The Sanctuary

[007 Nab]

I... uhm -- do most of my learning during tests.

[cazaron]

Instead of explaining this from my own, geeky viewpoint, I'm going to explain why tests are fun from a normal person's;

Would you rather sit in a room with a teacher you hate, listening t stuff you already know? Or would it be better to not only not have to sit there bored with nothing to do, but also get to show off that you DO know what the teacher was talking about even if you weren't listening?

i see your point, but come on, it's work nonetheless. you have to work hard to get a good mark in them and all that.

i'll admit, compared to listening to the teacher, i love tests. just not the effort involved

(spoken like a true teenager haha)

[GCFuture]

for my Oral english exam i improvised could'nt find space to study. i received a b+

[Trine0]

GC: Sounds nice, but for my English and German oral exams we HAVE to compare whatever text we get to a theme and some texts we've read over the last three years. So remembering just a bit about them is pretty essential. And for oral physics... I just won't be able to talk myself out of it unless I'm VERY lucky with the topics I get. I simple doesn't know/remember enough about most of the stuff we went through.

[R3VENGE]

my psp sort of broke ages ago, so i didnt use it much, but ive just bought my friends psp

[vista?]

I just completed my first ever actual GCSE exam today on Science, I've got another in January before I finish this set. After this, I'll be studying Biology, Chemistry and Physics for separate exams. Based on my results on past papers, I'm hopeful of achieving an A* but I suppose now, all I can do is set the countdown for 27 August at 10 AM for my results.

It feels so good to have such an immense weight off my shoulders!

My other "piece of happiness:" A new home screen to fiddle about with on my Nokia 5530. Bless those modders.

[Andrew D]

I just completed my first ever actual GCSE exam today on Science, I've got another in January before I finish this set. After this, I'll be studying Biology, Chemistry and Physics for separate exams. Based on my results on past papers, I'm hopeful of achieving an A* but I suppose now, all I can do is set the countdown for 27 August at 10 AM for my results.

I just had my last Chemistry exam today. You will come to absouletely hate it, trust me - although the exam went okay today.

[vista?]

I just had my last Chemistry exam today. You will come to absouletely hate it, trust me - although the exam went okay today.

Is it really that bad? Usually, I got the higher marks in the Chemistry section of past Science exam papers. My Biology was weak and that could make me fall short of a few marks away from an A*. (You need 45-ish to get an A*)

If it makes any difference, I'm doing OCR Science B.

[Andrew D]

Is it really that bad? Usually, I got the higher marks in the Chemistry section of past Science exam papers. My Biology was weak and that could make me fall short of a few marks away from an A*. (You need 45-ish to get an A*)

If it makes any difference, I'm doing OCR Science B.

The course I've been doing for science is the "Triple Award" for the 21st Century Science course (basically the entirety of OCR Science A, for all three sciences). The course breaks down into three units for us, plus one piece of coursework (but now I assume you'll be doing the new spec, meaning you'll be doing your coursework in an exam hall for 8 hours). For the sake of comparison, I'll compare my Chemistry GCSE with the Gateway Science Chemistry GCSE (by the looks of it, you've been doing just GCSE Science so far)

For Chemistry, it breaks down into:

- C1, C2, and C3 (Air Quality, Material Choices and Food Matters)

- C4, C5, and C6 (Chemical Patterns, Chemicals of the Natural Environment and Chemical Synthesis)

- C7 (Further Chemistry)

The C7 exam is the one which I've just done on Friday - in the Gateway Science, you do not do this unit.

Having a look at C4-C6 paper for Chemistry - it lasts about twice as long as my C4-C6 paper, seems to cover much more broad areas of the units, but also deals with a lot applied parts of the course - there are a quite a damn few questions relating to how you carry out tests and experiments, rather than the actual chemistry behind them (although, as I said, there's a broader range of stuff to learn, such as metallic bonding)

Now, as to why C7 sucks. Looking at one question on the specimen paper for the new OCR Chemistry A course, there is the following question:

Explain how gas chromotography seperates the components in a mixture. (4 marks)

Use ideas about the following in your answer:

- stationary phase

- mobile phase

- dynamic equilibrium

- distrubtion of the compounds

To get the four marks for this, you'd be basically need to say this:

In gas chromotography, the compounds in a mixture are seperated due to each compound having a different retention time - this depends on how the compound effects the stationary phase; therefore, how long it would take for an equilibrium to happen between the stationary and mobile phases. For a higher retention time, the equilibrium would be more to the side of the compound and the mobile phase - for a shorter one the equilbrium would be towards the compound and the stationary phase.

^^^^^^ Stuff like that is why I think Chemistry is quite a hell.

[vista?]

Having just filled in my options form, I had to decide between Additional Science (continue the core science with chapters 3 and 4) however that would mean picking 3 additional subjects for GCSE.

I chose Triple Science B meaning that I would only need to choose 2 other subjects for GCSE. I chose AS Computing and GCSE Economics if you were wondering.

