Y7 exams

[Taswama]

Y7 exams coming up in mid June and DS is getting a bit stressed about them.
He’s top set for both sciences and humanities and enjoys most subjects. His hardest are probably English and German. I think it’s worth spending time revising vocab for example, but am not sure how you can revise for English. On the one hand I get that he needs to learn how to revise, not just rely on remembering all the facts etc from history. But I don’t want to spend huge amounts of time getting him to go through every subject and topic. He’s done well in end of topic tests so far. We are also going away for half term.
Any advice?

For Y7 I would be guided by the school.
Some schools take y7 exams way more formally than others.
Many top set pupils quite possibly need do no more than look through their notes the night before, and an hour per subject might be easily more than needed.

For DD2 for example, humanities and English tended to be skill based rather than knowledge based, so a reminder on what type of thing to cover would generally be sufficient. (eg History - consider reliability of source - who written by, contemporary or later, possibility of bias).
Whereas maths was 'all maths so far' and for her (lower ability) needed revision whereas a top set child would just be able to do it all anyway.

Ask him what school have said. He may be less stressed by doing some revision, but if not first week back I'd probably leave it.

Thanks T3 . School have sent list of topics to revise but also sent a letter saying it’s just to get practice in and will be in class lessons.

I didn't even know they were sitting end of year exams until I got a letter from the school yesterday. I asked at parents evening and was told no end of year exams just continuous assessment, so looks like they've had a last minute change of heart or I was misinformed

Anyway we're going on holiday tomorrow and not back until day before school starts, which also happens to be the first days of exams so that's fantastic

A bit more notice would have been good.

I would just enjoy your holiday. Got one y7 and one y8 and neither do much in way of revision but seem to do fine so leaving them to it. I am not sure what ours are used for, school haven't even told us and have organised a fun week for after half term.

I have a Year 7 with exams when he gets back, and we're also away over half term. DS1 is at a different school, and they didn't make a huge fuss, but DS2's is more formal and more pressure.

Saying that, it's Year 7, and just gets them used to the idea of exams. Both my DC's are choosing to take revision with them but will only do a bit in the morning. I'm anticipating long, peaceful, breakfasts

We’re going within the UK so have room in the car and anyway bbc bite size is the preferred resource! My main issue is convincing DP not to put loads of pressure on to DS I think!

My year seven and year eight have already done their terminal exams for the year. Not sure what they are going to do after half term!

DD just finished hers. She was told by her teachers to revise everything since October, nice, isn’t it?

She did roughly 2-3 revision sessions per subject, normally around 45-60 minutes, they had 2 weeks for it.

It is hard to revise for English, she did some grammar revisions with BBC bitesize and reviewed her books what kind of work she did over the months. The test itself was comprehension, so she re-read how she worded her answers during class work and what was marked for improvement.

For Spanish they use a web base tool which she practice on anyway so went through the bits she found challenging. They did a reading, speaking and listening test.