Advice please any 2ndry school teachers or parents of this age group

Hi all, well me and hubby find ourselves in a tricky situation and would like the dogsey advice.

Me and Hubby move around the country a lot (main reason we can't have any pets right now ) so we find we aren't that close with our families. We have 4 neices and one of them just started secondary school last week. She says she's enjoying it but hasn't made any friends yet. Last Friday we rang to say we'd like to spend some time with her on Saturday as we were around. She was excited to spend time with us so we asked that she complete one of her 2 pieces of homework before Saturday afternoon when we'd drop by and pick her up. Saturday 1pm came and we were there collecting her for a day of baking fairy cakes and art stuff. She brought her homework with her to show us that she'd completed both pieces set! We were well chuffed until we saw her efforts.

One piece "Citizenship" was for her to draw pictures to illustrate what each word was for, such as "bullying ... racism ... puberty" it was a A3 sheet folded into A6 with dirty marks on the back. The pictures were all similar if not the same and her colouring-in of the words was incredibly scruffy.

The second piece was "Geography" and she was to select a photo from newspapers, magazines or the internet which was an example of geography and describe what was in the photo and how it illustrated geography. What she had done was glue a newspaper photo onto a A4 piece of paper and surround it with sloppy writing - not even straight lines. The writing was a direct copy of the newspaper text about flooding in Binar, Guinea, West Africa. But she hadn't even spelt all the words correctly. Also when we asked her about what the story was about or what some of the words meant she simply shrugged and attempted to distract us.

Now I was pleased she had done the homework and praised her for being so effiecent in completing her homework. However we both know that she can do better, and felt uncertain if we should've taken a different approach. Should we have made her re-do her homework, should we have let her know that we felt it was substandard? Are we expecting too much? How would the schools deal with this? Do you have any suggestions on how we can encourage or motivate her to try harder?

Furthermore I watched "Dispatches: last chance kids" and realised that she doesn't have the reading ability of an eleven year old, her level is more of the 7-9year olds. Could this be why she fails to try?

.... just grabbing at straws now ... thing is we feel more could be done to achieve .... we feel her parents aren't in the right frame of mind to be able to help encourage her .... should the school be expected to do more .... Is there a roll for us in helping her apply herself more?

Ah so many questions, its difficult to know where to start.

Any thought???

L.

I am not a teacher but my friend is, and i would definetly try to find out what level she is actually at as all that will happen if she doesnt get help is she will fall behind and eventually completely lose interest.

Is it possible to discuss it with her parents OR her and find out if she is having difficulties with particular issues ( could be dyslexia etc).

You could also buy her some reading books and try and encourage her to read - you can get some great girlie stories for preteens and they might get her interested and motivated to read.

I dont know that you approaching the school would make a lot of difference as think it would have to be her parents. Do you know if the school she attends has any extra special classes etc.

Mine have left school but I always found that talking about what they had to do before they started it and drawing ideas out of them, rather than you putting forward yours, was usually the best way to go. You can get her talking about news items etc. to enable her to have a better understanding of what's going on, also make a game out of learning and understanding new words with rewards thrown in as incentives, doesn't have to involve cost just tie it in to what she likes to do when she visits you. Remember though that part of the reason homework is set is so that teachers can understand how well the child works on their own, so make sure that it is actually the childs work and not yours or otherwise you're not actually helping.
It can be really frustrating sometimes because they do try to get it out of the way as quickly as possible. I remember telling my son I used to get 3hours homework a night and his response was God you must have been thick for it to take you that long. Little did he know how lightly he got off homework wise by comparison.

it sounds like my sons homework! when he does it! but we found that his writing was terrible cos his brain is much faster than his hand. he gets very frustrated and in the end you just cant read his writing. he has been diagnosed with adhd and in his options we have tried to let him do the options with not much coruse work. he is very bright and has been involved with a uni to do some reasearch on kids with adhd that are not on meds. his testing came out excellent but on the brain waves you could tell he was bored after a few second.
i would speak to the parents and let them speak to the school to help her. i have noticed schools go out of their way to help kids who need the help unless like my son they are classed as able they dont help him with his social problems at school