Year 7 Summer Term !

Phew@shoe turning up LGP Hope your DD's lesson goes well

DD's Art teacher slotted DD in for parents evening in the change around time as did her English and History teacher. And I will finally get to meet Mr Drama-Music! I'm sure he's a very nice person but DD is very animated when she lists his latest hideous crime - singing the register is a favourite crime of his!

Teaching maths in Y7?? What are the teachers doing?

DD came home without one of her school shoes yesterday, having lost it somehow playing rounders after school. Luckily the PE teacher spotted it on the field and put it in the changing room for her - I do NOT need to buy new school shoes this close to the end of term.
Tomorrow she and two or three others are teaching a maths lesson - the class was divided into groups and each has had to prepare and teach a lesson on a different topic. She said so far some have been good and some not so much. I think she is pretty nervous about it.

Thanks everyone
Am v excited as was chosen to trial the new 'cybersentinel' program for MN and have today installed it on dd's laptop, so now I will be able to see what she's doing from my laptop and monitor her chat etc - it's spying obviously, but am looking forward to knowing what she's talking to her friends about.

Robin - yes, quite a bit of DS's work is marked with a level.

Hello and welcome Foofi

DS has a had a bit of trouble with some drama homework on bullying. He hates drama with a passion, probably because he is not very good at expressing himself and sometimes when he asks us things (could be about anything) he has to take 3 or 4 goes to get his sentence out. I am not sure if this is to do with DS2 or not who is rather forward and always use to speak for DS1. DS2 always has to be first at everything and I think DS1 just used to let him get on with it in the end. Someone would ask DS1 a question and DS2 would be in there like a shot answering.. The teacher put a comment on the work "see me with a face". But after seeing him DS1 still didn't understand it and it has to be in today. It is all to do with techniques used in the role playing. I don't think there was just DS that didn't understand from what I can gather.

Welcome to the thread Foofi

Hi you lot - I am obviously coming to this rather late, but can I join you?

Since DD has been at secondary school I know almost nothing about her life!

Robinpud - I do hate it that everything seems to be about levels now. At parents evening in March (the first one we had) that's all the teachers did - read a list of levels for various pieces of work. Reports are the same, a list of levels. I would like more COMMENTS...

Having said that, comments about dd are only going to be about being disorganised. It's the same at home - v. messy at the moment.

Magenta - the "parents evening scrum" didn't turn out to be as bad as I had been led to believe. Generally had only one family queuing in front of us at each table. Didn't take DD with us, as many parents did. I prefer to talk about her when she's not there! Also, I noticed that lots of the teachers spent the valuable 5 minutes asking the child how they thought they were getting on, rather than the teachers having to say anything themselves!

Am up early today helping her with her English as she never asks for my help but did last night but I was going out!

Have just remembered I haven't topped up the lunch money card (we do that online) so am just nipping off to do that.

Robinpud re giving out levels on peices of homework I always took it to be that it was that particular peice of work was deemed a level what ever and not that was the level my DD was at for the subject as a whole IYSWIM. My DD has recieved Science projects leveled at about a level higher then her half termly tests. Regarding asking questions then yes I would especially the marking thing. One of the reasons I really wanted to see my DD's English teacher was due to the lack of marking. DD herself comments on the fact she does English homework putting alot of effort in and doesn't even recieve a mark or a comment. I don't expect homework which is find 5 things about so and so to be marked I'm assuming that this kind of homework will be fed back in class but I think things like stories and longer peices should at least have some kind of feed back if only to show her where she went wrong and how she can improve. ranty hat gets taken off

Bellavitia - do you not have the parents evening scrum to contend with? We had a tutorial with her form techer but that in November I think.

We have parents' evening tomorrow night. Not sure whether to sit there and say nothing- her report was quite gushing.. or to ask question such as
" Is it standard practice not to indulge in any marking apart from a mad rush the week before parents' evening?"
or " why was dd and her friends told to play with their mobile during a history lesson?"

btw does anyone else's child get a level on a piece of homework.. e.g RE design your own religion- levels range from level 3 to 7c.. in Year 7. I just don't get this.. how do they know it is independent work? How can one piece of work represent an achievement at a level?

magenta - we have already had our parent consultation (through the day and no school for DS). It was a 15 minute slot and we saw his form tutor. He gave us all the info from his other teachers.

