Do you DC's school have text book for KS3? What do you do to support?

DD was provided with a couple of textbooks at A level. She had to pay a deposit for them which she was given back when she returned them.

I went to school in Ireland and you bought all your books at that start of the year either new or second hand and if they where in good condition at the end the school bought them back off you to sell on.

Thus most people looked after their books and returned them but it wasn’t a drain on school resources if you ruined it.

My DDs been in 4 state schools across two counties.

All they’ve had access to school extra net with things like maths watch.

As they’ve got older we’ve had via school bought various text books and revision guides. Don’t think school should be supplying these.

They’ve also had office 365 accounts recently as well.

Is that a state comprehensive Tvstar?

We had that for certain subjects at A Level, but there wasn't enough for GCSE students due to budget cuts and there aren't KS3 textbooks for my subject that cover all the texts we study (same for every school I've worked in), so we either select the best texts for our cohort or we make less effective curriculum decisions based on what textbooks, of varying quality, are out there.

They have textbooks in every subject which ch are given out at the start of the yearand taken in at the end.

Well, text books don’t exist at Key Stage 3 in my subject, so.......

We can't send text books home in one of my subjects because we can't afford to buy text books for the whole year group. As it is for one lesson a week we have to share one between two as we don't have enough for the three classes timetabled are the same time.
GCSE and A Level specifications changed at the same time. With no extra money provided to fund the new resources. This combined with reduced budgets has resulted in this situation.

Is it a state school Tvstar?

They have textbooks in every subject which ch are given out at the start of the yearand taken in at the end.

What are they revising for? Do you mean like a general read over at home or prep for an exam?

At our school the general curriculum for each subject is on the school app. When it comes to time for exam prep links and books are sent home.

Mostly I leave them to get on with it although I do check in with them how it is going.

That’s shocking Lola but nothing surprises me anymore.

Parents place so much faith in private tutors as opposed to actual their child’s actual teachers (possibly because they are paying) but they really could be anyone. I know of so many private tutors who don’t even have any teaching qualifications and therefore, don’t understand anything about exam boards/attending exam spec training been an examiner (which many teachers have) or have ever been in a classroom. The parents are swayed by their Oxbridge degrees or ‘recommendations on Facebook’, and rarely even ask any questions about their background!

Chloe
I think the PP was going down the route of at university the lecturers record their lectures and put PowerPoints online therefore students in secondary schools should have that sort of access, completely ignoring the totally different contexts.

I've had parents request their child can record my lessons before. It turns out they were getting their tutor to critique my lessons and the tutor was contradicting my guidance and giving advice from old specifications, but naturally the tutor was right and I was wrong and so I should allow DC to record my lessons "for clarity when they're revising". I'd have said no anyway but especially with parental history of them instructing staff how to teach their subject better.

I think students should be able to access the stuff teacher is teaching directly.

They can. I think the issue with spoonfeeding is the parents (or teachers) doing it for them i.e not thinking that the children can write decent notes, therefore, they won’t be able to.

love
It was an overall comment given that one reason we apparently should have text books is so students can read around what they've done in class (as opposed to, say, using the internet or the library or their intuitive to read widely). Combine that with the idea that it's somehow ludicrous to expect students to take appropriate notes from 60 minute lessons, and it's clear how and why there's a growing problem in schools where some staff and parents don't see why study skills and independence and responsibility should be expected, and then seek surprised when GCSE Students can't take effective revision notes.

Students love revision guides and they love writing them out and making nice notes and highlighting things to death at GCSE, but they're not effective study skills.

It's easy to say "at university" but as I've said to another poster, it's totally different.

University students should have note taking skills. If they don't then they've been spoon fed from 11-18. Equally they are taking notes on lectures and wider reading with much broader remits.

KS3/4 students are at an age where it is absolutely appropriate to teach note taking skills so they can learn effectively. Their lessons are typically 60 minutes long, have better, clearer resources than lectures, the input is broken down into sections, often they're given the sub headings to help,

A university student could miss a lecture and then download the PowerPoint and catch up. A y9 student wouldn't be able to do that from a lesson because a lesson isn't a teacher talking through a PowerPoint, and not everything I say is in the PowerPoint.

