My first Term with both Jack and Daisy together was a bit like herding fish.It was both exciting and challenging.In some ways an 8 year old with the skills of a 6 year old and a 6 year old with the skills of a 9 year old sort of meet in the middle.Jack has a lot of flexibility in his work to extend himself as far as he wants and frequently does.Daisy needed more help.In truth a lot of my time was spent trying to address the deep seated existing problems that Daisy had with literacy and numeracy and more importantly her fear of having even a passing acquaintance with anything literacy and numeracy related.A great deal of energy went into disguising learning as fun..in much the same way you might puree vegetables in pasta sauce.
Another large proportion of my time was spent thinking.
Q. How an earth did it get so bad and go unnoticed for so long ?..
When do you ever as a parent seriously check if your child can,count to twenty forwards and backwards,complete a Dolch spelling test, read to an benchmark age, or sequence correctly...you don't In the real world you read the school reports and if they are good, you trust all is well.As my husband pointed out its a cookie cutter system,you deliver a concept and you have a certain amount of time to do it,the majority will get it,those that don't grasp it may get left behind.
We built last term around how to deliver Daisy the support she so desperately needed .It was obvious to us she could not get the most out of any materials or any programme unless she could understand and participate in it.We went back to the foundations, letter sounds and phonemes,blending and sight words and practiced again and again,It was tough.
Imagine reading a small frequently occurring word like "the" in a book when you cant say it phonetically or understand it once youve read it, then you instantly forget it,and even if there are 20 examples of "the" on a page, every one has to be re read and explained, like its the first time you have ever seen it.After 30 minutes of doing this you might hold on to it.Only to forget it all again the next day.Its the same with numbers you might have no concept of what comes after or before ten in a sequence.Imagine the frustration.
When your planning a term you have a world of choices, the children dictate what you do by what they need,their learning styles show how you deliver it.The Australian Curriculum has standards that should be implemented but whose bar is so low it is possible to achieve all the outcomes from the core areas by doing an activity such as making a cake. Read the recipe (Eng) Measure the quantities (Maths) Bake it in the oven (Science) Talk about how in their parents day they didn't have packet cake mix and in their Grandparents day they didn't have cake! (History)....I am grateful to my Educational Moderator for this Gem of an example.
Anyway for us the core is Literacy and Numeracy, which we reinforce with Writing and Spelling,We like hands on learning so go on an excursion every Monday to tie in with Life Science,We finished off all the units on animal classification,habitat and environment,and use lots of Documentaries,text and on line resources not forgetting the ipad (all hail to thee.. glorious svelte tablet of magic).Tuesdays is the chance to do Art, Guitar,Keyboards,Choir and Drama,Wednesdays is speech therapy day so a good day to do Technology, construction,and Geography and languages We learn about different cultures and places and its traditionally the day to write to the kids we sponsor and pen-pals.Thursday our kids go to Flourish a whole day with like mind homeschool kids where they create,play games,make films,build cubbies,flex their imaginations,problem solve,and learn to be flexible agile thinkers,Whilst I mostly drink Coffee!.This term on Fridays we took up the Sci Tech Homeschooling CIRSO lab classes which were great and combined them with a programme from the WA Museum and the Planetarium. Thats the nuts and bolts but it would be nothing without the fun and the tree hugging.
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