A day in the life of an Upper Second Year pupil

As I wake up in the morning, with sunlight streaming through my window, I get my mind ready for the day of school ahead.

I mentally run through which lessons I have today, then get out of bed and change into my school uniform.

After eating my Bran Flakes, brushing my teeth and, of course, getting the several lectures from my parents about checking my bag and ‘look at the time, we’re so late’ that no school day would be complete without, I get on my bike and cycle to school with my dad.

Once arriving at school, locking up my bike in the bike rack and playing a bit of football before 8.20am (the time school officially starts), we have registration in our form rooms and get sorted for the day ahead. Then we grab our hymn books from our lockers and go to assembly. This one was a particularly good assembly on resilience involving several clips of the Cookie Monster from Sesame Street trying desperately not to eat cookies and failing miserably, which were very funny. Afterwards we start our lessons at 9.00am.

Before I get onto the actual lessons, let me explain how the period system works: each day there are eight periods. After every two periods, there is a break varying in length from five minutes (to go back to the form room and change books) to 100 minutes – for lunch, clubs and play.

The morning periods are 1 to 4. We have Maths, in which we are learning the hybrid method, also known as HMS Bringdown, for dividing 3-digit or more numbers by 2-digit or more numbers, which is useful when short division doesn’t work because of the number of digits in the question.

Then we have French. At the moment we are learning how to talk about which sports you play and like.

It’s double Science up next, taking up Periods 3 and 4. We are learning about cells, and what their different jobs and functions are. We have the test soon, and we are all revising hard, making sure we know our tissues from our organs.

After a very yummy lunch of chicken korma and a super-massive football match of about twenty people (or possibly Code Club if it’s Friday, which is where we use an easy to use programming language called Scratch to make games which we then play), we have the afternoon periods of 5 to 8. We have English first, where we’re studying Powder Monkey by Paul Dowsell. We are looking at different characters’ personalities, and how we can understand more about them by analysing the text. We then have triple Games, which this term is rugby. It’s great fun – and it’s nice to give your brain a rest from square roots and watersheds.

4.00pm arrives and my Form Tutor wishes me a good evening. My dad and I cycle home along the river, probably having a chat about how Liverpool need to sign a decent striker to have any chance of competing for the top four. When we get home, I get out my homework, which is a bit of a bore but has to be done, and at least it doesn’t take too long. Then, after sorting my bag for tomorrow, I can prepare my mind for the next day whilst walking around Dreamland in my sleep.