How to support not-coping bright Y7 with no time

[Echobelly]

So DD is 11, bright and in Y7... her brother is in Y4 and struggling, so what little time we have tends to be given to him and we hoped she'd get on and she seemed to be - we saw her doing work, we didn't hear much from school one way or another. But it's becoming increasingly clear she's hardly handed anything in and didn't tell us because she knew I was already overwhelmed with work and DS, and she feared DH would be angry and he has even less time than I do.

I'm in bits, I have nothing more left to give after helping DS and DH has no time - I feel awful for leaving her to it. I don't worry about her academically she is very bright and it's not a massive inflection point in that sense, and I don't worry about the school as they know that (though I am annoyed we/she had so little feedback) but I feel so bad for leaving her to it and that I don't know what else we can do.

I think she is finding it very difficult to do work without the structure of school, but we can't really provide much structure either. She wakes up very early and does her work then, and often says she has done all her work by mid-morning (but now she's saying she can't finish anything in the given time)

The only solution I can see at the moment is to hire someone as babysitter/
tutor for DS for a few hours a day (AFAIK one is allowed to have childcare in, no one in our house is particularly at risk from Corona) so we can give the time to DD, which we are in a position to afford as long as DH's contract lasts, which may not be much beyond the end of this month.

It sounds to me like your DD is struggling less with the work itself and more with the lack of structure and not being sure what is expected of her. I think that if you or DH could divert some time towards her just for the next few days (i.e. don't see this as a thing you have to fit in every day for the next few weeks) you might be able to help with that. Also, encourage her to talk to her friends. I have a year 7 DD and she's on FaceTime with her two friends a lot to check that they've understood what is required of them.

So last night I looked through a bunch of documents again from school, and emailed form teacher. Head's message was they only expect about 3 hours a day, prioritise Maths, English and Science and anything they are most interested in, but if they leave out some non-core, that is OK. No one will get into trouble for anything.

Form teacher has offered to email around all teachers saying not to chase up anything from last term so she can just have a fresh start.

We had a chat this morning and said that she can do one piece of work early in the morning, seeing as she feels productive then, but she shouldn't be zooming through everything then rather than working during normal school hours, so she did her dance/music/drama work early. She did her English this morning and there's just a science lesson on Teams this afternoon (possibly with homework) so that should be it for today and I will keep checking in. She did also find a French piece she hadn't submitted from last term and sent back to teacher (this was before I got reply from form teacher).

I think she has been emailed work to teachers rather than through SMH, which she says she isn't sure how to do, so I'm going to look at that with her today, as I suspect it will make it easier for everyone to keep track of what she's got done.

Submitting work through SMH seems really easy, and there's function they can directly communicate with the teacher who assigned the work. No need to email or anything, just type in the comments. That's on the same page as they get marked or graded.

Ive got the parents sign in for show my homework so I look at it every morning while I'm still in bed so that when I see dd I can say

'so, you've got English about Romeo and Juliet and then some Geography about deforestation and there is a video to watch and some RE on Buddhism. You have to make a comic strip.'

The. I know what's what and she knows that I k ow and she knows I'm interested in her and what she is learning about. My dd submits everything directly on the app and I can see it on my app. Also, if you go in to 'updates' you can see any comments.

If I think a piece of work that has been set is a waste of time I tell her not to do it.

Thanks, I've been looking through it and found the submission part, which should help.

I did more or less what you said running through today's stuff with her this morning, it was only 3 pieces.

Dh has asked her to run though last term & establish what she hasn't handed in, obviously if it's loads we're not going to ask her to do it all, but if it's 2 or 3 things she might as well as do them if possible. Or possibly we will ask form teacher to ask subject teachers if anything crucial is missing so that she can do what seems like the most important bits. Again, if it's loads we'll not expect her to do it all.