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AmyZ
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Posted: Tue Jan 8th, 2008 03:41 am |
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It's past time to get a journal for 2008 going! I thought I'd start by copying over my afterschooling goals for my son from Cassie's New Year's Resolution thread:
All three of you have some great afterschooling resolutions! Here are my resolutions for our family:
1. Get the kid the skills he needs so his physical writing capability matches his spoken word skills.
2. Help him memorize multiplication tables and addition tables (those tricky ones, like 6+7, still require his fingers to play along).
3. Encourage him in dance and shooting since those two things seem to be the things he likes to do most.
4. At my insistance son is going to join the swim team at our local pool this year. We made a deal: he has to try it this year, and stick with it for the whole season, but if he doesn't like it even by the end he doesn't have to do it again. But I want him to have some stretch of physical activity.
5. Find ways to encourage son in his nature studies and other science interests.
Writing those out inspired me to look at my goals for the 2007-08 school year... I'm glad I looked at those to get back on track. Here's what I wrote (with an update in orange).
- He's going to finish the 4th grade DK math book. There is no way I can loop de loop with Everyday Math, so we're going to plod through the other book and hit all the topics in sequence while he plays games and does the fun math stuff with school. I think with a solid dose of afterschooling the basics Everyday Math might be a workable program.... Of course, if the teacher supplements with math drill I'll be rethinking that strategy! (AZ 1/08: where the heck did that DK math book go??? It couldn't have just disappeared... but.... We're supplementing with other things instead.)
- We'll continue Handwriting Without Tears so he can write without pain. Although you can hand him a lot of things and just tell him to figure them out and he will, a handwriting book is not one of them. He was hopelessly lost with the correct way to create letters and is so relieved to be able to write in cursive. I had wanted to finish the alphabet before school started, but that would have required us to actually do that every day....
 (AZ 1/08: We have yet to finish the book, but I'm hopeful we'll get some help at school...at least sort of hopeful...)
- We'll carve out reading time no matter what. Hopefully school reading will be fun again--he loved reading in first grade when they were reading regular books, but then hated reading in second grade when he had less than fascinating short selections and then worksheets or computer questions about the selections. He should be getting differentiated instruction for reading and science in school; we'll see how that works out. Not sure how exactly to afterschool science yet. (AZ 1/08: his reading differentiation seems to have started, at least sort of. We're encouraging him to read Newbery Award Books or even some grown-up books. We've had a problem with the library supposedly asking kids to pick pick books "on level", meaning on 3rd grade level only...)
- We'll keep after him to write in his journal. He is writing a lot of songs at the moment. Two rules have been implemented: must be at least a page double spaced and he has to go back and correct spelling mistakes if he knows the word or rule and just didn't think. In other words, he would have to correct "wokt" to "walked" but he wouldn't have to correct "ensiklopedia" to "encyclopedia". (AZ 1/08: While we haven't been so good at keeping it in the journal, the handwriting practice has helped and son has enjoyed writing stories. It's funny--I didn't even realize he was still doing "wokt" at the beginning of the year!)
- Extracurricular activity holding at ballet for now. Still discussing Scouts... Gotta get that 27 hour day... (AZ 1/08: Never did get started with scouts.
 In March son is going to start swim clinics for the summer swim team. I hope he gets to liking it...)
And that's where son is at for now.... Next major life event will be going to India!
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Cassie
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Posted: Tue Jan 8th, 2008 11:19 am |
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| Amy-- My ds9 stalled in reading in 3rd grade because he was required to read only books "in his lexile" and take those horrid Reading Counts quizes on each one- that was the extent of his in class reading instruction . He took off in the summer and 4th because no restrictions were put on the lexile in which he was allowed to read. Even though I openly pooh-poohed the lexile approach, he still felt he had to follow his teacher. If at all possible, I would make sure your son isn't put under that sort of restriction at school. (I am sure you have this covered!)
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angel
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Posted: Tue Jan 8th, 2008 07:51 pm |
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Amy, nice plan for 2008! Good luck!
Reading is something I'd like to work more on too. One of things dd 8 likes to do is go the library. Before she was picking out books that were too easy. So now we are trying another approach. We make some selections and she chooses a book from this selection. One of things I used to do was to write a brief summary of each chapter. Well this became drudgery since this was in addition to her regular lessons. Now she is reading more without the writing assignment. Trying to find a book that is challenging while manageable is a challenge for us. I wish we had a better librarian at our public library.