Having read the "documentation" in the options booklet, as far as coursework is concerned, we have to Science In The News reports in all three sciences (essentially writing an essay on a question and stimulus material provided by OCR). As far as I'm aware, these will be done in class. The second part of our non-exam marked work is the "Can-Do Tasks" in which essentially all we have to do is carry out practicals. Whilst I'm not sure, I think we do the SITN in class rather than an exam hall. That's what we have done with the Chapter 1 SITNs.

I don't really see why there would be so many questions on practicals aspects in Chapter 7 for an exam, that does seem rather difficult - does Science A feature any can do tasks or SITN?

As for the mandatory GCSE courses, I'm having to French, Maths, English, RE, DT - Graphics (started already with an awful teacher) and I've done my IT ECDL.

Edited May 29, 2010 by vista?

[Andrew D]

Having just filled in my options form, I had to decide between Additional Science (continue the core science with chapters 3 and 4) however that would mean picking 3 additional subjects for GCSE.

I chose Triple Science B meaning that I would only need to choose 2 other subjects for GCSE. I chose AS Computing and GCSE Economics if you were wondering.

Having read the "documentation" in the options booklet, as far as coursework is concerned, we have to Science In The News reports in all three sciences (essentially writing an essay on a question and stimulus material provided by OCR). As far as I'm aware, these will be done in class. The second part of our non-exam marked work is the "Can-Do Tasks" in which essentially all we have to do is carry out practicals. Whilst I'm not sure, I think we do the SITN in class rather than an exam hall. That's what we have done with the Chapter 1 SITNs.

I don't really see why there would be so many questions on practicals aspects in Chapter 7 for an exam, that does seem rather difficult - does Science A feature any can do tasks or SITN?

As for the mandatory GCSE courses, I'm having to French, Maths, English, RE, DT - Graphics (started already with an awful teacher) and I've done my IT ECDL.

For Science A, I had to do either:

- A case study and a data analysis or

- A full investigation

for my coursework - the case study would be you investigating a scientific issue depending on what science it was (for example, my Chemistry was on biofuels and if they were suitable/sustainable), and a data analysis would be you carrying out an experiment, collecting data for it, then interpreting that data and drawing a conclusion. The investigation would be basically a data analysis but in a lot more depth - you'd need to talk about a lot more stuff in more detail.

GCSE wise, the ones I've took are as follows (there's an asterick for compulsory ones)

- AQA English Language A *

- AQA English Literature A *

- Exdecel Modular Maths *

- OCR Physics A * (not entirely compulsory - to do the individual GCSE's it takes up one of my option columns)

- OCR Biology A *

- OCR Chemistry A *

- AQA Humanities *

- AQA Graphic Products

- Exdecel DiDA (Diploma in Digital Applications, basically a non-office based ICT course)

- OCR History B (Modern World)

[vista?]

I see that there is no modern foreign language taken for GCSE. Nearly every French lesson, there's always somebody moaning about how they have to do a foreign language. For us, it was a choice between French or Mandarin (or for others French and German) although you could take on an additional language such as Italian or Spanish although you would have to start from scratch.

Also, on our options form, there was the choice for Latin and it turns out that only 3 people in the entire year group selected Latin. At the very least, 6 were needed to make it a viable course so I'll let you guess what happened to those 3 who chose Latin.

[j.d.melek]

it's "eurovision final" night,,and we made it to the last 25 acts,,

"go on niamh! do it for the Irish"

regards j.d.

[vista?]

This just made me laugh, a bunch of robbers who miscalulcated how much explosives they needed and ended up blowing up an entire bank in Germany!

[Lance McKnight]

Well, they must be Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

[csm725]

Happiness - got my tablet with PSE7. Works great! Got a 98 (A+) on my Maths test - Algebra 1 Quadratic Formula. I skip 2 years in Maths.

[Andrew D]

Algebra 1 Quadratic Formula.

I'm guessing that is basically solving quadratic equations using:

or by factorising it and solving it that way?

[csm725]

ax^2+bx+c=0

and then the formula.

[Frontcannon]

It's only going to get much worse..

Polynomial long division is torture.

[csm725]

I already learned that. It's horrible.

[Andrew D]

It's only going to get much worse..

Polynomial long division is torture.

It isn't that bad

[csm725]

Happinesses -

A. Tablet works great

B. Won my school spelling bee, winning words are eiderdown and kohlrabi.

[GCFuture]

Me, my girlfriend and my bestfriend and his girlfriend, celebrated my birthday yesterday.. it wasent any big one but still nice.. we rented some movies, ate some pizza and then at around 22:00 we went out.. it was really nice

[007 Nab]

That's awesome GCFuture Sounds like a really fun night

[007 Nab]

Ahhh... either I have a lot to be happy about or you people are crazy!

Just finished me Public Speaking class -- totally awesome - dominated the final, went to a grand total of one hour of class today, and lunch out with friends

What a way to start off a new week eh?