What are mocks?

Hi, I'm 15, 16 this year, and I'm a home ed student. I'm my own teacher and student. I heard that in schools they do these things called mocks, and I'm wandering what mocks are, so that I can maybe implement them in my home ed plan. Are they like past papers to predict your grades or are they like topical questions to see if you're understanding the topics? Any answer will seriously help. Thankyouu

Reply 1

squiddy135

11

Original post by BraveEagle

Hi, I'm 15, 16 this year, and I'm a home ed student. I'm my own teacher and student. I heard that in schools they do these things called mocks, and I'm wandering what mocks are, so that I can maybe implement them in my home ed plan. Are they like past papers to predict your grades or are they like topical questions to see if you're understanding the topics? Any answer will seriously help. Thankyouu

Mocks are “mock exams” so where you sit a paper in exam conditions as a practice, as “mock” versions of the actual GCSEs (or A levels in 6th form). Some schools also call end of Y10 (age 14-15) exams mocks and use them to predict grades, but in the GCSE year they’re done to practice doing the exam and see how you do in an actual paper and conditions.
Some schools, once they’ve finished the content, will just use the previous year’s exam papers as their mocks, but as you’re not a teacher you won’t have access to these, so if want to do that it’s probably best to use another paper (e.g. from two years ago) as these are available freely online via the exam board websites.

If you’re home ed then what it could look like for you might be printing out say, the 2022 paper, then doing it in timed conditions, marking it carefully and seeing what you got. Basically just doing a past paper, but maybe in more strict conditions than you might usually (if you don’t always do them in strict exam conditions and timing, which is probably the case for most of us).

Hope this helps, feel free to ask any further questions you might have, and good luck!

Reply 2

BraveEagle

OP

15

Original post by squiddy135

Mocks are “mock exams” so where you sit a paper in exam conditions as a practice, as “mock” versions of the actual GCSEs (or A levels in 6th form). Some schools also call end of Y10 (age 14-15) exams mocks and use them to predict grades, but in the GCSE year they’re done to practice doing the exam and see how you do in an actual paper and conditions.
Some schools, once they’ve finished the content, will just use the previous year’s exam papers as their mocks, but as you’re not a teacher you won’t have access to these, so if want to do that it’s probably best to use another paper (e.g. from two years ago) as these are available freely online via the exam board websites.
If you’re home ed then what it could look like for you might be printing out say, the 2022 paper, then doing it in timed conditions, marking it carefully and seeing what you got. Basically just doing a past paper, but maybe in more strict conditions than you might usually (if you don’t always do them in strict exam conditions and timing, which is probably the case for most of us).
Hope this helps, feel free to ask any further questions you might have, and good luck!

Thanks that's really helpful. And I do want to ask somethings else. How many hours per period do you usually spend at school? And do you guys go through the whole textbook? Bc the way I learn since I was young was to go through the whole textbook and then do a checkpoint at the end of the year. Since I'm home ed and doesn't take the actual exams (my dad just print out checkpoint past papers and mark it himself, and I never got good grades since year 4, year 5) until sixth form (which is this year, and I just did 3 out of my 4 papers (2 for maths and 2 for comp sci)), I never actualy learned how to 'learn' for an exam if that makes sense. And I learned the hard way that reading through the whole textbook was not effective. So I'm asking what do you guys actually do in lessons?

Reply 3

squiddy135

11

Original post by BraveEagle

Thanks that's really helpful. And I do want to ask somethings else. How many hours per period do you usually spend at school? And do you guys go through the whole textbook? Bc the way I learn since I was young was to go through the whole textbook and then do a checkpoint at the end of the year. Since I'm home ed and doesn't take the actual exams (my dad just print out checkpoint past papers and mark it himself, and I never got good grades since year 4, year 5) until sixth form (which is this year, and I just did 3 out of my 4 papers (2 for maths and 2 for comp sci)), I never actualy learned how to 'learn' for an exam if that makes sense. And I learned the hard way that reading through the whole textbook was not effective. So I'm asking what do you guys actually do in lessons?

So I’m in sixth-form college (about to do A levels) and we have 4.5 hours per subject per week of lessons (3 90 minute lessons), with the expectation that we then did 4.5 further hours of homework or independent work.
I don’t do maths or comp sci, the most comparable is probably chemistry, but we would have an ‘independent study’ to go through the topic for that week and make notes for it before the first lesson, so we had a vague understanding of already, and then in lessons we would go through the hard bits of a topic, do recall of definitions e.g. on mini whiteboards, and practice questions mostly. We go through the whole textbook, but it’s the basis of information, so we don’t really use it much in lessons, just focus on practicing skills and learning how to answer questions on them.

I’d recommend you look at the specification online for your subjects, make sure you have notes on each part, and then make sure you have good notes for each point. This means you know what you need, and what you might not need, so for example you would know what’s important to put on flashcards to practice your recall. Once you’ve done that, use topic questions to check your understanding and then past papers to practice.

Reply 4

BraveEagle

OP

15

Thanks a lot... I think my A2 levels would go so much better than AS since I know some exam techniques now. I'll definately be considering some traditional school routine to implement in my own home ed routine. Thanks again for you explanation, really helps a lot

(edited 1 year ago)

What are mocks?

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