Student guide

The school day

Some of the subjects that you study now in Year 6 will be the same at secondary school such as Maths, English and P.E. There will also be lots of new subjects such as Design and Technology, (which will include Food Technology, Product Design, Graphics and Textiles) German, Drama and Computing.

You will have a different teacher for each subject and will change classrooms throughout the school day. As you will see from the school map, subjects have their own areas, and you will soon get used to which corridor to head to for each subject. We are quite a big school so there is a ‘warning bell’ between each period to allow you time to get to your next lesson.

Here is what a typical school day looks like at SWCHS and when the school bell sounds:

Homework

Every Year 7 student will be expected to do approximately 4-5 hours of homework a week. Homework builds upon what you have learnt in class, and it is a good opportunity for you to understand each subject better.

Sometimes teachers will set homework which will help you prepare for the next lesson. It can be handwritten or sometimes you can use a computer for your work if you prefer. Homework will be set online through Microsoft Teams, and you will also complete online quizzes for Science, Languages and Maths.

We recommend that you choose some ‘Study Buddies’ from your lessons so that if you are absent or unsure about some homework set, you have someone to ask. Most Year 7’s complete one hour of homework each night during the week. We would suggest that homework is completed in a quiet space.

Think about the following:

• Where will you do your homework?
• How will you fit this into your evening?
• When do you think that you will do your homework?
• What will you use to help you with your homework?

Here is an example of homework tasks that Year 7 were set in the first term at school:

• Maths – Complete the work on triangles Page 142, Exercise 6
• History – Use the Horrible Histories clip that you saw in class to find five things that the programme used to make history interesting.
• Art – Use 2 pages in your Art book to produce a mood board of still life pictures.
• English – Redraft your written work to include at least 3 complex sentences.
• German – Write 6 sentences in German about things in your school bag.

Think about the following:

• Which homework would you like to do the most from the examples above?
• Which would you find hardest?
• Why would you find this homework hard?
• Why are lots of different types of homework set?
• Why should you try and get your homework done in a quiet space?