English

Each day at secondary school is different. Your child has to be well organised and must ensure that:

• the right books are packed ready for lessons;
• homework is ready to hand in;
• games kit is packed;
• any return slips have been signed.

Some ways to help your child get organised:

• Make a BIG copy of your child’s timetable and homework timetable and pin them up in the kitchen or on the back of the front door.
• Help your child make a list of the things which have to be taken to school each day.
• Make sure your child packs their bag before going to bed and not last thing in the morning.
• Make sure your child has a buddy who is ultra-reliable with whom they can check details of homework etc.
• Get your child an A4 ringbinder and some plastic wallets. Use them for storing worksheets and handouts.
• Buy a stock of Pritt Stick. Use it to stick worksheets and handouts into exercise books.
• If your child has been absent from school, make sure that they see their teachers and find out what work has been missed.

Arrange to photocopy notes etc produced by a reliable child. If you know your child is going to be away from school, write to your Head of Year well in advance and ask for work to be set.

• Read and sign your child’s homework diary each week. Check that your child records homework in enough detail to allow them to do the work correctly and by the due date.
• It will be very unusual for no homework to be set. If your child claims to have completed work ‘in the lesson’, ask to see what they have done.
• Encourage your child to check the details of homework with another (reliable) student.
• Display your child’s homework timetable.
• Try to ensure that your child does homework on the day it is set. Ideas will be fresher in their mind – and there will be opportunities to ask for help and advice before deadlines.
• Help your child to organise their time. Three subjects a night is an hour and a half’s work – which has to be fitted in around other activities and interests. Homework is unlikely to be done well if it is left until late in the evening.
• If your child has spent a reasonable amount of time on a homework – ie, the required time plus a bit more, but has struggled or has not completed the work, write a note to the teacher explaining this.

Most subject teachers will set written work for a range of purposes: notes, essays, accounts of experiments or practical work, stories, poems, answers to questions. Some teachers will provide clear guidelines about what is required and offer some support for the writing process. Other teachers may not.
Key points about writing:

• It should suit the purpose for which it is required.
• It should be organised, with a clear structure. which follows the order of events or deals with ideas in order of importance.
• Ideas should be expressed clearly and straightforwardly.
• It should be as legible and accurate as your child can make it.

The writing process:
PLAN  WRITE  REVIEW CORRECT

The most difficult part of writing is getting started. Your support will be most effective at the planning stage and later at the review stage.

Help your child to consider:

• The PURPOSE of the writing;
• HOW MUCH is required; and
• WHO the intended audience is.

A plan is simply a list of the key points put into the best order. Once the plan has been worked out, the points can be developed into short paragraphs. When this has been done you can help your child to review and correct their work.

Don’t point out every error – clear expression is the most importance aspect of writing: reading the work aloud should help your child identify parts that don’t seem clear. Discuss these and help your child to make improvements.

• Help your child to read widely and often. People who are good spellers are usually good readers.
• Go through your child’s exercise books and list all the words which have been spelled incorrectly. Help your child to write them in alphabetical order in the back of their planner. Update the list every week.
• Make a list of the basic words that your child often spells incorrectly. Pin it up over the place where your child does homework.
• Help your child keep lists of technical subject words at the back of each exercise book.
• Help your child look up unfamiliar words in a dictionary – write down their meanings in a notebook.
• Check spellings a paragraph at a time.
• Have spelling competitions with a friend and learn 10 words a week.
• Write out problem words on large pieces of paper and pin them up in the loo or bedroom.

If your child does have a spelling problem, don’t become over-concerned. There are other aspects of writing which are more important. Help your child to do everything else as well as possible!

• Break it into sounds (d-i-a-r-y).
• Break it into syllables (re-mem-ber).
• Break it into affixes (dis+satisfy).
• Use mnemonics (necessary = 1 Collar, 2 Sleeves).
• Refer to a word in the same family (muscle ~ muscular).
• Say it as it sounds (Wed-nes-day).
• Words within words (I AM ParlIAMent).
• Refer to etymology (bi + cycle = two + wheels).
• Use words which are spelled similarly (light, bright, night).
• Apply spelling rules – eg, doubling consonant for short vowel (writing, but written).
• Learn by sight (look, cover, write, check).

Some subjects will provide a textbook. This may be issued to your child at the beginning of the year and a lot of the work in the subject will be based around it. Your child will have to bring these textbooks home as they will be used for homework assignments.

