Lockdown by Kezia P 

 Y8 (at the time of writing)

Lockdown: ‘a state of isolation or restricted access instituted as a security measure’. This is what we are currently going through. And it sure as heck sucks.

It was officially announced on March the eighteenth, a week before my birthday. Everyone had already figured out that it was going to happen soon enough; some people even desperately wanted it to. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t one of those people (although to be fair I just wanted to avoid having to partake in a French lesson on my birthday). I do however seriously regret having been quite so naive as to what the concept would mean for everyone.

Don’t get me wrong, the first few days of home schooling in lockdown were okay - fun even - but as time progressed, I grew to hate it more and more. The pros that had once excited me soon became outweighed by a great deal of cons. For example, I couldn’t get specific enough answers to some of my questions during remote learning; my printer wasn’t working properly so I had to draw out massive diagrams in my book; I couldn’t access the work because my Internet was down; the list seemed endless. Finally, after two weeks of stress, when the Easter holidays came along, I was beyond relief. But that was when it got much, much worse...

It began with me developing these spot-like bumps on my fingers which at first, I ignored, thinking that they were probably just bites or something along those lines. But they started to gradually worsen: soon my fingers were covered in scabby, bumpy patches that hurt whenever I bent them or even just slightly moved them. In addition to this I became ill with minor coronavirus symptoms. I already happened to be in quarantine at the time as both of my parents had also previously had the symptoms so it didn’t really change anything as far as that was concerned.  But it was still an awful experience. I was unable to eat much; I constantly felt far too hot (I had a super high temperature); and I was extremely weak and dizzy. Thankfully it ended after around five days but by then the Easter holidays were almost over.

It had now been a month since I had seen any of my friends except in a pixelated fashion via face time. I missed them all so much and craved any social interaction that didn’t involve my family. I also began feeling unmotivated to do anything other than what I needed to do for school. So, life was pretty bad. The only thing of interest was the thought that there was nothing of interest to be done, everyday just as mundane as the next. This led to me actually missing school, something I never thought I would say. To tell you the truth I still do miss it.

Thankfully though, after a while I began to find some motivation and started getting on top of my work. For the past two months now, I have been completing all of my schoolwork on Monday and doing extra jobs on the other days. I came to the conclusion that the stuff on my fingers was eczema and I have finally finished treating it. I have met with my friends social distance style and recently found out I will be going back to school in September. I can’t wait.

Lockdown has been a very tiring experience for me and although it gave me plenty of time to complete things I wouldn’t usually be able to do, I am really excited to be free from it at last.

My Lockdown by Sophia S

( Y7 at the time of writing)

The first time I heard about the coronavirus was in my English class. My teacher was supposed to be going to Wuhan. Then I heard it on the news that night when I came home from school. I remember everyone joking about it and making memes on social media. I remember thinking I would have one extra week of school after the half term than everything would be back to normal. But it wasn’t.

 When Boris Johnson finally announced that schools would be closing, I felt scared. For the next 2 days I spent every second with my friends at school. I talked to them about how I was going to wake up every morning and exercise and eat healthy. That didn’t totally work out. I remember the last hug I gave them before leaving school. When will I be able to do that again?

It was the Sunday before starting online school, I was very worried, I wanted to know what sort of schoolwork I would have. I barely slept a wink. For a few weeks I was anxious about my work and worried my grades would go down. That would be all I would think about at night.

I really missed one of my best friends, Ruby. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have a phone so the only way I could contact her was through email.

Around about a month into online school I started to feel better about the whole situation. I understood most of my work and I was face timing my friends every day. Nothing was too out of the ordinary at home as my dad was still working. My mum was helping an elderly man with his shopping once a week. That’s when I would go for my daily walk on a Wednesday. Then, my dad fell off a ladder. We took him to the hospital, and he had fractured his heel. He was supposed to be off for 8 weeks but was back after 4. Whilst he was at home, we played monopoly every day. I only ever won once. He must have cheated.