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AmyZ
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Posted: Fri Jan 11th, 2008 03:51 am |
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Cassie, I think something similar is happening for our son during school library time: somehow he has it in his head that he's not allowed to look at anything beyond third grade level. My way of combating that is to make sure there are pleasure reading options that are a bit of a challenge here at home. My husband and I got a bit testy when son came home with a bunch of picture books... We'll see how it goes tomorrow.
Angel, one thing we've been doing with reading is giving son books we want him to read, telling him that we think he might like them, and later discussing them. Son sees my husband and I researching and typing quite frequently, so he has embarked on a few research projects of his own. Also, what with the upcoming trip to India I have a number of books related to India for him to enjoy. Right now he is absolutely enthralled with Gay Neck, the Story of a Pigeon by Dhan Gopal Mukerji. I found that many of the Newbery Award winners are winners in son's book as well.
We're all getting excited about India! Son finally asked for a new camera (thought he had given up on pictures!)--fortunately I picked up a Canon PowerShot 560 for me as a back up camera very inexpensively around Christmas, so I asked him if he would like to use that. I have an almost two-year-old Canon Digital Rebel XT that I'm using (made the mistake of looking at the newer ones while making that link...bad idea!!!) but I wanted to have another camera "just in case" mine dies at an inopportune moment. I also figured son would suddenly want to take pictures and I wanted him to have access to a camera, but didn't want him to have full 24/7 responsibility for it. So this one will live in my camera bag and make guest appearances in son's hand.
We have an appointment to discuss son's writing at the school tomorrow. Hopefully that (and what comes of it...) will go well.
Son't ballet class started back up and he is happy to be the only one in the class for a while. When that happened over the summer it was tragic, but now it seems to be a good thing. I think he knows the teacher now and realizes she won't bite even if she does expect quite a bit from him. Just a couple of lessons before India, then he'll do make-up lessons when we return, and I'm going to look into taking some classes as well after we get back. 
Multiplication tables are a biggie right now--strictly afterschooling those.  Hopefully they'll sink in!
Also signed son up for a swim workshop beginning in March. I hope he likes those at least... I'm not sure about this whole swim team thing this year (son is WAY not sure of it!) but I'd like him to at least try it one time. Again, we'll see...
Mostly holding pattern here!
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angel
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Posted: Fri Jan 11th, 2008 01:05 pm |
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Amy, it's good that ds is not taking the school's word as law regarding "only 3rd grade books." I'm reminding dd to read her new chapter book everyday. I want her to read for pleasure but in a way "forcing" her to do it. After her regular lessons, I ask her to continue the book. Sometimes there is a bit of resistance, but I remind her that reading should be a daily thing.
Looks like your India planning is going well -- good idea to have an extra camera -- just in case.
I hope your meeting with the teacher goes well.
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Cassie
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Posted: Fri Jan 11th, 2008 01:43 pm |
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| Are you going to show us your "India Unit"? How did your proposal for the India trip homework go over with the teacher?
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AmyZ
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Posted: Sat Mar 22nd, 2008 05:36 am |
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Oh, brother! Where to even BEGIN??? I haven’t posted here since before India, and reading the plan for the year is a bit depressing... I guess I’ll start with that. Original goal in green bold (see my first post for 2008 for the full goals—here are just abbreviated versions) and my updates in navy blue.
1. Improve physical writing capability.
I am very frustrated with this after seeing what lengths the kid will go to in order to avoid writing (sitting Right Next To the kid to get him to keep up with journaling in India was an experience, for example), seeing what problems he has in spelling, getting an assessment meeting together at the school where more assessments were supposed to be made, and then getting a mid-term progress report saying son would do better if he “tried harder”. I am convinced there is a greater issue there, and I’m tired of afterschooling being such a huge part of the remedial effort. There is to be a follow-up session with the school the beginning of April and I hope the school sees what I see.
Steps we’ve taken:
Handwriting Without Tears. The school agreed this was a good program and they started him with the printing one. Rather than work with him on cursive at the same time an potentially confuse the issue, I have not done any HWT at home. To the best of my knowledge he has not done HWT in school since we got back from India mid-February.
