Y7- 2023/24 support thread

[BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz]

Hi, just dropping in a thread for those of us who have kids starting secondary this coming September. There was a lovely thread going last year and they are carrying it on into Year 8, so here is a place for us the year behind.

How is everyone feeling as they finish Primary and prepare for Secondary?

Dd is moving from a single form entry "family feel" type cosy Primary into a large 8 form entry, multiple building secondary. She's going alone, her primary class are really split up across multiple secondaries.

The transition days helped, and she is excited,but has been really sad this weke saying her goodbyes

Is everyone prepped for uniform etc?

Yes my suggestion is an advent calendar with chocolates in.

Do any of you have any tips for Y7 school refusal? DS is refusing to go tomorrow. Something about one of the lessons is obviously causing anxiety, but he won't open up. Pleading and begging not to go, and says will just run away if he has to go! Feel helpless.

@rosseyv contact his pastoral tutor asap and HoY. You need to get him proper support otherwise this can quickly escalate (3 friends have now gone through this and all ended up with chronic school refusers as they didn't pastoral support in the early stages). Has he got any SEN issues? Secondary is often when undiagnosed anxiety/ND can make themselves known due to the upheaval of the transition, stress etc.

I dont unfortunately as dd school refusal was primary and luckily it only meant i took her to the gate everyday.
maybe try emphasizing you cant try to fix it if you dont know what it is. You might be able to move class or set etc. Or go to library at break etc or the sen unit?

a friend's ds does refuse sometimes its usually maths related or specific teacher for him.

Definitely some anxiety there, and possible ND. We had to speak to the welfare lead once before in Sept when something similar happened, but he was obviously distraught that I spoke with them.

@Walkingbkwrm mine have sunrise alarm clocks which work pretty well as it wakes them up by getting gradually lighter so feels more natural.

She got full marks on the spanish tests which was surprising even though she is good at spelling etc.
But says those that didnt have to retake or go for extra help. Seems harsh as some kids will work hard to even get half the marks. They also got more strict on one of the other homeworks saying kids can have extension but if still not done they get sent somewhere in lunchtime. Not sure what happe ns if theyve been off.
shes swapped to footaball and fitness for pe. But amazingly she seems to have actually worn the football boots and done football as she wouldn t even try any on in august i had to just buy them online. And was glad i did as only told 9pm the night before

Can anyone help me understand why teachers set homework that doesn't get marked? My DS doesn't receive any feedback on it, only a tick to say whether it was completed or not. And this is for all subjects. Do all secondary schools do this?!

He's now asking what the point of home work is. He doesn't know whether it was right or wrong, good or average and no feedback is given as to where he went wrong to help him improve. He has a fair point - it seems totally pointless to me and just a tick box exercise. (I understand they want to reduce teacher's marking workload, but surely at least some of the homework should be reviewed with the whole class or individual children?)

Is it just to prepare them for GCSEs, and the extra work they will need to do then? It feels like I'm going to have a hard time persuading him about the 'why' of homework if he now feels like it serves no purpose.. and is just another thing he has to do to avoid getting a C point.

Anyone else dealing with this in year 7? (He was doing really well at the start of the school year, and it was a huge transition for him due to an international relocation back to the UK but the shine has definitely worn off and I would like to help him feel a bit more enthusiastic about learning again, this whole homework thing doesn't help).

@hummingbirdsinmygarden there is no value to homework if it isn't being marked AND feedback provided.
DDs school is private not obviously not representative of most schools, they have to mark, grade and give feedback (what was done well, what could be improved on + what to do next time) within 3 days of the homework being handed in.

@hummingbirdsinmygarden there is no value to homework if it isn't being marked AND feedback provided.
DDs school is private not obviously not representative of most schools, they have to mark, grade and give feedback (what was done well, what could be improved on + what to do next time) within 3 days of the homework being handed in.

@twistyizzy yes, agree, that sounds like a good system by your DDs school. I'm assuming some state schools / teachers might argue that they just don't have the time to mark every piece of homework. But then, why set any? As you say, there is no value in it if there is no feedback.

Yes I completely understand how state school teachers wouldn't have time and I'm not criticising them for that. DD would quickly lose motivation to do homework if she wasn't receiving timely feedback, getting her work graded + feedback definitely motivates her to complete homework and put extra effort in.
I feel that if it isn't getting properly marked/feedback given then it is probably set just for the benefit of the teacher to check if any kids are falling behind rather than for the benefit of the kids themselves.

