Hi,

I've been working with my son on English, Maths and Science in preparation for year 7 and I'm happy with his quality of work for Maths as it's my subject, but I'm really concerned with English.

He really struggles with writing sentences together and using good grammar. I had to explain to him that he needs to re-read his own sentences (sounds very obvious to me) and he has never been told about basic essay style structure (i.e. introduction, middle section with paragraphs and headings and a conclusion). Tangled around all of this is the 11 plus habits that I'm now slowly trying to deal with (i.e. no more multiple choice...aghh!)

So my questions are: -
1. Is what I described normal for his age group and just how schools now teach English and I shouldn't be too worried?
2. What will be the expectation in terms of English in years 7 & 8?
3. If anyone knows a good English tutor in Cheltenham / Gloucester for year 7 please PM

Thanks.

By year 6 he should have covered all sorts of writing genres, different types of story writing, recounts, persuasive writing, balanced arguments.

There will have been work on drafting, redrafting, a massive amount of grammar (fronted adverbials, the passive voice, different types of determiners, different tenses..past progressive, subjunctive..modal verbs etc, etc, etc!)


https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... e-of-study

I would speak to his current teacher first - I would be very surprised if they have not taught him basic essay structure (but less surprised if he does not understand it), as it is part of the very basics as yoyo has said.

My DD and DS (who is y4) both talk a lot about chronological reports and non-chronological reports, plus writing stories and looking at newspaper articles etc. Could it be that he is not doing essay style as you would see it, but perhaps views it more with a different naming method?

I would speak to his teacher as it may be they are just calling it something else. I know our school at one point were looking at 16 different types of sentences...

+1

And, nice as it is to have some idea of what to expect from the transition to secondary school (have a look at the year 7 handbook and under the 'Curriculum' tab on your allocated school's website, when the time comes), please don't try to second guess everything the school your DS goes to will do and how / in what order they do it. (Unless your DS has a specific learning difficulty which means that he can't cope easily with new concepts, in which case, you need to alert the new school to this as soon as it is allocated).

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Don't tell him there is no more multiple choice as this is absolutely not true.

There is MC in GCSE Physics, Biology, Human Biology, Chemistry, Geography, History, Economics, PE and probably more that my dds did not do.

Did he do any standard format comprehension and writing exams.

If he only did MC English then he will be behind other Y7 students who did standard format English exams but as other posters have said there are a lot of writing formats covered in Y6 that will prepare him well for Y7. DG