Keyboard skills. The teacher is letting him type more of his assignments and he is getting better at typing surprisingly quickly. Son will write more if he types it from the start, and now that he knows he can rearrange or add in the middle on the computer screen without having to retype everything he is taking more chances in writing—he’ll try a simile he’s not sure about if he doesn’t have to redo the whole thing if he’s wrong. He also will sit down at the computer to type out personal letters or stories on his own whereas he almost never picks up a pen and paper on his own. This is a good thing. Son likes the BBC’s Dance Mat Typing better than the typing program at school, so that’s another winner.
Spelling Power. I just dug this out after getting the “if only he tried” mid-term report from his teacher. I had purchased it at the beginning of the year, but I shelved it for lack of time then. I’m making time for it now. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Writing practice. We’re making sure he has lots of time to practice writing (both at the computer and by hand), drawing (with good pencil grip) and copying phrases over. In fact, the first copy exercise was such a success (I told him to pick his three favorite quotes from Gandhi and write them in his best penmanship) that I want to add more of that. Not exactly sure how, but we’ll get there. This week (spring break) he had a nature camp and one of the activities was a nature journal. Unfortunately he didn’t write all that much at camp, but he has the journal and is amenable to doing the exercises I suggested. That’s the way he did the India journal—answered lots of questions. We’ll see how that goes.
This is a major concern to me, so that’s where the lion’s share of our time is spent.
2. Memorize multiplication tables and addition tables
Working on this one. Also trying to see the pattern of “if 4 plus 7 is 11, then 14 plus 7 is...?” Working on lots of different methods, but not the DK math book—that one got lost somehow. ::grumble::
3. Encourage him in dance and shooting
He has improved so much in ballet I can’t even begin to describe it! Oh, he’s still not likely to get any job offers from a major dance company, but he is doing SO much better than before Christmas! Not sure what clicked in him to get him to decide to focus more, but I’m betting seeing The Nutcracker with all the kids’ parts at the San Francisco Ballet might have had something to do with it.
My husband has been traveling a lot for work and hasn’t been home much on weekends for shooting, but son is happy to go when he can and can still punch holes in nickels!
4. Joining the swim team at our local pool this year.
Son is going to start going to the second swim clinic beginning Sunday after next. He’s still not sure about this, but willing to give it a go this year. As am I. 
5. Encourage nature studies and other science interests.
Nature camp over spring break was a huge success! We’re hoping he gets selected in the lottery for his favorite nature camp for the summer. I would like them to stop holding a lottery and make it first come first served, but I can like all I want it’s still a lottery. We have other science summer camps to look at and he does a great deal of independent nature study around the backyard and walking the dog.
We'll carve out reading time no matter what.
When left to his own devices son does a great job with reading. He does not like 3rd grade “reading comprehension” exercises, and when I look at them I can’t really blame him—the stories aren’t interesting and the questions are inane. Because his teacher said he needed to catch up with reading comprehension from the time he missed while in India (still not happy about that statement) I started him on some middle school level reading comprehension and he likes it a lot. We’ll see how that goes over with the teacher when we go in to talk to her.
write in his journal.
He had a journal in India and now has a short Nature Journal from spring break nature camp. Just telling him to “write anything” doesn’t produce much. On the other hand, if he has questions to answer he can write quite a bit. Spelling stinks and handwriting is iffy, but I am happy just getting him to hold a pencil or pen and get something down on paper for now.
Afterschooling could almost be an entire homeschooling curriculum for us at this point:
Mastering Essential Math Skills: 20 Minutes a Day to Success, Book 1: Grades 4-5. As the title states, 20 minutes per day. Somehow son had decided that he “wasn’t good in math”. As he works through this I’m convincing him otherwise.
Sentence Diagramming. Son has been having a bit of trouble with parts of speech, so I thought of sentence diagramming immediately. He wasn’t thrilled at first, but then saw some of the advanced diagrams and had to admit they looked really cool. He grudgingly admits they are kind of fun. ~30 minutes per session on this one (not every day).
