Grammar School YR7-homework!

[Dingle]

So how are they coping please? How much homework, support, organisation skills, encouragement....

It's a bit of a shock to his system I think. Such a contrast from the 3d models he needed to make one a year at Juniors!

Hiya! How's he getting on?
We don't have grammars here, but ds2 is getting a lot more homework than he's used to. But he's mostly taking it in his stride. He caught up to date by Saturday lunchtime and then had an unusual homework-free day today, so has had a blissful couple of days off.

How much is your ds getting?

Hi Roisin! He's tired and grumpy!!!!

He seemed to be loving school itself but the whole concept of homework is causing so much strain on us all!

I don't feel he is getting lots and lots (yet) but he might start a task that you'd think would only take him 15 minutes and if we are not careful an hour may pass and he would have actually achieved nothing more than googling a few images of Fibonacci.

He is technically minded, so last week I sat down with him and made up an Excel spreadsheet of his homework and deadlines to help him prioritise it all. I think it's more down to time management, organisation and the motivation at the moment.

We are trying to break it up by sectioning off smaller tasks and giving "rewards" but I am not even sure that is working yet.

He is looking so drained and to top it all he is off to Paris on Thursday! I am wondering if being so young,we are asking too much of him!

DD is not getting her transport into SN school until about 8.45am so I am having around 3 hours of intense childcare to deal with before I even start work! I am exhausted and not sure how to make it easier for DS!

dd is coping fine, she gets 2 or 3 subjects a night, the arty stuff take ages, but the worky stuff isnt too bad. She is enjoying it so far, and really, its quite minimal in content. Will get worse though i know. She is enoying everything and not moaning about it! She moans about everything else though.

When ds1 was in yr7 he did have a tendency to want to spend too long on homeworks. If they are "justifiable" I don't mind them spending extra time, but I do make a point of indicating "meaningless" homeworks. Then I get them to set a target for themselves as to how long it should take, then get them to try and stick within it.

I do bang on (an nauseum apparently) on the joys of having completely free time once the homework is all sorted, which I think is an additional motivation too.

Is the Paris trip with school? Wow, that's very organised to get that all organised and sorted so early!

ds2 seems so very, very young. He is still wants to take things in to tell/show the teacher! One pocket in his bag is full of conkers. And he gets ridiculously excited about the smallest things.

OMG- I feel out of my depth already! DS has already got maths homework that I don't understand! HELP PLEASE!

What's the homework?

I don't think my DD is especially overloaded with homework. She has two or three bits a night but they are fairly small bits of work that don't actually take that long.

I am however having a bit of a battle with her to get homework done when she is given it rather than leaving it as "It doesn't need to be in for ages..." Which I know will result in her having 10 bits of homework one night as all the deadlines fall on the same day.

She has also twice not brought her work home which needs to be in the next day. (Manged to get it done at lunch time the next day as her lesson was thankfully at the end of the day!)

I don't think it's really the homework that's the problem- more the organisation.