Now, I mentioned at the start of this that I told all my friends I was going to eat super healthy and exercise. I have and haven't. For a starter I went on two 2.5k runs with my brother and it was torture! I was doing a few workouts at home too. Some days I wanted to just lie in bed and sleep. But I got up every day. I will admit it wasn’t at 7 o'clock like normal it's more like 9 or 10am. After a while I started to get fed up of doing the same routine every day. Waking up, schoolwork, exercise, bed. I started to feel so trapped and I was sick of everybody. Then thankfully the lockdown restrictions were loosened. I started going on a long bike ride everyday with my mum and I also managed to meet up with my friends .And with the weather that we have been having I went on a few more runs and improved massively. I ran my first ever 4k 2 days ago.

I must admit I have missed school. I've missed my teachers and my friends and being barged in the hallways by the older ones and playing rugby and hockey and I can't remember the last time I had played netball. I have missed the feeling and excitement when the last bell went off to go home. It's so upsetting that I have missed a whole term of year 7. I was just starting to get used to secondary school and I was excited for the athletics season and being able to go on the field at lunch time and sports day. I had finally moved on from the horrible people that were in my life.

 It's strange how things work, I thought that I knew who I was before lockdown and I knew what style I had and who my friends were, but I was wrong. I have learnt so many new things about myself. I have realised that some of my friends were just school friends and when I look back on my old self, I can barely recognise it.

2020 has been one year to remember.

Lockdown by Sarah H

One day, a girl called Georgina Jones is sitting in her school and doing her normal work, in her normal classroom with her usual teachers and sitting next to the same boring people. She lives in York with her parents called Samantha and Jeremy and her older sister called Hetty. Georgina and Hetty get on well usually but since her mum started working, they have been arguing non stop.

Georgina was sitting in her English classroom doing a test paper when the principal came in and stopped the test and spoke to the class teacher.

The next day the principal came in and said, “Meet in the assembly rooms in 10 minutes.”

She said, "Why do we need to go to the assembly rooms?”

The principal replied, “I need to talk to the whole year all together.”

So, after that they went to the assembly rooms to have that assembly they dreaded. The principal started talking. The principal said “Due the virus we are going to have to send one year group home until the virus is safe and under control and we have chosen your year because it seems that you are the best choice as year 10 and 11 are in the middle of their GCSE’s and year 7 and 8 are too young to stay home alone.”

After that dreadful assembly they were all excited and couldn’t wait to be off school. Even though they didn’t know how long they were going to be off school. Georgina was terrified. Being off school with her sister was her worst nightmare. She absolutely hates her sister and it’s just going to be even worse with her parents being key workers. This was going to be the worst time ever.

They have been off school for 3 weeks now and Hetty and Georgina are getting on quite well. Hetty is helping Georgina with her work. Even though she has her own work to do for GCSE.  Georgina has call with her friends this afternoon, so she wants to do all her work before that.  She has loads of work to though so she emails her form tutor called Miss Birch and says can I focus on my GCSE subjects? Miss Birch says yes if you do your core subjects as well. She also found out that when her form group from last year is staying the same and is going to have a form call with the form.

Georgina decides to do some baking of cakes and muffins and make some bread to sell to people in her community and she enjoyed it especially giving cakes to the elderly and people who couldn’t go out during the pandemic. She even decided to give some of them to people in care homes and hospitals and their staff. Her community is starting to some normality because shops are opening.

She also finds it weird that when she is going into year 10 when she gets back to school. So, she must get a silver tie instead of wearing her maroon one which she has now. Also, to help her manage her feeling she decides to write a journal and she writes in her journal every day, whatever she is feeling. She is getting loads of nice review about her baking which she has sold in her community. People have even started ordering her baking weekly as part of their weekly shopping.

Her and her family won't even be allowed to go on holiday this year which she was really looking forward to, but she might ask her mum and dad whether they can go to the beach for a day. She asked her mum, “Can we maybe go to the beach for a day as a family?”

Her mum said, “Yes sure, I'd be fine with that, but we would have to ask your father.

She asked her father, “Can we go to the beach for a day?”

Her father said, “Ok. We’ll go tomorrow.”

So, we are at the beach now as a family. It's fun but weird because there is hardly anyone here. We bought some sandwiches, chocolate and crisps with us which her mum bought yesterday. This is fun!