Unique Stories for Reading Comprehension. When son’s teacher said he was having trouble with reading comprehension I knew there was some problem. Seems boredom with 3rd grade level reading (and below—when he didn’t perform to speed on one story the teacher would dumb down the next...). Son genuinely likes these stories and does well with the questions. About 30 minutes per session.
Spelling Power. Haven’t started this yet, but it is needed and will take 15 minutes per day.
This doesn’t include Handwriting Without Tears, science, history, or the time spent on ballet. Oh, or that dreaded thing called homework. I’m hoping for more school cooperation soon.
There! I’m caught up now! Back to more normal posts!
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Cassie
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Posted: Sat Mar 22nd, 2008 07:43 am |
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Thanks for the update! Wow that ballet clicked so suddenly! It sounds like the teacher is being nasty about your vacation.... I would say definitely pursue the writing issue-- he is a bright kid and you have worked with him a lot, so there must be something up, and the school should be helping with that. Great that typing is working out. He may be one of those kids who just needs a keyboard for most of his work. My ds7 is hooked on Typing Instruction for Kids (Typer Island), and I am so pleased that I waited until he can touch-type decently before starting him on composing on the computer. He just wrote his first story in MSWord this week. I get so frustrated every time I see 1st and 2nd graders struggling with typing their work at school. That's another topic!
For reading comprehension, I would recommend McCall-Crabbs Standard Test Lessons in Reading. I have the 5 books-in-one version. It is an older book but I found it quite good, and the pieces are upper elementary/middle school, although they can be used with lower level readers. http://www.swrtraining.com/id53.html
I will have to remember where I ordered it-- I know it was a Christian homeschool site in Oregon, which had great service. Maybe you can find it at homeschool stores? Wait- probably on Amazon too!
I found a really great Japanese nature journal (the Japanese specialize in journals for every subject because they are used extensively in schools. It has open space on top of each page for drawing and writing space in the bottom (either horizontal or vertical- since often the Japanese write vertically). It also has two clocks that you can fill in for when you started and finished your observations and a thermometer for recording the temperature (in Celcius). A few Japanese kanji- for month/day/etc. If you are interested, e-mail your address to me privately and I would be happy to send one or more to you! Perhaps your ds will think it is cool?
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AmyZ
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Posted: Sun Mar 23rd, 2008 11:22 pm |
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Thanks, Cassie!
It looks like we have two new topics here, because I want to talk about both reading comprehension (McCall Crabbs is indeed available from Amazon.com!) and journals...
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AmyZ
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Posted: Sat Aug 16th, 2008 05:34 pm |
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Phew. Where to begin with this one?? If I try to go back and catch up all the way I may never finish, so I'm going to jump into where we are now and fill in the gaps as we go.
At this particular moment my husband, son, and I are all in San Francisco. Son and I are out here for most of the month (arrived the first week and we're going home on Labor Day weekend) and my husband is out just for a week. Son and husband are on a cruise of the Liberty Ship, Jeremiah O'Brien, today to go up and see the ghost ships in the Mare Island mothball area. Can't wait to hear all they are seeing and hearing!!
My original goal was to get my mom's house completely cleaned out and get a lot of maintainance lined up so we could rent the house out soonest, but it turns out that the tax situation is a lot better than we had anticipated so I don't have to rush nearly as much as I thought. I'm still working on clearing out and cleaning up as much of the personal stuff as I can and getting major items in place. I'm also fortunate that I'm able to do a good bit of work from here: this past week has been very part time, but I don't have to take this as vacation and have no leave left as well as a bunch of headaches to sort through the way I did returning from India. Instead, I just have ongoing headaches, but somehow that's more better.
As I mentioned on the School Lunch Thread, we have son in a day camp here in San Francisco this past week and next week. I would be tempted to enroll him for a third week, but schools start back the following week here (son's school in Virginia doesn't start until the day after Labor Day). It's been a great idea--even though I have to schlep pretty far away to drop him off and pick him up, I am able to get boring meetings with lawyers out of the way as well as pull stuff out of places and have reminisence moments while at the same time he is having a great time learning and playing with other kids at City Camp. I think I feel a thread about day camps coming on to talk about all those he's been to and their pluses and minuses...
