Is this normal for year 7

[Firsttimegardening]

Hi, DD is in year 7, at selective school and has just started enjoying secondary. Everyday she comes back from school and says she has too much homework to do. But when she sits down to do her homework she takes ages to do any task. I mean hours e.g King Arthur, she will read on google, BBC bite size for at least an hour or two and still have no idea what to write? If I leave her alone to write up she won’t answer the question and just be sitting there staring. I feel like she has some kind of a problem but not sure. Her maths is really good. She finds difficult to make friends and has been avoiding school canteen since she started.
Part of me thinks she is just not bright enough but when I watch her drift away on the couch/ dining table I start to worry about her.

Does she have any textbooks? Do you have a breakdown of what she is to study over each year? I would find this out, and then get some textbooks/reference books that are relevant and cover the material in question, if the school does not provide textbooks. She can used those for her main research, and add in some online stuff only after learning the basics from a book. It’s mad for schools to expect an 11yo to sit there googling her way to an education, and the internet is full of dodgy informations and distractions. The lack of textbooks in UK schools drives me dotty (I live overseas).

RedFluffy, you seem to have a bit of a bee in your bonnet about the 11 plus. The OP did not say anything about a grammar school, so I am assuming that this is a private school. I am not in the UK, but where I am, private selective schools all have their own tests and different criteria, so I would be surprised if all private selective schools in the UK used a standardized 11 plus exam system for their own entrance. Reading between the lines, this child is probably better at maths than at humanities and maybe her excellent maths score made up for being less good at subjects involving writing.

@user1477391263

In UK the grammar 11+ tests are covering only a school curriculum. Passing it well is about speed and precision.
Private school have more extensive exams that in most cases involve VR, NVR, reading comprehension, essey and maths that can be tricky.
I do understand that she succeded thanks to her math. Nevertheless it is not that you can have a great math and poor comprehension, story writing and VR &NVR. Ultimately it is not about passing but how did she manage to prepare. These issues with focus would surely emerge at a time of preparation.

And 11+ is something that means hours of preparation as it covers the curriculum beyond what schools required...unless we are talking about child genius.

Orrrrr maybe those of us with academically able neurodivergent kids (sometimes known as twice exceptional) can see some potential red flags in the OP which might be worth looking in to further.

Social issues (avoiding canteen environment)
Lack of focus
Poor executive function

Or if it makes you happier, just write the kid off as lazy, yeah? It’s no skin off my nose.

Our selective school brings in a child psychologist to give talks to parents. One of these was "procrastination and perfectionism". Parents Q&A seemed very open and non-judgmental but it is surprising how many parents have daughters who spin out a 20 minute piece of homework to last several hours because they are so anxious for it to be perfect.

Re the friendship thing, she MIGHT be blowing this out of proportion because she is tired. There seems to be quite a large number of girls who have a miserable existence because they decide that they need to be in the "Queen Bee" friendship group, or nothing! Could that be the case here?

Look through the list of extra-curricular and challenge her to sign up for something next term. Better still try to find some out of school activities so school friends aren't the "make or break" of her friendship group/social life.

It might be worth having a word with her form tutor/teachers in advance of a parents evening to check expectations/performance.

Good luck

This doesn't sound right to me. I also suspect she's either a ditherer, lacking confidence, needs help organising. or SN. But tbf both My ds's sit down do it, then rush of to play x box!

@Jellycats4life I didn't' say she was lazy or should be written off as so. I said maybe she needed help with research skills etc.

And in my opinion, a year 7 child at a grammar school (I know there’s been some arguing upthread about whether “selective” means grammar or private; I assumed grammar) should be able to do a little reading around a topic and write a few paragraphs by themselves.

I’m just really tired of the eye rolling and scorn poured upon posters who read a description of a child and notice possible ND traits. And you did that.

I have a DC in year 7 and she's the same. She's bright at maths but if she's given a open ended question like what you described, she'll spend hours with nothing to show for it. She gets upset when we asked her and she'd say she's tried really hard. (I have no doubt about it). DH sat down and guides her to do these more open ended homework. Otherwise she just couldn't finish it.

My DD is a perfectionist. I already know that from her primary!

Also, if you aren't one to shun technology, try using ChatGPT or Bard for something like your example. DC says the kids in her class are very open about using it. Get them to use the software to start the first draft and then to correct the output and refine it. It might well be the help they need to frame the homework.

I can't help but think that is very bad advice.

The DC needs to learn how to do it, hiding it by use of software is not going to help in the long run.

Exactly. Because of AI soon nobody will be able to think not to mention writing skills 😭.

It should be no no just as it is with calculator

I work at a university and we're just about to start conducting plagiarism hearings for students who are using ChatGPT to construct their essays and even exam answers (online exams). They will have a very stressful experience and get a big fat zero for their work.

Definitely NOT a good idea to encourage children to solve the problem of how to construct their writing by asking a robot to do it!

There have been a few threads on here from parents who's children may fail NEAs at GCSE or A-level because they've relied on ChatGTP to do the work for them, and been caught out. Learning research skills now is important- getting into the habit of relying on AI won't be helpful in the future.

ChatGTP is also often wrong.