In some subjects your child will use a textbook in lessons, but it will not be issued and will not be brought home. Mainstream textbooks don’t always provide support for students who find reading difficult. Textbooks are sometimes difficult to follow: the page layout may be complicated, diagrams and pictures may not always be connected with the writing, and the text may be written in a way that assumes that students have some basic subject vocabulary.

• Where homework tasks are to research, look at a variety of sources; internet, books, magazines, etc. The school librarians can help you to find information that will be most useful.
• Summarise research; it is very important to make notes in your own words based on your findings. For example, for every useful/relevant page of information you read, sum it up in five sentences in a bullet pointed list.
• Make a note of all the websites and books you have used and which were useful as well as those that were not.

1. Highlight key points: Underlining or colour coding is a useful first step to breaking down long pieces of writing into more usable short lists or diagrams.
2. Make a Mind Map: A mind map is really a spider diagram using COLOUR so that each leg of the ‘spider’ is a different colour. Research shows that colour can help us remember things. You could also include pictures on your map to help you remember key ideas.
3. The Shrinking Mind Map: The aim of the game in revision is to reduce a lot of material into a small space. ‘Shrink’ your original mind map two or three times by reducing the amount of detail on it but using the same colours for the same ideas. By your final shrunken map, you may have only ten words on it but each word will trigger your memory of all the other ideas that were on your original map.
4. Song, Rhymes, Mnemonics and Acronyms: Making up catch phrases or rhymes can help you with crucial bits of information, e.g. to help you sort out which is the x and which is the y axis on a graph you could remember “x below y because y goes up high”. It may make you cringe but you won’t forget it! Mnemonics and Acronyms can do a great deal more for you. A mnemonic is a word or abbreviation than helps you remember. An acronym is a word made up using the first letters of a series of other words, for example in English, you must consider TAP before doing a piece of writing:
   1. Type of text
   2. Audience
   3. Purpose
5. Lists, Charts and Notes
   The traditional way of revision is to make lists of information and it may well be that your brain likes this better than any other way. If you are going to make lists, try and find ways of making them interesting and keeping them short; use the Shrinking Mind Map technique here too.
6. Study Buddy: Sharing Learning – one of the most effective ways to learn is to teach someone else! So don’t sit and struggle alone!
7. Practising Previous Exam questions: All exams are written in a coded language because, there are often not many different questions that you can be asked about in particular subjects. What does happen is that the same questions are asked in different ways or wrapped up in what can be confusing language. A massive key to success in examinations is understanding the question that you are being asked. This may sound obvious but so many people, although well prepared, have misunderstood the question and have written down irrelevant information for which they cannot be given marks.

Over 60% of all errors in exams are caused by not reading the question properly.

• Read the whole of the exam paper before you begin; it is shocking how many candidates do not see the final question at the back of the paper! Your brain also starts to plan for the questions ahead.
• Take the time to read questions carefully and consider what they are asking you by looking closely at the command words (see below).
• Highlight key words or important parts in texts.
• Skim texts to begin with, then scan for information once you have read the questions.
• Plan your answers before you launch straight into writing longer answers. Use a simple bullet pointed list of key words and ideas you need to include in your answer, then at the end, check over your answer to ensure you have covered all key points from your plan.
• Check over your answers at the end not only to ensure you have answered all the questions in the paper, but that you haven’t made any errors like leaving out words in a sentence, misspelling words, leaving out punctuation etc.

www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/words
Provides fantastic factsheets, worksheets, games and quizzes on grammar, spelling, reading, listening, writing and vocabulary.

www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/words/writing/proofreading/
Great tips on how to proofread and check over your work.

www.samlearning.com
All students should have passwords for this revision website.

www.bbc.co.uk/gcsebitesize
Useful for revising all your GCSE subjects.

Ask your teachers for other subject specific revision websites and resources.

• We hold the belief that raising standards of literacy is central to improving achievement throughout the curriculum areas.
• We recognise that all teachers are teachers of Literacy as we all have a crucial role to play in supporting students’ literacy development.
• Our vision is to empower all students, from the least to the most able, with a set of thinking, listening, speaking, reading and writing skills so that they have the ability to access, process and express knowledge appropriately in curriculum areas, examinations and life beyond school.
• As The National Literacy Trust state, we are teaching and supporting our students to develop “words for life”.

• Raise standards of literacy across the curriculum by teaching, modelling and providing students with the opportunity to develop the skills required for the four strands of language – listening, speaking, reading and writing.
• Encourage and promote existing literacy initiatives and events, for example, author visits, reading events and competitions, in order to develop and establish a reading culture.