The mechanics of writing is still his biggest issue and I don't see a lot of change coming on with with that at the hands of the school. We've spent a lot of time focusing on that and math over the summer. It has been tortuous at times to get son to write anything (he'll talk a blue streak...) but I think we're getting there from here. It has been enlightening for my son to see some of my old school papers--my mom saved some of them, such as a handwriting book from 2nd grade. It consisted of about ten sheets of primary lined paper in between construction paper covers with a dittoed list of activities inside the back cover. My son was able to see where I was told to fill the complete page and then see lots of pages of what he considered to be really neat handwriting. On the last page with the ditto was the teacher's only other comment: "Work neater next time". Suddenly he realized the standards I grew up with and saw that I was a kid who didn't always do everything right. I'm glad I saved some his work and I'm going to organize it so he can look back on it more easily to see how far he's come!
I can't believe he starts 4th grade this fall! Where did my baby go?? We're trying to rack and stack extra-curriculars for the school year, but I don't want to commit to too much until we see how much work he has to do for school. I've heard of a lot of kids who have writing problems really hitting a wall in 4th and 5th grades, so I want to make sure he has plenty of down time to recover, but also lots of success-oriented extracurriculars so he can shine elsewhere.
That's the size of it at the moment--lots more as I get back in The Swing!
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AmyZ
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Posted: Sun Aug 17th, 2008 10:43 pm |
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In this topsy-turvey, messed-up year I was happy to remember the goals from the beginning of this thread and see where we stood with them…
1. Get the kid the skills he needs so his physical writing capability matches his spoken word skills.
We’re on the road with this one, but still have a long way to go. School doesn’t officially list a problem since “he is responding to the remediation plan”, meaning mom is teaching it at home. We’re also having a hard time getting school action because over all son is “at or above grade level” in most things—now, to me, the bad handwriting/spelling/incomplete thoughts on page LEAP out as inconsistent with the rest of his performance, but we’re just two parents a-leaping. *sigh* Note: I should make it clear that my husband is an active participant in this foray since I showed him where son was trying and not succeeding instead of just not trying the way the school was making out. I’m reasonably convinced my efforts to get the school to notice/care about son’s writing difficulties have hurt rather than helped for the most part in that he is having to do a lot of extra stuff instead of the same amount of stuff, but different from the rest of the class.
2. Help him memorize multiplication tables and addition tables (those tricky ones, like 6+7, still require his fingers to play along).
Addition is pretty much there (most of the time…) and multiplication came along pretty well with a huge push after the school year ended. For some reason the chunk from about 6x8 through 7x9 are Really Hard, but getting mastered through sheer determination.
3. Encourage him in dance and shooting since those two things seem to be the things he likes to do most.
Shooting took a bit of a back seat as dad got quite busy during the year. Looked into some shooting clubs, but a) they require schlepping to and from and b) I’m not entirely sure that kind of structure is what is best for son right now. As far as ballet goes, that is still son’s favorite activity: he wants to increase his participation to twice a week!
4. At my insistance son is going to join the swim team at our local pool this year…
This went far better than I had hoped! After initial reluctance son fell in love with it and came in as second runner up in most improved for his age bracket (about 20 kids). He isn’t A Star and is a “B Meet” kind of swimmer at present (not swimming fast enough for A meets), but he likes it and is doing well enough to get some praise in the midst of encouragement to do better. The summer season is over and won’t start until stroke clinics in February, but the coach has another team/recreational group in the fall/winter, so we’re going to check that out. Had hoped to try to get some private lessons in there, but I don’t think that’s going to fit with the schedule or budget at this time.
5. Find ways to encourage son in his nature studies and other science interests.
We managed to get him into his favorite nature camp this summer and we hit another nature camp over spring break that worked out okay. He desperately wanted to see the Body Worlds exhibit (well, there are a couple of the same type with plasticized human bodies and we went to this particular one at the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore) and he hit another couple of camps and classes. His problem right now is that he knows more than the average 8- or 9-year-old but isn’t quite ready for the next step in logic for science experiments that would be the logical progression. Finding interesting, not frustrating things is a challenge!!
Here is a closeout for the 3rd grade goals I came up with in September 07:
He's going to finish the 4th grade DK math book.
I never did find that darn book. We had a number of other books and worksheets that he used (been using the Afterschooler worksheets from Math Facts Café quite a bit), but he didn’t finish any one of them. Bad on me.
