Any secondary teachers? - GCSE book recommendations

[beedj]

As per title ... my son's recent GCSE mock results are a long way off his targets. I don't think he took them too seriously and he'll probably do better for real in June, but nonetheless I want to give him all the help I can in next 6 months.

(Surprisingly!) he seems keen for me to sit down for him for a few hours each week and work with him, but there seem to be dozens of books & revision guides available.

I know there is tons of stuff online and I'll encourage him to use those also, but any recommendations on good books for us to work through together would be appreciated....

[V8mate]

You need to get the ones which are most appropriate to your son's GCSE syllabi(?).

For my son (same age), for example, the CGP books were the best.

[Merlot]

beedj said:

As per title ... my son's recent GCSE mock results are a long way off his targets. I don't think he took them too seriously and he'll probably do better for real in June, but nonetheless I want to give him all the help I can in next 6 months.

(Surprisingly!) he seems keen for me to sit down for him for a few hours each week and work with him, but there seem to be dozens of books & revision guides available.

I know there is tons of stuff online and I'll encourage him to use those also, but any recommendations on good books for us to work through together would be appreciated....

What subject?

[beedj]

English, Maths, Science & French are the areas we need to work on

[MentalSarcasm]

Personally, unless he's planning on taking french as an A Level, I wouldn't worry about it too much. But definitely work on the English and Maths has every good university and most colleges will demand a bare minimum of a C grade for both subjects.

[dundarach]

I know this sounds stupid - but make sure he's happy with the basics of exams:

1. read the whole paper quickly at the start - you'd be amazed how often they give you the answer later, or another trick is to ask a follow up question based on one you have just answered - and often when asked in another way - it jogs your memory differently.

2. answer all the easy ones first.

3. work to time - leave enough time to answer all the questions - based on marks.

4. which brings me to marks - look at how many marks are available for each question - if it's a 2 pointer and you're unsure come back - if its a 10 pointer you're going to need 10 good points as a minimum.

5. teach his granny to suck eggs - if he has the time - write twice as many points - providing they are sensible for each answer - if half are wrong - half might be correct.

6. As for books - check with his teachers - they might be covering very specific topics.

Sorry can't be more help di^cking about with computers (so I'm informed) is my subject!

[littlegreenfairy]

Make sure you get the right exam board/paper reference books.

I think the ones we used were CPG (I'll have a look on Amazon in a bit) and I've used the same ones when doing a bit of tutoring and they do seem to be very good.