dishwasher. While the breakfast is cooking I go drag children out of bed. This is achieved with a 'Mum of teens' dog lick attack. I take the dog with me upstairs and get him in turn to leap on the boys and lick them awake. If this doesn't work, I have taken to lately dragging my eldest legs out of bed and sitting him up, then quickly positioning the dog so he can't lay back down. I have tried removal of covers, stealing pillows, suggesting the use of an alarm clock..well the alarm clock is useless he can have a siren going off by his head and sleep through it. I have tried leaving him to sleep in, but all this does is turn him nocturnal, which isn't good for productivity.

After breakfast, depending on how dozy the boys are we either go for a walk and do a strength workout or watch a documentary. We are going through different science/history/social studies/geography documentaries which we watch may be three a week on different days.

 Every week day morning we do maths (exceptional circumstances withstanding). Sometime my youngest does maths while I cook breakfast, they are both using the online conquer maths program, most days I like to sit with my youngest and help him find ways of thinking through the maths, I never answers the questions for him, but I do show him clever tricks for quick mental calculations. My eldest like to work by himself on maths, unless really stuck.

My weekly plan for structured work I would like us to get through changes termly, depending on our goals and aims. Its totally geared towards the boys ambitions and dreams.

Currently this term we are working on iGCSE Physics using this book, we are all working through it together, my eldest is making note cards with key terms and formulas for revision and my youngest is just making general notes. We all snuggle up on the sofa and I read through and explain, until they understand one topic or part topic if a complex one. I use real life examples they can relate to, for example, how would you work out the velocity of our dog as he runs from one end of the room to the other?

This may seem quite a formal approach to learning, but my eldest son has goals which require certain exams, so we need to work through some set work for the exams. As a home ed. Mum I am always very aware of the balance between interest and driving the boys to achieve. If they are not interested they won't learn, so I drop the subject or find something that gives them the motivation to regain that interest. I am also aware of age differences between my boys (3 years), so obviously I don't expect my youngest to concentrate for as long and if it gets too technical and switches his brain off, its time for him to go do something else.

On top of the above formal work, my eldest works on English, which is set by his tutor. He is currently working on English literature iGCSE, having just passed his English language iGCSE.

All other learning is informal and autonomous, here is an interesting article on autonomous learning. Our days are full of spontaneous conversations, discussions on every topic you can imagine, for example, this morning we had a 'film studies' type discussion on about Star Trek and how the different aliens were supposed to be based on different stereotype national identities. This discussion also included the big question 'Do aliens exist?'. All quite fascinating, and as always learning happened whilst laughing.

My sons are both avid computer gamers, I gave up trying to turn them in to gardeners or chefs quite a few years ago, they love computer games, much like their father and myself. I can't really condemn this love of PC gaming, when one of my favourite ways to relax is to load up 'League of Legends' and play a few competitive online matches, trying to keep the 17 year old gamers on their toes! I have an extremely competitive streak and this is a fun outlet for it. Anyway digress slightly, my boys have found that role play gaming is fun, its basically drama online, so you act the part of the character in the game you are playing, this is usually part of a community of players, who you can chat to whilst playing. Its sounds mindless, but believe me its highly complex including flying realistic flight simulators whilst talking to a control tower, mapping flight paths and rescuing comrades. I challenge Mums and Dads to attempt to play these games, the multi tasking involved is huge. Both boys have become server admins for servers running gaming communities, to do this they had to write application  and submit them, they had to show maturity and responsibility, believe me there is nothing worse than an 'online gaming troll' so they both are learning to be polite respectful, but also how to deal with idiots (a useful life skill). Both boys have learn't internet safety, how to avoid scamming and how to keep a balance between real life and online life. I discourage night time gaming, so most of the time they go on the PC is in the afternoon, before dinner. This is if we are not out swimming with friends or visiting interesting places.

The boys evenings are jam packed. I guess this is my season as taxi driver, I remember my Mum and Dad taxi driving me about at this age too.  My eldest is very involved with the Air Cadets and is highly motivated to be a pilot, hence the exam work. He is also working on his Duke of Edinburgh award so he is helping to lead the local cub pack. He does many sporting and physical activities with the Aircadets and is also working through a BTEC in aviation. Nearly every weekend has some sort of activity, from service in the community to flying aeroplanes.

My youngest loves Scouts and the camping, archery, hiking, shooting and chopping wood with axes that this involves. He is also learning Karate, which is excellent exercise. He reads every night at bedtime, spy stories and wants to be a Ninja.

Then we all love to watch TV in the evenings together as long as it is an episode of Castle or Chuck, or similar.

So this is us...how we roll...

Today's Pigeon rescue.

Exam nerves...

 Preexam nerves are hitting. No I am not doing any exams, but my eldest son is doing his first iGCSE, as a mock to practice for next summer.

Are mothers allowed to be nervous? It seems crazy, I guess all the memories from the exams of my youth are being recalled. Is it that as a home educator I can't just ignore it and relax knowing the school has it all in hand?

 All the physical details are booked and planned: exam paid for, triple checked he is booked for the right papers, arranged to stay with my Aunty and Uncle who live near the exam centre and little son is booked to have major fun with various relatives for a few days.....oops forgot about the dog! Being a Mum is complicated.

 I felt like blogging today, I was inspired by big son. He did a practice exam paper today. For two hours little son, the dog and myself whispered and crept about the house; try doing an Australian accent, followed by a Hong Kong accent, whilst whispering, with a dog sat on your lap with his head shoved under your chin, one arm around little son and a book in the only free hand...not easy, I told you being a Mum is complicated! When I got in a bit of a muddle and my accent turned in to a cockney one, then Little son had a credible attempt at the whispered Australian accent.

My inspiration came from two angles, the descriptive writing my son did as part of his paper which reminded me that I do enjoy a bit of descriptive writing. Then when big sons English tutor commented on my incredible lack of skill at grammar (noted from Facebook). I felt inspired to have a go at improving it, by using it.

Here is big sons descriptive exam writing from today, he says, it's bad mum, its bad mum, but I think he might have a little of the exam nerves too.

The Traffic Jam by 'Big Son' aged 14

Polluted grey sky rules our mood today, emotionless flocks of birds on a mission to seek a better place, flying in perfect formation; only blacking out the sky more.

Far off grey mist looked as if it was the scouting party for the sky, who slowly scrutinised our movements and plans to attack us with its forces of rain, lighting and thunder. Sitting on the motorway only gave me joy in the fact that a huge narrow lorry looked ominously over my car covering me with a shadow casted by the invisible sun; what is good about this is it blocks my curious view from seeing how far the traffic jam went.

I opened my window to hear what I didn’t expect: bleak silence. I got panicky for a small moment as I thought I was deaf, but I heard my engine which seemed to be vague as if it was a mile away. Then I heard a sudden crash of metal as the queue moved forward then I heard a car alarm as I thought someone had been hit. A burly bald man built like a bear opened his door and ran to the car behind him and shouted some abuse at the driver.  It was obvious that bear man’s car had been hit; he was now holding up the entire lane to my left. As I smelled mind altering fumes it seemed I was drifting away in to a state of mindlessness. In my half dazed state I almost didn’t notice the traffic as it rumbled in to twenty mile an hour life.  I travelled down the road and went past the cause of the jam, a car had flipped over on top of a caravan. Shards of glass and metal were scattered around inside the orange radiating barriers. The shards were so ominous I become quite disturbed. I pulled off at the next junction, relieved to be away from the mayhem.

 

Ok I know his grammar is better than mine, I am feeling a little paranoid! I think I will stick to maths.