I am getting more and more emails/questions about the different resources that we use so I thought it might be helpful to write a summary post about the Year 7 resources that we have been using with my daughter. It is going to be a summary post so I am only going to highlight our key resources – the ones we use the most – I will not be including the extra reading or extra documentaries we use.
Maths
We have largely stuck to using websites for her maths. We like Khan Academy for explanations and some example and then practice pages are from Twinkl’s KS3 section and TeachitMaths. It took me a little while to get used to the menus and where I could find the different Maths pages that I wanted on Twinkl but now I actually find the site really easy to get around. One of the reasons we like using websites for maths is it allows us to take a step back if we need to or allows us to extend the work and include some pages from other years. I often find with Maths we end up working through a combination of pages that would be year 6 / year 7 / year 8. Using websites means we are not restricted by the pages included in a workbook and I can give her as many examples as she needs.
English
This is a real mix. We have been using our Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar Workbook from Oxford and then adding to it with extra worksheets from Twinkl and TeachitEnglish. For Literature we pick books that we read together and then discuss in detail and do activities based on that. Creative writing – my daughter loves writing and I have largely been leaving her to go wild and write as much as she wants and on whatever topics she likes. We are about to start working through more structured creative writing activities that I am putting together.
History
Our main History resource has been our Oxford Invasion, Plague and Murder Book. I cannot say enough good things about this book. We Love it. It is detailed and has good examples for my daughter to work through (she loves History and we are already certain she will be doing History as an exam subject so we wanted something that would help give her a solid foundation). And we also add in some of the Oaka Topic packs. These Topic Packs are popular with both my kids and really they actually just enjoy using them.
Geography
We are using a combination here of the Geog.1 Books and our Oaka Topic Packs as our main sources (but also lots of documentaries, and extra reading here). I also really like the On the Map board game (probably our most popular board game).
Science
My daughter naturally enjoys Biology but Physics and Chemistry is something we need to work on. Here I am using a combination of two books – Oxford Activate and Collins Year 7 science book. We have covered a few topics in excessive detail – like Space – which is just the way my daughter likes to work. She likes to do a topic and then research it more thoroughly then required by the cirriculum and we go with that and let her get into all the detail. We are also still playing our Science board game from Oaka Books
Art
She did a Bronze art award and we will probably sign up for the Silver one soon.
Food Technology
This happens vey naturally because we bake a lot and she also often helps me prepare meals. I often search for recipes and ideas on Pinterest.
That is a real summary but I hope it helps all those with the questions. When we learn about topics we do go into lots of detail – read extra books, watch documentaries look up activities on a number of different websites but all the detail is too much to include in this post.
ofamily learning together 