From what I can gather I don't think we get to see other teachers until after year 7.

I can imagine she would be LGP! Well done your DD.

DD's evening isn't until mid-June. I don't know when we get the chance to book appointments. I will want to see as many as possible - she won't want me to see any .
She was on cloud nine today as she got an A* for her art homework.

Can I ask how long other DC's parents evening are? DD's is next week the day after her report is issued. They are holding it from 5pm till 7.30pm. The bookable slots are every ten minutes but that allows a five minute changing over time. I've counted that up to be 12 slots from 5-7pm and 3 from 7pm till the last bookable slot at 7.20pm so 15 slots in all per teacher. I didn't expect to see all her teachers but would have liked to have seen her Science, Geography, History, MFL and especially her English teacher - they are all fully booked up.

DD has been on a trip to Plymouth Aquarium and will be going to the Bristol science museum in July. She missed out on a history trip because there were limited places and she 'forgot' to hand the form in early enough. There is a residential week in July at a PGL centre, but she won't be going as she has had three residentials in Yr 4, 5 &6 and has to wait until Y9 now so we can afford to let her younger siblings have the same opportunities with the primary school residentials.

DD had one trip to see a musical in London before Christmas, was supposed to be having another day trip at the end of this term but it seems to have been changed into an optional weekend at an activity centre... which will be more expensive of course.

I am bracing myself for when the trips abroad start!

DD has been to the Science Musuem in Manchester and a local trip to a musuem in town for Geography/History. She is going to Alton Towers in a fortnight for the annual praise trip her school do.

Next year knee permitting she'd love to go on the school ski trip.

DS had loads of trips in yr 7, cost me an absolute fortune. He went to

Induction Day
Warwick Castle
Science museum
Paper factory
Overnight trip to German Markets
Day trip to France
Theatre trip to Lord of the Rings.

Not so bad this year but we have said no to a week trip to France.

We have just got the starter pack for DD to start in September, so will have it all again next year.

DS has done a geography field trip to Manchester and an RE trip to the church local to the school, there have been no others.

I suppose roisin that it helps the students enjoy the subjects more?

How many trips have your dss done this year?

At the school I work at there are endless trips/special workshops all the time. Often just into the locality, but still.... There is also a 3 day residential for yr7s in June and an optional French trip. We also have Key Days which often involve outside agencies coming in and doing 'exciting and fun' things. Some of these are heavily subsidised, so parents don't have to fork out all the time.

At ds1's school there's been hardly anything. No residential trips this year. He has done a few things holidays/weekends/evenings with Boys Singers. Once he went to the next town for a science/rocket talk. The "Key Days" at his school (6 this year) have been run pretty much entirely by the regular school staff.

Now my question is, to what extent do all these 'extra' things really contribute to their education? Or how much they enjoy school? I know they take up an enormous amount of staff time to plan and organise, but I sometimes question their true value.

DS brought a letter home on Friday asking for £36 for two school day trips.

One is to a theme park and the other is to The Deep Aquarium. Both in the last week of term in July.

I hope you manage to get some more appointments to fill your time magenta!

We have parents evening on the 19th DD has managed to so far get 3 appointments - one at 5.10pm one at 6.50pm and one at 7.20pm I think we might be popping home for a cuppa at this rate. I told DD we really needed to see her Maths, English, Science, MFL, History and Geog teachers. DD wants us to see the ICT and DT teachers as they'll say nice things about her apparently and out of her 3 appointments two of them are ICT and DT. I'd like to meet her Music/Drama teacher only to see if he's really as awful as DD makes out -she has me in stitches recalling what Mr Drama-music has done today! If anything she's become a very good comic recounting tales of his lessons.

DD has to go for an Xray on Monday luckly the Xray dept has an open door policy for Xrays from GP's so she can go after school.

Oops! I once binned DD's homework when she was in yr6 as I thought it was just a tatty bit of paper!

DD had me in stitches tonight -she gets very animated when telling me stuff about school. Apparently one of the other girls made some snidey comment about DD's shiny sleek straightened hair ( took me aggggggggggges to do it!) so DD offered to buy this girls Mum a loo brush to stop her using X's hair as one! DD is normally a polite child who would have retorted "and your point is?" or something similar and walked away but since getting her hair done on friday appears to have become a bit of a girlie! and you don't diss a girls hair!