Year 7 starters - tips and advice

[Spud90]

I thought it’d be a good idea for a place to share tips to help kids settle in and be organised.

I was massively unorganised at school(undiagnosed adhd) and struggled so much. I’m trying my best to teach my son how to be organised but honestly, I’m a bit clueless! So any tips and tricks to help him not lose things, not get lost, stay on top of homework etc would be massively appreciated.

Ive got two in secondary, these are my tips:

• put names labels in all clothes, just like at primary

*get hold of a copy of their timetable, photocopy it and use it to help them pack their bags each night ready for the next day

*decide where they are going to do homework (one of mine works in his bedroom, the other doesn't get stuff done unless he's working in the back room - you might need to experiment to see what works for you). Wherever is the chosen spot set up a series of intrays - 1 with spare stationary, pens, ruler etc, rest to store exercise books etc when not being used.

*agree what the after school routine is going to be. Eg mine get home 4.30pm, eat something and relax til 6pm then do homework til dinner at 7.30pm. Eldest will continue with homework after dinner if necessary.

All the above plus I have bought my son a whiteboard with a list of the things he needs to do in the morning to tick off as he's easily distracted. Once back to school no access to screens in the morning.

Get a box for all their books.
Get into the habit of checking timetable and getting bag ready night before.
Try to get homework done on the day they get it rather than night before the deadline.

Are they going to school on the bus?

Make sure they know where to get off the bus in the afternoon. I know that sounds daft but ds didn't recognise his stop so stayed on the bus until the end of the route, and then panicked.

The driver then very kindly drove back every stop until they found me. Apparently it happens every year. 😀Year 7 Kids are either so used to being in a car that they forget to look out for their stop, or they don't recognise the stop from the inside of the bus.

2 pencil cases, one that stays in school bag and goes to school, the other for homework.

A good quality stiff plastic A4 wallet for taking paper sheets to and from school (unless everything is online).

As well as a run through for things like getting the bus, you need to talk through how to deal with things like missing the bus/stop/losing passes etc before they happen so they have some idea of problem solving.
Schools are often very strict on uniform and homework for yr7's to get them up to speed (and compliant with rules!)
Bag & uniform ready the night before is a good idea.

I couldnt agree more with this!

When my dd started secondary, her bus pass was late arriving so I drove her the first couple of days, when she got the bus the first time TO school all was fine but at the end of the day it went to shit, She didnt realise that they had to walk across the road to the other high school and get on the bus from there, she presumed it had not turned up and started walking home, a 4 mile walk with no footpaths! Obviously when the bus arrived and she was not on it all panic set in, then an ambulance turned up with her, Someone had flagged them down worried about a young girl walking on the side of the road and luckily they brought her home. Id forgotten about this till you mentioned the bus and hoping to reforget now as it still makes my blood run cold

Buy a white sharpie and write first initial, last name and form group on the inside collar of the blazer and inside any pencil case e.g. A. Smith, 7X.

For outdoor coats, PE bag, school bag, bus pass holder, musical instrument cases and anything that might be left on a bus/in a shop, write first initial, last name and your mobile number e.g. A. Smith 07902 123456. On the door keys, order a dog tag from ebay (I tend to get the metal rings that are personalised with some kind of laser magic) and get first initial, last name and your mobile number e.g. A. Smith 07902 123456 engraved onto it. These are useful for musical instrument cases too actually.

There was a really helpful thread about this of you look back.

As a secondary school teacher and a parent of a soon to be year 8 who is a massive worrier. Often the idea of getting a detention for year 7s absolutely cripples them, for a lot of students it's quite important to let them get a detention for something minor. So that they see that whilst it's an inconvenience and annoying and they shouldnt get any more, nothing disastrously awful happens. I've had year 7s in tears (as was my own DD when we were 2 minutes late because the car unexpectedly needed defrosting in October last year) she did her detention, wouldn't want to repeat the experience but now isn't really worried about them.

List next to the door of things to check on way out:

Lunch
Phone
Key

Monday: PE kit
Tues: Guitar for lesson
Thurs: PE kit
Fri: signed planner

That sort of thing.

