Should exercise books be coming home?

[Exercisebooks]

Sort version - do GCSE students bring home exercise books more often than not?

Long version - I have two very different children. One has just completed GCSEs at a grammar school. Grammar school wasn’t on our radar and it’s something they wanted to sit after hearing about it from other kids in their primary school class. Anyway, flew through it and got in. As I said just say GCSEs and got great grades.

They were always bringing their exercise (and sometimes) text books home. I took it as a granted.

Second child. Very different child. Was given 11+ option but didn’t want to commit. Goes to a local secondary and seems quite happy.

This school has turned around in the last 6:7 years from a school that was undersubscribed into oversubscribed and if relevant, now part of an Academy Trust (although I think seen as the “poor relation”).

This child is in Year 10 now and rarely brings home exercise books. And text books are handed out and shared in class (I assume this is down to budgets being slashed). So they never come home.

I’ve been encouraging recapping what they’ve learnt over the day - the older child said they wished they’d done that more rather than waiting til mocks to revise. So I thought I should encourage it now with the second child embarking on GCSEs.

But without exercise books, there is no way of doing that.

Why aren’t they sent home? I realise there will be some marking needed but surely the kids need the books? I’m happy to ask but I don’t know if I’m missing something really obvious before I do! Thanks

I think it will depend on how the school works... DD keeps her exercise books unless they are being marked. No text hooks but there is all the classwork available on Google classroom. A lot of homework is online, so the exercise books might not be looked at between lessons.

Because if they go home many never come back.

How do they do homework? Is it online?
Some schools they don't actually use exercise books - children have a general note book to keep notes but actual classwork is done on individual sheets or online.

This

Do they have another way to access to the work, such as google classroom?

My son is in Year 11 - he keeps all his books at home unless a teacher has kept one for marking. That's been the case since Year 7 though. I agree that the books should be at home - at the beginning of Year 10 we had a parent meeting about the importance of regularly going back over your work and preparing for GCSEs. My son doesn't actually do that though!

Yes this is exactly why it's sensible to keep books in school. For every child who would diligently bring them to each lesson there are 2 more who take them home and never bring them back so all their work ends up on scraps of paper.

There really is no need for a book to be at home revision of topics they've learnt can be done easily without having their book in front of them.

Sometimes a school will have a policy, more likely for textbooks than exercise books but you do see schools where there is a whole school policy of exercise books stay in school.

Very very rare for textbooks to go home (they are just too expensive).

Sometimes the teacher has a policy - I used to teach in a comprehensive and with lower/middle groups if you let them take exercise books home it is very likely that next lesson at least half the class won't have their book and you need to give out paper etc, I set up trays in the classroom where they had to leave their books. Homework was done on paper or online.

Just too much disruption to the lesson every lesson otherwise.

It's not great for the parents though. We used to have lists of what topics we were covering and online examples and questions on Dr Frost maths so students could practice outside school and parents had an idea what maths they were doing.

How can they do their homework without access to the textbooks?

Here in Ireland, the parents buy most of the textbooks so the kids carry ridiculously heavy bags around with them to school and back with their textbooks and exercise/copy books in.

DS has always had homework every night since junior infants so he spends an average of a couple of hours a night on homework at secondary school.

It's even worse now as last year we had to spend €700 on a laptop for school use (he already had his own) and so he has to take his laptop and the textbooks to school in his massive backpack every day!

I have recently complained about this as it's too much to carry.

Dd's Good comp they didn't come home due to disruption with being left at home.
We used the CGP guides to revise anyway for most subjects as quality of handwritten notes wasn't great.

Thanks all.

To answer a couple of questions - there is no google classrooms. They work on Teams and have certain homework set on Quizlet etc. But it seems to me if nothing is set nothing can be accessed.

We’ve not had any details of what is being learnt (other than the short overview to help them decide on options).

So how can I help them reinforce their learning?

