More yr 7 Homework angst. Please help

[indignatio]

DS has moved from state primary to a selective indie school. He is really struggling with the amount of homework that is expected. He has been used to one or two items of homework per week rather than 3 to 4 subjects per night.

We have set up a system where he has 10 minutes chill out time (usually on the trampoline) on his return from school - he doesn't arrive home until 5.30. Then straight on with homework. I try to cook for him at 7pm and any time after the end of homework and before supper can be spent on screen time.

I do like him to go to be between 8 and 8.30 because he likes to read and has to get up at 6am.

Some homeworks do take 20 minutes, but just one page of written work or detailed drawings take him far far longer.

Whilst he does as much as he can on the day it is set, our timings do mean that he ends up with 7 or more homeworks over the weekend. He only has two after school/evening commitments per week.

I am assuming that those children from prep schools are far more used to regular homework and getting through tasks quickly. Please correct me if I am wrong.

I don't want to go to the school to say he is taking too long, I don't want him to be taking too long. I think I need:

1. Ways to help him speed up
2. Reassurance that he will speed up - a timescale for how long this will take would also be appreciated.
3. To be told whether stopping him at 7pm to feed him, and not pushing him to do anymore after supper is reasonable or not.

Many thanks if you have bothered to wade through all my angst and detail.

"However, he is in a class with others who seem (and. I could be wrong) to be able to cope with the amount set"

Can I ask why you think this?

Oh, and no down time at all is just not sustainable. Really.

My DD1 is also struggling with homework in year 7. In fact she had been off sick 2 days this week with what I mos realise is stress She is also getting 4 pieces of homework a night and ix finding it very stressful. She was at a state primary and is now at an all girls state academy with very high standards and tough discipline.

I emailed her form tutor and head of year tonight and gig z phone call straight back. Thankfully the head of year ix going to have a friendly chat with her tomorrow which will hopefully help with her anxiety. She is enjoying school but do terrified of forgetting a piece of homework and getting a detention. What a massive step up secondary school is ...

Hope you'd DS feels more in control soon.

Oops sorry about phone typos.

I'm not trying to suggest changing the school. But he is facing 7 years of this. If he ends up in years 10 and 11 with 3 hours commuting, and 2-3 hours of homework there really won't be much time for socialising/DofE/sports/music etc. I think you need to look at other methods of transport, or possibly even moving house. Are any of his classmates nearby?

Regardless of whether your son is taking too long or not to do year 7 homework, if the schools ethos is to give this amount of homework in year 7, he is going to have a lot more in later years. Yes, you need to get him used to working at the appropriate standard in year 7 (and it is obviously a jump).

English reading - surely this can be done on the journey home?

If you have 3 hours to do prep, food and shower, then that seems like plenty of time. Is the issue that prep finishes at supper time? I certainly wouldn't be rigid about not working after supper - sometimes it has to be done.

My children have had this level of homework and I had more when I was a year 7 at a grammar school. What is excessive is the travelling. I thought some schools had travel policies and enforced a travel time limit. These timings are all wrong and it will only get worse when exams loom! How in earth will ge manage A levels? It is important to join in with opportunities at school and this regime is like being at work. Such a shame. The school may be the best fit when he is there but the limits put on his life are not so good.

Ladymuck, the amount of homework may not ramp up in later years - DD gets a similar amount now (though often fewer but more in-depth pieces) in Y10.

Marmite, my DD was like that in Y7. She still gets very stressed by homework/revision, etc pressures at times

Curlew - aren't evenings for socialising/playing too? If it's pissing down with rain at lunchtime and some of DDs friends are doing a club or just chilling out then she will go to the library with one or two friends to crack on with homework, thus leaving the evening free for mates over for tea, swimming club, guides, Miranda on catch-up etc.

I agree - it's about them deciding how to manage their time.
Not that my two ever go and work in the library!

This is why I made sure my DCs went to school locally, my oldest gets lots of homework and revision and really benefits from being home 10 minutes after the end of school.

My Y7 DD goes to prep so that I can pick her up rather than her going home to an empty house by public transport.

She generally gets three preps a day and does two of them in school. That means she just has to do one at home. Y7 preps are typically 3x20 minutes per night.

If you are worried about how long you DS is taking, write it on his prep or in his planner. You can make your own choice as to whether he stops on the 20 minute mark or goes to completion.

The teacher may be inexperienced and perhaps a bad judge of how long preps take (for all students). If so, she needs to know so that she can adjust.

If your DS is slower than the rest of the class, then this is also important to record. When he comes to public exams, they will want to know his usual way of working. The more info on his extra time requirements and allowances in day to day operations, the better for getting the best exam arrangements for him. Don't hide any special arrangements, as they are designed to help your DS fulfil his potential.

I just hate that there is no room for manoeuvre. What if the's a party? Or they just doesn't feel like spending the 3 hours they have between school and bed doing homework one night? Or there's an England match they want to watch? Or a friend for tea? When do they just do nothing, or think or mess about? When do you talk as a family, or play a board game? Music practice? What if they suddenly want to learn another instrument, or take up basket weaving or something? As I keep saying- it's not sustainable long term.

Indignatio, ah yes dreamer of dreams. How could I forget? Didn't our boys do well? From what I remember of your DS it's likely to be a case of speeding up and learning to stop after 20 minutes?