Does she have a clear question to answer or task to do? I have to say that if my homework was "King Arthur" then I'd struggle to know what to do!

Can you do her homework with her for a few nights/weeks to get an idea of what she's meant to do? And show her how you'd approach the problem?

I have a DC at selective secondary, Year 7. DC gets 2 x 30 mins per night. If it takes longer than 40 mins to do a task then we're supposed to sign in their books to say they've done more than 30 mins, so the teacher can see that it's taking too long.

If I discovered a child at my kid’s school was using bots to do homework, I’d anonymously report it to the school; I’m not usually a grass, but kids need to actually learn how to do things or they are going to come a cropper when it’s exam time and it’s not fair to let them do this. OP, please ignore the poster who suggested doing this.

I think the ones here who aren’t using generative AI are like those who won’t use google or ban screen time. Whether you like it or not, very soon, it will be expected you use it to improve your writing. It won’t help with exams because it’s handwritten, but no one now thinks it’s wrong for word to correct your spelling and grammar.

A quick google will find you loads of info on journalists are using the technology. For example this shows what it can do
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/21/opinion/chatgpt-journalism.html

What it really does well is a peer reviewer or a colleague you can bounce idea with.

My dd is dyslexic and has Irlens. She is also a perfectionist. She struggles to start work and they way we have dealt with that is to talk through the work and then break it down into chunks. She also uses a laptop for any written work as she finds this far easier than handwriting.

She is an articulate child with a brilliant memory but the stumbling block is expressing that in a written format. By supporting her at home now she is developing the skills to do this independently.

I also bought the KS3 exam board books and question booklets for key subjects to help her with revision and end of topic tests etc.

AI is a tool that should be used in conjunction with other tools.

When I was at school, If I wanted to research a topic I went to the library and looked in a book (or possibly two books). Nowadays, we don't expect a student to do that - or at least not to solely do that, we expect them to use the vast array of information on the internet.
But equally we don't expect them just to look in Wikipedia - they need to use a variety of sources. Chat GPT is just another source. It might be useful to see how it's structured its answer, but only as additional information to (say) the teacher setting out the structure in class, or looking at model answers to similar questions online. Students should also be aware, in the same way as not taking things on Wikipedia as gospel truth, that ChatGPT may not be correct, may not be fully correct or may not have done things in the best way.

When I was at school it would have been "wrong" to just copy a section out of a book, but fine to use the information as part of a longer essay written in your own words.

5 years ago, it would have been "wrong" to just copy the Wikipedia entry, but fine to use this as one source of information along with multiple others, collated and summarised.

Today, it's wrong just to blindly copy ChatGPT, but fine to use this as a basis of obtaining information and some hints on structuring an answer as long as this is used alongside other sources.

The key thing in all case is that the human added value by doing something themselves that the "tool" couldn't.

Use of ChatGPT is more of an issue in maths/science where there tends to be one answer and there may be no "value add" to add. I would not suggest your child puts their maths homework through ChatGPT if they don't know how to do it :)

I have only used the free version of ChatGPT but when I did, there were no references. I've seen discussion that it is able to generate invented references.

The difference between that and a book/Wikipedia is the lack of sources.

With a book, you can look up the author and publisher and you can be reasonably certain that e.g. Hodder or CGP will have checked their facts - because their reputation relies on it. Even Wikipedia has citations and says if an article or point is lacking them.

An 11 year old is unlikely to.be mature enough to understand these differences and would benefit from an actual reference book.

Sounds like the complexity of the task is difficult for her.

Try and show her how to break the task down into stages and to set a time limit for each stage. Research/ gather information/ read around it (30 mins); plan the answer- intro, point 1, point 2 etc (10mins); write each stage in full (20 mins). Or whatever.

Help her/ prompt her/ (use a timer) to move her on from one stage to the next. Some people find it hard to move onwards with a difficult task. It's not about lacking motivation, their brain just finds it difficult.

This type of homework will be a big step up from primary school work - and requires very different mental skills from e.g. solving quick maths questions. She will need to learn how to do it and then to practise.

My son is intelligent but lacks these executive functions. He did much better at his BTecs than his A level, as BTecs are more broken down into chunks and simpler tasks than complicated A Level essays.... but the issue really came to the fore at university and he has been (officially) diagnosed with ADHD (after a 3year wait on the NHS...)

Indeed ChatGPT or Bard won’t give references. It’s an amazing search summary. It is a prediction of what is most likely to come next in a piece of text. Hence the name large language models.

In the case of the OP, it will help for example of giving a skeleton of what can be included. (Then the child needs to go to do more googling or ask more questions to enrich the facts and improve the homework). Later you can re paste what you got and ask it to be your editor. The former would be similar to searching for year appropriate examples of a typical essay of the same topic. It is a big leap from primary to have work that is so much larger in scope.

For year 7 work, I don’t think it’s common to include references to published journals. My DC use Google, Wikipedia, and all sorts of random websites as source.

That wasn't what I meant.

I meant it's never too early to start talking about information quality and academic honesty in age appropriate terms.

I am very sure she is bright enough since she made it to a selective school.
How is she getting on now? Did the advise about limiting resources and taking notes help?
you said she is finding it hard to make friends and been avoiding the canteen, could this be affecting her performance in school/homework?