My child is willing to do this but other than remembering what they remember from the lesson (which clearly are the parts they don’t need to reinforce as they’ve remembered them) how can they do anymore? What resources should we use? Thank you

Find out the exam board for each subject.
Get the CGP guides (esp Science).
Ask them about what they have done on a regular basis.
When they switch topics / each half term mark off the done ones in the guide index. You only need them to remember the topics, not the details, the details are in the guide.

Thanks TeenDivided.

I’ve just checked and apart from English and Business there is no information about examination boards on the website.

So I will ask the school for that info and buy the CGP as suggested.

Did you get an options booklet when picking GCSEs?
Our school used to put the board in that.

It's the difference between grammar and comp in my personal experience. Both of mine are at grammar and lug huge heavy bags around/ lots of homework compared to their friends at comp, who don't take bags and leave their books at school - this isn't a snob post as I went to comp and it was the same then.

I would advise buying CGP books for home study and check what exam board they are using for maths. Corlett maths / YouTube/ bitesize / twinkl all have good materials

School I work at exercise books are left at school for the reasons mentioned above

Text books, they can be accessed in line. Homework tends to be worksheets or quizzes which are done on line.

At my son's school, there was no option of leaving anything at school. The school had no lockers! They all had huge rucksacks to carry around the books (text books and exercise books) between lessons and to/from home each day. Great fun on days when they also had to lug their sports kits in another rucksack, and even better on days when they had food-tech too as they then needed another bag to carry the ingredients etc. Oh, and they had to carry their coats around the school too as there were no cloak rooms!

But, yes, it worked well as he always had all his resources at home which massively helped with homework, revision, etc.

In the sixth form, they did have access to lockers, but by that time, he was accustomed to lugging it all around with him, so he didn't bother with the locker.

Check Teams to see what the teacher is uploading.

Some teachers teach from onenote/PowerPoint and put them in the team so that students can see every lesson. (This is rare but it happens)

Most teachers will have something in the team giving details of topics/homeworks etc.

Depends on the teacher/department but generally no - they also don't have text books even in school working from photo copies or power point slides.

Sometimes it's photocopied worksheets bundles they are working in rather than exercise books. Plus exercise book have been taken in and regularly misplaced and some don't allow exercise books home at all- I do get it some pupils can't manage a pen between classes.

So to re-enforce at home it's on-line sites like https://senecalearning.com/en-GB/ languages https://www.duolingo.com/, - we're lucky there one for maths for their board https://www.mathsdiy.com/ and there are may paid sites as well. We also spent a small fortune on study guides - some subjects do work books as well which were good.

Sometimes school will give access to on-line resources like maths watch.

I had to help DS a lot this last summer - it was quite shocking how few and how poor his notes were - did think it was him but he'd actually got more than most of his peers. Some subject also overwhelmed him with last minute verbose photocopy pages so study guides were helpful to cut through all that.

i taught MFL in a comp school until fairly recently. Text books - I typically had one set of 15 or so per year, so they stayed in my classroom.

Exercise books- I did use to send them home, but I got fed up of kids writing on bits of paper bc they had forgotten their book. At first I asked a few for their book, then more wanted to leave them with me so they didn’t spill water/get eaten by the dog.

If they needed to revise for a test or do HW that required their book, I would send them home. And if anyone wanted their book, of course fine (usually a reliable student). I’m pretty sure for GCSE I expected them to keep their books tbh. Maybe your ds should ask? Surely no teacher would mind.

Same as @clary (and I'm an MFL teacher too) - I have moved towards mostly keeping their exercise books in school, for the same reasons.

Ah I see others say the same. Yy op agree for GCSE revision find the board, get the CGP guide and use that. For Eng lit you’ll need to know the texts.

We don't seem to have either exercise books or text books - DD uses laptop for everything so never queried the lack of exercise books.

Homework all set on an app and link to a worksheet or similar attached.

School sent out a list of all recommended revision guides and set texts for every subject at the end of last year plus relevant exam boards. I bought all of those and suggested DD make revision cards every week for the topics covered in class using the revision guides to work from.