KS3
Years 7-9
KS3 can be a difficult time especially when adjusting from primary school where your teachers pander to you, your friendships are old and you have lots of break times and long lunches. Moving to secondary where your school is huge, there are hundreds of students, the teachers expect you to be already independent, remember everything your told, follow instructions first time, complete all your homework on time and not to forget it, have short breaks, short lunches and all your friendship circles have changed.
Behaviour of other students affects your child's attainment 100% of the time.
"Time on mobile phones, gaming and social media is stopping children from being children and preventing them from becoming who they truly could be"
If their Literacy level and Numeracy levels are not high they will be placed in bottom sets and then behaviour of other students on your child will be an overwhelming factor in your child's progress.
Your child needs a firm understanding of the subjects learned, so that they are confident and to ensure that they know how to ask for help: so that they can continue to make progress.
READING
As a parent you must ensure that your child, regardless of age, reads every day.
Your child has to sit exams and must do so regularly. If they do not read well, then they will take too long to read an exam question and this will reduce how much time they have to work in their exams.
Your child must read, so that they understand the words that are in exam questions.
They must read, so that they are familiar with high level terminology, learn to spell, learn to recognise words, learn to process faster. Reading is phenomenally important.
Reading on their phone is not the answer. If they have time to be on social media then they have time to read.
Take their phone away, it is not difficult and it instils discipline. They must read a book. See KS3 reading list.
KS3 Learning
KS3 is the foundation teaching for GCSE.
The amount of times I hear my students tell me that they "haven't learned it since Year 7" shows that children do not understand that they have therefore been taught it in Year 7 and are expected to remember it for the next 5 years. This requires revision.
Revision doesn't start in year 11, it starts in Year 7 and continues for 5 years.
In year 7 students are taught elements of Biology, Chemistry and Physics and these are then built upon over the next 5 years but each year what you are taught doesn't then become obsolete.
Unfortunately teachers [that aren't me] do not teach their students to make exam cards and revision notes at the end of each unit in order to revise them for their end of year tests, and then what I would do is to make them keep those revision pages and transfer that knowledge into their individual revision books for each subject for years 7, 8, 9, 10 & 11. Unfortunately at secondary school for whatever reason! They insist on changing teachers on classes. This results in inconsistency's and gaps in learning.
So this is why when I tutor for GCSEs I prefer to have each student for two years MINIMUM. Years 10 and 11. That way I can cover the whole of the GCSE specifications for Biology, Chemistry, and Physics and/or Math, from scratch, so I know that they have been taught everything and correctly.
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