We'll continue Handwriting Without Tears so he can write without pain.
We did not finish the book and right now it’s trying to find the DK math book… So, we need to clean up the house and find them and we need get back to working with them. My biggest problem was finding the time to work with him on it with all the homework and other things to do. The school agreed it was a great program and said they would use it with him—but their method of teaching handwriting is to hand the kids books and tell them to go forth and do good things, which doesn’t work at all for my son. He needs specific instruction in handwriting. It’s better than it was, though, which is a good thing.
We'll carve out reading time no matter what.
This goal was met completely!! Although his school differentiated reading plan was rather a joke (a great plan, but he was supposed to “work it in” to his existing school work—one of the many issues we had during the latter half of the school year), we kept giving him good books and encouraging him to read them at home and at school. Believe it or not, the only way we could keep him from getting more under level books from the school library was to keep one group out until near the end of the school year as they could not take more books out until they bring back ones already on loan—we could not find any other method for having son select books at his level rather than the class average. But in the end it worked and he has been working on Newbery Award winners and even Animal Farm and 1984 by George Orwell.
We'll keep after him to write in his journal.
We haven’t kept him writing in one journal, but we have been able to keep him writing off and on. Writing on a computer is much easier for him and I was glad to see that he will write quite extensively if he has the option to use the keyboard, especially since I showed him that he can cut and paste and rearrange what he writes on the computer without losing anything and having to start over! The only problem is that he will never be bad enough writing that he will be able to use keyboards during standardized tests (unless the whole test is via keyboard), so I am working hard at getting him to write something, anything by hand. Right now I have resorted to bribery: he wanted a stuffed giraffe in a toy store near us so he is working off his $12 debt at fifty cents per page written in his journal. So far, that seems almost to be working for keeping him fairly consistent in writing…
Extracurricular activity holding at ballet for now. Still discussing Scouts…
Never did Scouts—I love the program, but I just don’t have enough time in the day to go and be with at the time the troop meets. We finally got son started with Hebrew school, which meets two days per week (Wednesday evening and Sunday morning), though he just went to a month’s worth before it broke for the summer. That will be something to do come Fall… Swimming was once per week in March and April, then when the real season started it was 6 days a week when he could go in the evenings while school was on, then three days a week plus meets when it shifted to mornings after school ended but he had camps scheduled. Next year we may cut back on camps so he can attend more practice. It was a lot of time, but it really helped him and he had a good time.
Now I just need to come up with 4th grade goals…
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angel
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Posted: Mon Aug 18th, 2008 09:22 pm |
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Amy, your afterschooling plans look so organized! It is great how you went back and looked at your goals and was able to give an update item for item. It looks like a lot has been accomplished and I was impressed with your son reading Animal Farm by George Orwell. A lot deep thoughts there which I wasn't fully able digest in high school. Lately I've been looking toward Newberry books also to suggest to my own daughter. Lots of luck to you in the new school year and I hope your son gets the best teacher for him.
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AmyZ
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Posted: Sat Aug 30th, 2008 01:40 pm |
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1984 wasn't his favorite (it is rather a downer when you think of it) and we had to get him reading other things to get him the momentum to finish it, but it worked out in the end.
In the past week son has read Taro, the Dragon Boy, a retelling of a Japanese folktale and done a few math problems grudgingly. He also tested the Thinking Blocks site for me and was quite pleased to be helping mom do Afterschoolers.com things (lol--one day he will realize that his entire life helps with Afterschooler.com things!)
We also took a trip to the really big coastal redwoods up in Humboldt County. That's a four plus hour drive from here, but son was great to travel with, comparing the ride to the ride up to New York (much prettier and much more interesting--and he stayed awake for all of it!). We have been listening to an audiobook of a novel about the origins of Superman (It's Superman), which is an adult level book and has provided a ton of opportunities to talk about inferring information from what is given. I think it's moving a bit slowly, and I'm not sure I'd recommend it to everyone (adult situations for Clark Kent), but it has worked out well. I just wish we had finished it before we have to leave! Not sure when we'll get the last few disks in (it was a long one, but we wanted to make sure we had enough...).
Can't believe school starts next week--I figure I'll make afterschooling goals for the year a couple weeks in after I see what his day is looking like.
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