what might be useful in a year 7's school bag (not the bag itself but contents)

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any tips from those who have gone before please.

So bit of money (in blazer ideally I suppose) for emergency, bus card, sanitary towels, tissues, plasters (new shoes and long walk), pencil case (calculator, pens, pencils, geometry stuff etc), small notebook (? thought might be useful in first few days? she suggested putting a little post it pad in her pencil case), umbrella and/or packamac, plastic bag for wet umbrella, obviously lunch and water bottle.

anything I am completely forgetting?
thanks

The school I work in has a no bag policy too. Not all one building. There are six periods in a day - five minutes before registration starts a bell sounds which is “locker time”. They collect everything they need for registration and the first period then. At break, after 15 mins (of the twenty min break) a bell sounds and they collect everything they need for the next two periods. Similar at lunch - bell sounds five minutes before the end of lunch. At the end of the day students go to their lockers before leaving school for buses/to walk.

Students with SEN or any reason that might make locker use a challenge are supported by TAs at the start of the day to organise what they need ready for each two period block and at the end of the day to make sure things that need to go home do.

Of course, there are a few students that carry bags - eg. those with disabilities that make carrying books and pencil cases problematic or students who for whatever reason just can’t get on top of the system even with support - that’s fine.

We have a system where the duty staff carry master keys for the lockers so even if students forget their keys, they can get to their books.

I really like it and thin It works really well. It means that we don’t have students and teachers tripping over stuff in class all the time and that students aren’t carrying loads of stuff around all day, which must be good for their backs. Hardly any “miss, I left it in my locker” moments too, which might surprise lots of people! But, it’s a culture we had (and sometimes, with new students still have) to work hard as a school to instil.

Calculators - the post about having one at home and making it the same model.

If your child has left their calculator at school then there is one on your computer. When you open it it's a basic add/multiply etc but if you click on view or the three horizontal lines (depending on your version of windows) you can select scientific.

I realise you may know this, but I worked with a guy who had a pHD in a science subject and was searching for his calculator.I think he thought I was some kind of witch.

I agree @user12398798768657

I'd be way more wound up if I left all this til the end of August

thanks everyone - glad this has been useful for others. didn't know about calculator on computer! no bag policy actually sounds good to me. ours doesn't do that though.

how does a no bag policy work?

the lockers are all in the outer reaches of the school. in the morning they put their bags in the lockers and take out whatever they need for lessons 1 and 2. At break they go back to their lockers, and replace with items for lessons 3 and 4. At lunch they go back to lockers and take out lunch (if they have a packed one). At the end of lunch they go back to lockers, put away lunch box and take out things for lessons 5 and 6. All the DC keep diaries and pencil cases in blazer pockets and teachers tend to hang onto exercise books unless they need to go home for homework. They don't ever take text books out of classrooms; and don't have them in most subjects (thought this was normal nowadays).

The school is in multiple linked buildings (and on 2 campuses, but they don't move between campuses). I "think" you can get everywhere to everywhere without going outside, though going outside is often shorter. It's a good 5 minutes walk from one end to the other though (and they have a one way system in corridors, due to the corridors being narrow, which is why they have the no bag policy). The first thing the DC do when they get new timetables is to work out how they get from x to y and groan when they discover they have to get from science in lesson 1 to MFL in lesson 2 (rooms about as far away as it is possible to be). They do a lot of walking - it was the main thing we noticed when both DC started - how knackered they both were from moving so much!

It does sound like a palaver but they are all used to it and it seems to work! Having to carry everything by hand does focus thoughts on what they really need and I imagine reduces hassle in classrooms.

DCs have to leave their bags in lockers slung on the floor It doesn't help with this situation though since they still have to get the right stuff to school on any given day.

In addition LOADS of stuff gets nicked.