Middle school maths

Today was an interesting day. I spent the first half and hour of the lesson discussing tests and how people prepare for them. Whilst the consensus was that students hated tests, they couldn't (or weren't prepared to) pinpoint why. When I asked how they prepared for tests, it was like pulling teeth. Either they said they didn't or they told me what I wanted to hear. In the end I had to say "Do you want help in preparing for this test?". The majority said, "No!". So I said, "Sorry for wasting your time, let's get stuck into the Maths".
We went over how to get the highest common factor of two numbers (ie dividing by primes) and they seem to understand that.
We then used that method to get the factors for the numbers 2, 4, 16, 32, 64 etc to show that it was 2, 2x2, 2x2x2, 2x2x2x2 etc. I showed them that we could continue this but it would become very tedious writing all these numbers, so in Maths we abbreviate using exponential notation. They seemed happy with this but were not confident to use the words. That is, if I asked them to write 49 in exponetial form using base 7. they struggled.
It is going to be interesting to see how they go in the test. I would predict that some of them are going to struggle big time, but are not prepared to admit it.
I also discussed a number of things with the other key teacher of the class - Jane. It appears that at least one student in the class is under big pressure from their parents to succeed. "I have paid a lot of money for your education" type parent. Very scary that a 13 year old is under so much pressure. We will monitor him and discuss this with parents at the parent/teacher meeting.
Further, some other students are still struggling with homework requirements, especially on weekends. It appears that they lead busy lives and so have little time for something as silly as homework. Must remember to catch up with those students on Wednesday.