My DD starts tomorrow Y7 and frankly I’m more worried than her.
For example I will be driving her but I am very inexperienced Sunday driver - the road where the school is extremely narrow and very long and parents are not allowed park/ drop off there due to this.
All the other area around is very busy traffic with large roundbounds, junctions and roads with traffic wardens.
I worry that I wont be able to pick her her, she is not familiar with the road, refused to go there to even look to see. She won’t be able to see me or find me after school.
She can’t cross a road safely, never checks the street to see if any car is coming, she just can’t do it no matter how often I was telling her.
I am just dredging tomorrow morning and every other day, I feel physically sick already counting down the hours …

@Panickingnow I have today realised that for all our debating on getting TO school (bike, car, walk), we haven’t established the picking up protocol - my DD also starting tomorrow, also with minimal street smarts! She will be cycling with DH so will have the added (initial) complication of bike storage and retrieval.
Can you do a dummy school run this afternoon to identify a potential meeting place, a landmark or something easily remembered in the blur that I’m imagining their first day to be?
Or call the school to see if they can share what other families do - you surely can’t be only one in this position.
Good luck to you both - I’m pretty sure you’ll work something out!

@panickingnow when she crosses the road there will be lots of other students around too, you can ask her to cross with them and hopefully their is someone sensible in the group that leads the crossing.

It's very unusual for children to have no street smarts at all unless Send are involved, if she does have a diagnosis then you may be given permission to pick her up straight from the school.

You really do need to do a dry run with her tonight whether she wants to or not. Is there a bus stop that gets her closer to school than you can even if you pick her up further along the bus route if it doesn't go near your home where its less busy?

Y7 Form Supervisor here (and parent of two older DCs)! All good advice, but I'd echo: name everything. Do something to your DC's backpack and sports bag to make it stand out from the 150 near-identical ones in a big heap, or when child A picks up child B's bag and then abandons it around school when the mistake is realised; key fob, coloured ribbon, sew on a patch or a nametag, anything.

Whiteboard by the door is also good!

Download the homework app yourself so you can discreetly keep an eye on how it's going. Also be ready to print out the odd thing. Might also come with time table and extra-curricular clubs available to point them at.

I'm finding that my y7 is just not putting in the effort to do homework to the standard he needs to - he has a real "it'll do" mentality. Any thoughts on how to motivate him to make more effort?

@greyinganddecaying Well, will it do? Is it the schools standard or yours? Is he capable of better quality work or is he balancing homework with addional needs, extracurricular activities, split time between parents or many of the other things that make a preteens life tricky?
Learning when something is good enough and not fretting over a piece of work and continuing until it is perfect is an important skill and one it takes a lot of people a long time to accept and master. If it is the schools standard he is not meeting but is capable of better quality work they will soon let him know if he doesn't meet it hell get sanctions.

We tell students in Y7 not to spend more than a certain amount of time on each piece of homework. Admittedly, some teachers follow that better than others! But "finished beats perfect" is a good attitude to learn (or "the best is the enemy of the good.") Is the school happy with the work..?

@Singleandproud - in short, no it isn't good enough! He got high SATS scores and is very capable, but is doing a rough job, getting 50% and deciding that's good enough, despite the work being really easy, the school spoonfeeding them the answers, giving them three attempts to improve scores (he's only using one) and telling them that they should be getting 90% by the time they've had three attempts.

That's why I'm concerned

He's spending 5 minutes doing something that school recommend should take half an hour.

The trouble is that the teachers don't yet know what he's capable of, so will be lowering their expectations of him. Despite him being much more capable than his work would suggest.

And he's had a few teachers telling him to redo and resubmit already.

I wonder if you need to make doing something rushed/poorly cost more time not less?
So is he rushing so he can play on an X-box or something?
If so then something like

• no X-box until 7pm
• any work returned means no X box for 2 nights
• he shows you homework before X-box
• bonus time for getting good marks

I suppose in that case you have dedicated homework time with no distractions for the length of time the school recommend and if he doesn't do his homework properly during that time then he doesnt earn time on the xbox or whatever he enjoys.

I think he's just trying to get his homework out the way so he can do other stuff when he gets home.

I'm going to try to instil a homework hour/half hour every day, before he's allowed to do anything else. Hopefully that might help...