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Secondary education

yR 7 Parents Evening - How do we get dd to not rush everything

4 replies

bruffin · 05/03/2010 22:56

We had first secondary parents evening last night.
Lots of positives ie she energizes people, brings people together, lots of teacher enjoy teaching her as she is enthusiastic and interested and contributes well to class and one of her teachers said her ideas are very mature for a 12 year old.

However she has always seems to live life at a different speed to everyone else and just rushes everything. I often have to tell her to slow down when she speaks because I can't understand what she is saying.

She makes mistakes because she takes the homework down wrongly usually because she is chatting ie in geography she had to write several facts aoout one volcano instead she wrote general facts about volcanos.
She misreads questions because she is too much in a hurry to get it done.
Her handwriting (lefthanded) and presentation are still not good but are a huge improvement over the last year or so and teachers seemed quite understanding once we explained this.
She is at that age where she is fairly resistant to advice but we need to get over to her the only person stopping her succeeding is herself. She is definetely underperforming in her science assessments and there was a mild threat that she would be moved down if she did not improve.

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mnistooaddictive · 06/03/2010 03:07

It is a really hard one. Gentle reminders.

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MmeBlueberry · 06/03/2010 06:31

There are lots of things the teachers can and should do.

If she takes down the wrong homework, the teacher should check her planner before she leaves the classroom. It is helpful if the teacher can put the homework on the board early in the lesson, so she can have plenty of time to absorbe the information.

She can have her work marked down for insufficient detail and poor presentation, which should be clearly described in the teachers comment.

At home, you can make sure that she does the full 20 or 30 minutes per subject for each homework (whatever the school allocation is). She'll soon stop rushing if she knows she is stuck there for an hour and not allowed to move onto leisure activities.

With her fast speech, you can obviously have her repeat things more slowly. She may also find it helpful to do some extra curricular activities where public speaking is required, eg drama club, debating society, poetry reading.

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bruffin · 06/03/2010 17:04

Thanks, she does do drama at school and her drama teacher says she is very good, she was recruited into the school production of a Christmas Carol.
She was on stage 5 minutes before DH or I recognised her. She looked a real young lady and was so upright and self possessed instead of her usual awkward self and she did say her lines nicely.

She has always got on with her homework with out us having to remind her, but i will keep more of an eye on it.

I will also ask her teacher or at least one of her friends to make sure she has got the home work down properly.

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bruffin · 06/03/2010 17:04

sorry that should be

"ask her to ask her teacher"

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