Getting home at 6, eating dinner, taking a shower, doing 1 1/2 hours of prep then going straight to bed. Something has to give. Either you organise your day so you can pick him up a couple of days a week, or you live closer, or you change a ridiculously early bedtime. Or, of course, change schools. My DD who is 12 attends a school half an hour away by bus, leaves home at 7.30am, gets back at 6pm, completes the prep she hasn't done in school time then has about 2 hours to herself before bed. If she has to work on longer projects, generally she's given a few days to complete it so works for a few hours on a Sunday afternoon. She isn't a morning person either but is in a routine and knows she can sleep in on the weekends.

I agree that a 3 hr a day commute is going to become increasingly unsustainable. However much your dc may speed up, the quantity and level of work will naturally ramp up year by year. Is this length of commute common for the school? If so, how do others manage?
I would suggest that your dc notes when they come to the end of the allotted time on the homework, and if they really want to finish, carry on beyond and then note how long the piece took beyond the set time. Teachers might be able to better see where the issues lie then and be able to help in a more constructive way.

Is there anyway you could pick him up at the station? The bus journey at the end of the school day must be very tiring. As he gets older & stronger he could do the bus journey some days building up to 5 afternoons a week. I'd also drop him at the station in the morning if I could (says the sucker who drops DCs at school for early morning training as it seems mean to make them catch the train before 7am).

Thank you to everyone for their advice.

Re the commute: DS is dropped at the station every morning so door to Door timings are 1 hour. In the afternoon, he is collected twice a week from the station. On the other three days he has to take the bus from the station. If the bus is on time the journey door to door is 1 hour 15 mins. Unfortunately the bus is not often on time.

DS chooses to go in earlier than he needs to, to have time with his friends before school starts. Today he is early because he needs to go to the library to do some homework he could not do last night as he forgot to bring home the relevant book.

Moving is not really an option. His catchment school would still involve a bus journey each way of 45 mins. We are not really in the middle of nowhere, honestly.

I agree that he does need to make better use of his travel time and will suggest ways he can introduce this. Ie vocab and planning for longer pieces of writing.

I like the idea of noting where he gets to in the 20 minutes and then letting him complete the work, so he doesn't feel he is handing in substandard work.

The school is great and many children travel long distances to attend. Secondary school is so different from primary when all the parents happily chatted about whether there was too much or too little homework. Given the distances the children travel, there is not the same interaction between the parents. I may get a better idea of whether DS is the only one taking so long when there is a parents' meet up in a couple of weeks.

I am sure the bedtime will change over time, but he is young for his year and needs his sleep at the mo.

I totally agree that he needs some downtime, which is why I am trying to find ways for him to cope with what is set and have time for other activities.

He does need to speed up, so any advise on how to encourage this would be gratefully received.

I like the idea of having a word with school a couple of weeks after half term as this should have given him a sufficient settling in period.

Music practise. I am so glad that we chose not to continue with his two instruments this term, lessons at moveable times and the daily practise may well have been too too much. I know that he would like to re-start lessons next term, but at the moment I can't see how he could fit it all in.

He has taken up three new sports at school this term. Fortunately two of these are within the lunchtime, so I would really rather he did not have to rely on lunchtimes to do his homework.

We do get time to talk, see friends and play board games (settlers of catan anyone?) at the weekends.

Thanks again to all posting with great advice.

Right, it's time to take control & be firm with him

Dd goes in half an earlier because dh has to be there at that time. That half hour before registration is strictly designated as homework time. Another day girl is dropped off at the same time as her mum has to take other siblings to school afterwards/get to work, so they do their homework together (except yesterday when instead if doing homework she spent the entire time searching lost property for her tap shoes!)

So your ds either has to use this time effectively or he has to go in later, hence being able to get up later & go to bd later.

Ds's commute by car is approx 1 hour.

Certainly you will have to build up his stamina; termtime is a whirlwind for children, especially those who do sport and music as well as all of the other clubs and activities. My older son has a similar bedtime by the way, so I for one don't disagree with 8:30 as time for heading to bed and reading. But equally I know that there just isn't much downtime during the week in termtime, and every member of my household keeps asking me how soon is halfterm!

What you must watch out for is how he gets through the 2nd half of this term. If it is like many of the independent schools local to me, then Saturday fixtures for Year 7 haven't fully kicked in yet: they are still training those who haven't played much rugby or hockey previously. After school fixtures aren't always possible as school don't have enough floodlighting, so Saturdays become a day of sport (and one less day for catching up on prep). From year 8 fixtures start from the first weekend of term.

His mood will change as the end of term approaches, and he will be not just arriving home in the dark, but in fact he will be leaving school in the dark too. It is not unusual for boys to have some form of meltdown in the last week or two of school. Judging by ds I would say most of the detentions etc are awarded in the final 2 weeks of term, when frankly they are exhausted! Trying to fit in all of the Christmas season into the first week of December because of the early break-up is also a bizarre experience that you have ahead of you!

Has he had any study skills training yet? Ds's school, which takes about 20% of year 7 from state schools, offers a buddy scheme, and also specific study sessions from memory in the second half of the first term. Certainly a chat with his form tutor is the starting point. The speed aspect is a puzzling one as I would expect that there is a huge variety to the type of homework he gets (vocab, reading, writing up, research), so I'm surprised that they all take longer. Is someone at home when he gets home? I would certainly be tempted to observe closely for the next week or two and see what is being set and how long it takes. The other thing to consider is that often homework will be to finish off what was started in class, and in fact there may be an issue with how much he is getting done there?

[We also play Settlers of Catan, just not in termtime!]