Completely agee. There doesnt seem to be any requirements for marking.
I could see a research one not getting marked or looked at but other stuff?
I do think there can be a purpose - but why would a child put in effort to make it an A vs just something to hand in.
Its only 1 piece per term for most subjects.
Or if every 2w it would be 3 pieces per half term.

also feel that the extra sparx stuff actually is becessary as some is different aspect of the topic.
seems hugely different to when i was in school as maths homework after every lesson and it was marked. I guess online for maths is a huge improvement. for both sides.
we have sparx reader too but none set. As doing a particular topic.
to be fair though primary teacher didnt mark anything. (Online maths.) And the sats papers they swapped with each other.
its worth noting that teachers childre n seem to do well as presumably they can give the kids pointers

@Busornobus67 yes, I agree - it's really demotivating if no one looks at what you've done, or grades it. The science and maths is better as it's online so they get an immediate mark, and can see where they went wrong. But English, history, drama, IT, art - where they're asking for kids to put effort into a presentation or spend time on creating something, and then barely look at it / don't even comment on it seems so pointless as it doesn't help them improve or know if they were on the right track.

Definitely. And for eg on spanish test there were results from 25/25 to 0 apparently so similarly im sure written homework must vary hugely.
It will lead to prioritising the quality of some homework.
Though what would be worse would be using this work to rate kids on report when the child cant understand then how the mark is reached.

What does your school use for online science?

I imagined some science homewor would be from the textbook or reading it, but it hasnt.

@Busornobus67 they use Educake for online science, and last night he had online Spanish homework, which was good because there is immediate feedback to both child and teacher, which I assume teacher can then use to inform what she needs to repeat in the lesson. But they do assess quality of homework as well as completion on their reports, and give a %. So on his recent report he got 0 for IT, but he thought he'd completed the homework, so it's all very puzzling and he got some reduced marks for two other subjects, but no feedback as to why it wasn't good enough. Makes no sense to me!

Anyone else just finding this term extremely long now? I'm so done, we need the holiday! The dark early mornings and endless monotony of getting everyone where they need to be on time is just really hard work. Never mind homework etc into the equation

Yes, the dark mornings are dreary. And I'm pretty sure that DS cannot process any more information at this point yet there is still a torrent of homework!

It is starting to drag, definitely and the DC are less and less eager to get out of bed. In primary there was Christmas hype to keep them going but now they just have lots of tests - DS2 is not at all impressed!

State schools around here aren't breaking up until around the 22nd, that seems really late for an already long term.

Yep, dragging here too, and they had their half term earlier than the primaries in the area, so it's an 8 weeker.

Thanks hummingbird- will have a look at that.

more tests here we have spanish speaking and geography and science.
She thinks geography may be this morning - but only told me that today. The deadline for homework isnt till next week.. A nd the note only says - for revision.
spanish speaking she wont really have to do anything for.
but science looks like a lot (states of matter and solutions). Not the most fyn topic to start on.
she says about a third of the class had to retake the Main spanish test with some having got 0.

ours dont seem to get xmas dinner, but assume that would be tricky with so many kids.
I wouldnt say bullying but the kids in her class arent nice. One took the whole prize that was to be shared between the winners. Then yesterday (in art) one twisted what dd said and told the teacher. The girl was also kicking the stool next to dd till it fell over. The teacher seems to have ignored what the girl said luckily and the girl got taken out of the room by the teacher. But the boys in class then calling out dd should go to behaviour support.
This girl was also apparently in trouble for messaging a teacher a swear word using someone else's IT. And another kid has had to go to behaviour support for verbally swearing at a teacher.
i had thought the school set for languages and science but i think thats later and its a pity (not really even the disruption so much as dd has ni friends in class and is stuck with them all except for pe/d&t and maths).

Ours break up on 22nd too but inset day for us today :)

Unsurprisingly the geography test didnt go well. (No revision) makes me laugh thougb as she labelled sweden correctly from the europe map but mislabelled n. Ireland as Scotland. But got the capitals of them right. And im sure i said scotland was above england.
She says kids sent to behaviour support a fair bit. Doesnt sound an ideal class.

Parents evening and first term report out today. All positive and tutor said DD is visibly growing in confidence so we are really pleased.
DD has joined the choir however so now we have 3 long, late evenings next week as she has to attend all of the 9 Lessons services at school! She will be exhausted by Friday.