Lecturers can choose if they want to put the lectures online because it's just them talking. You can't record teacher lessons to put online as there's loads of student contributions and also people would rightly be fed up with being inundated with parents who think they're experts on teaching classes.

Maybe instead of expecting schools to be providing text books (which will mean writing their own for lots of KS3 as the topics differ school to school), or expecting staff to provide notes, or thinking every ounce of the school day can be made available at home, people just expected their children to work appropriately in school.

It's like when someone doesn't work in y7-10 and in y11 suddenly home want to know whether they can buy a revision guide through school, why don't we order them, what intervention is on, their DC can't revise at home so needs revision classes. The onus needs to be on students.

It seems to work with no text books. Not sure how. DD1 very very successfully completed GCSEs with no textbooks. DD2, when in y10, did ask us to buy the maths text book, which she does use.

I love it Chloe.

I've used it at KS5 for a while and dropped it to KS4 a couple of years ago.

I like graphic organisers, cloze exercises and questions at KS3.

The idea that "they can't do it" from colleagues annoys me. They can, if staff and parents promote those habits and teach them how instead of spoon feeding

Love that you are also using the Cornell method LolaSmiles! A game changer for my KS4ers.

Apologies, that sounds a bit ranty. I just can't get my head around the illogical views with secondary education where limited responsibility/independence is accepted and promoted but then parents/teachers complain when the students lack those skills.
If nobody nurtures those skills then they'll never learn.

May have got lost in the above thread but TeenPlusTwenties has it nailed.

For age appropriate support, a lot of money was spent on the KS3 BBC Bitesize online resources. Covers most subjects. It’s free.

Otherwise, unfortunately, the reality is that text books don’t exist at KS3 for majority of subjects. Teachers have to provide the resources etc. themselves.

It's complete rubbish that kids in secondary will be able to take comprehensive notes to revise from. Most uni students struggle with that and use the library books to compensate. A y7 student is often not organised enough to chase up missed work due to illness either
University students take notes from lectures and independent reading.
Year 7 students complete notes in lessons that are broken down and scaffolded.

At our school, we keep copies of notes or photocopy from someone's book when off for illness. Students catch-up from missed lessons on the whole. Based on this thread I'm starting to think I live on another planet where my GCSE students manage to use Cornell notes format and graphic organisers, my y7s do cloze exercises to recap information, all classes recap work from previous weeks.

Honestly, I'm starting to wonder how on earth the students I teach manage to function given this thread shows how little adults expect students to be able to do. It's honestly like listening to jaded colleagues who baby their year 7/8 classes and then complain about lack of independence.

On the other hand it makes sense when I see threads about y11 students not being able to revise, spending hours highlighting and copying revision guides though. Don't invest and develop the appropriate skills in y7-10 and then wonder why they have inefficient study skills at 15/16 and parents and students want spoon feeding through y11.

Does your school have an online virtual learning environment?

Don't all secondary schools have a VLE anyway?

The maths department probably have online access to a package like mymaths, hegartymaths or mathswatch which cover the maths curriculum with online lessons and self-marking questions. You’ll need to ask for a password.

If you want something paper-based, CGP KS3 maths revision guides are good.

For maths, their exercise book isn’t great as a revision tool as they need to be doing questions and practising maths to get better at it.

It's complete rubbish that kids in secondary will be able to take comprehensive notes to revise from. Most uni students struggle with that and use the library books to compensate. A y7 student is often not organised enough to chase up missed work due to illness either. It's also beneficial to have a textbook to refer to to check for mistakes copying and to get an alternative explanation if ymthe student is struggling to understand.

Does your school have an online virtual learning environment? Both my DCs are able to access subject pages on a system called Firefly. Their teachers are able to upload teaching materials, revision materials and links to useful websites for each year/GCSE.