End of Y7 -EXAMS

[caringdad66]

In two weeks,DS has end of Y7 exams
He has had a poor start to secondary,but there are signs of improvement.
How much revision,per day is normal at this young age?
Should I help him or leave him to learn some independent study skills?
Is leaving revision a week before exam week ok,or too late?
Ds is very bright,but very lazy.
All replies/advice welcomed??

School gave out a revision planner showing how many revision blocks per subject they would need to do (each block being 25-30 minutes). Varied between 2 and 8 per subject. Last week of lessons before exams also covered some revision. School also gave a practice paper for most subjects which helped highlight forgotten topics. Biggest change to anything previous were the languages with speaking, listening, reading and writing tests. Ds did find going over all the standard Q&As helpful on this, and certainly languages were far more time consuming than most of the other subjects (though if he had aced all the vocab tests during the year, then it might have been different!)

Imo Y7 exams are about accustomising children to preparing for, and taking, exams rather than proving levels of attainment. I.e. its about learning good habits when there is still time to mess up without consequences.
So, dc don't need to study at all, except that teachs bad habits.
Why not get your dc to make a list of everything he would like to know for the exams, subject by subject and then put that in a study timetable with the aim of having done every thing 48 hours before the first exam?

DS1 did them last year and only did 16 hours of cramming. He did quite well - so its not that much work if your DC has a good memory. However my Ds learned a bad habit about leaving it so late that cramming is the only option.

Thanks

Hi caringdad66

I discussed what we did elsewhere on MN: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/secondary/2382735-Y7-end-of-year-exams-is-everyone-revising

Our approach was to look at the exam schedule and discuss which exams were worth revising for and which exams could do with a bit of preparation (maybe quite a lot).

So for example in MFL, DD1 knew that she would be asked to write about what she does in an ordinary week - so she practiced that in advance before the test. She knew that exercise would be worth 40% of the score and if she prepared something and practiced it, she could draw on it in the exam.

But in maths she knew that it was reviewing everything over the year, and that maths is a strong subject for her, so she took the decision to do a GCSE L5-7 practice paper (started in class and sent home by teacher with everyone to finish for homework) but left it at that.

Art is a good example - she knew she would be quizzed on some terminology (elements of art/ colour wheel/ etc...) - but the bulk of the test would be a drawing task, which really you can't prepare for. She reviewed the terminology and maybe spent 30 minutes on that tops in the 1 hour revising break before the art exam.

I'm afraid we won't know the results until after half-term (which we're on right now) so I can't say if this strategy worked - but by talking through what exams she had (the school sent a schedule) and devising a strategy (exam needs lots of revising/ exam needs a bit of preparation on a specific thing/ not possible to revise) we sort of devised a plan which broke down the revising into manageable chunks.

HTH

When we do exam week at our school I set revision/revision type activities as homework for the two weeks leading up to the exam.

I talked to my dcs about exam strategy. They learned that writing things out helps info to stick, they reflected that they needed more time to learn next time - they didn't enjoy last minute craming. They will plan more next time. And i learnt that they both care about how they score, that they need space to study and thankfully don't need me to nag and interfer.
Building motivation and independent study skills is what I feel is important in Year 7 - they will use these skills to build on their success, it's good to allow them to not achieve their best and allow them to reflect on how to improve their exam strategy for next year.

Ditto caringdad66 my DS has been doing it halfhearted revision , I don't want to push him as this year has been up & down so not pushing him too hard this time......

My DS has just been told 2-3 hours a night! They have tests in everything and only got the timetable just before half term. They have been given topic lists but some are huge like "the physical geography of the world"!!! Their books weren't sent home so we had no idea how the topics were covered and to what depth. They start in 2 weeks.
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They haven't done any study revision skills session - they are offering one or two after school but on the same day as he has a touch typing class - he has been newly diagnosed with dyslexia.

This is a zillion times worse than doing them myself - I was v conscientious, things came easily to me and I had a good memory so was mostly top of the class. My son finds everything a struggle and is very unmotivated. Its incredibly stressful.