But something had been playing on my mind all term. After receiving two mid year reports that presented very unexpected results, I had taken Isabel back to the behavioural optometrist again. She had been wearing special glasses to relax the muscles in her eyes and I couldn't shake the feeling there was more to it. How she responded verbally was completely different to her written responses, even though writing was probably her favourite activity.
As I sat and watched the tests begin, even the optometrist couldn't help her look of concern, when Isabel could not even answer practice questions. After a few minutes, the optometrist put a stop to the test and told me that perhaps we needed to first test Isabel to check if the strength of her glasses needed adjustment, as this is sometimes necessary once the eye muscles have relaxed. We were both shocked to discover Isabel needed glasses FIVE strengths higher! Holding the new strength of glasses awkwardly before her eyes, Isabel went back and flew through the original test, ending up with results indicating visual processing of an 11yr old! I was stunned. The optometrist said she hadn't seen such a result in three years. Basically, her brain could not process visually while it was straining to focus. As you can imagine there has been a dramatic change in Isabel, but over the term I have noticed many 'gaps' that were holding her back and it has been really bothering me, especially as I am completely qualified to do something about it. I just lacked time.
With the holidays approaching I made the decision to do something about it, but had to figure out how to make it work for us. First I decided to tackle just Mathematics. Mathematics education is much like a spiral staircase. With too many steps missing, it can make progress difficult. Plus I only had two weeks. I think I will focus on areas of English after Christmas.
Taking one child aside to focus on Mathematics can be very difficult if the others are playing, so I quickly made the decision to include all of the kids, with the exception of Daisy. I had to find a time that we would always be at home, because my children respond really well to making something part of the rhythm of our day. Implementing something with little drama or explanation, presenting it instead as a this-is-just-how-it-is part of our day generally leads to very little complaint or resistance. Especially if the time is right for them. I chose the time between lunch and TV time as Daisy is asleep at that time, so we were always home. Eating before hand also helped with concentration. I also made the watching of TV reliant on them putting in their best effort and finishing within a reasonable time. TV is seen as very special because the older kids watch it very little throughout the school week. It wasn't so much a threat or reward, rather a matter-of-fact we-only-have-a-certain-amount-of-time thing. They missed out once as there was not enough time between finishing and going out.
With a time sorted I had to choose an approach. With limited time available to prepare each day, and only 20 minutes a day for 16 days at my disposal, I had to scrap all thoughts of creating my own amazing ideas for programs and bought four textbooks. Not my favourite way of teaching, but I chose to see the textbooks as tools and made them work for us. I used specifically chosen questions as diagnostic tools, then did my own thing with teaching concepts needed, and again used the text books for practice, before challenging the kids with my own questions to see if they could apply each concept. I didn't really want to spend the $60 on books, but Craig mentioned that it was about the same amount as it would cost to hire me as a tutor for an hour, so I then had no problem placing the order!
The results
Mixed results. Today was day 15. By day 4 the kids were asking what they would each be focusing on that day. I started by concentrating on the same area for all, but after a few days this just wasn't working.
If I'm honest it was a complete waste of time for Jack. He told me at the beginning that he already knew all the year five work, and that it was easy. Now 15 days on, I will admit he was right. His report gave me the impression that he was working at exactly grade level. My plan was to challenge him to apply his basic knowledge to a variety of problems and increasing the difficulty. There were a lot of bored looks, I-already-know-all-this-eyerolls, sighs, and he managed to finish vast quantities of work in short periods of time. No matter what I asked him, he could tell me the answer off the top of his head, and yes, it felt to be a waste of time. The only thing he liked doing was BODMAS (brackets, order of operations, division, multiplication, addition, subtraction) and he learnt about 24hr time (in less than 5 mins, with a very poor explanation as I was chatting to a friend who was visiting at the time.) He never really spent longer than 15minutes at finishing assigned tasks, so I let him play Minecraft while he waited for the others to finish. His comment was that next time could I teach him algebra or perhaps real science like the periodic table, not the pretend science that they are taught at school. Point taken. Will do.
Lucy could do almost anything I gave her also. Her mid year report had prepared me for this, so I had bought an additional enrichment text book for her. She has learnt about calendars and bridging to ten, which she seemed not to know about before, and has enjoyed working with number patterns, among other things.
Henry had fun just being part of the group. I hadn't wanted to buy him a text book and include him, but he was upset when he heard me talking about not including him. I would have preferred he did learning through play at his age, but being number four, he just wants to do what the older kids are doing. He learnt a great deal and really enjoyed working in a real school book. Just today at breakfast I asked him to eat two more bites of breakfast, he turned to me and said he had already eaten two and he didn't want to eat four altogether. I think he will enjoy school next year!
The amazing success story is found with Isabel. She was the reason for this, so I couldn't be happier. At the start of the holidays she could not instantly tell me that 20 + 4 = 24. She would count on. She had very little true understanding of many of the concepts within Mathematics, rather shallow strategies to just get the questions answered. The following is a list of some of the things she has mastered in the last 15 days:
- Counting money, including working out change.
- Place value of numbers to 1000's (including the ability to order these numbers and add on 1's, 10's, 100's, 1000's.)
- A number of different addition strategies, such as bridging to ten, the split strategy, and the addition algorithm (including the use of trading.)
- Subtraction strategies.
- Multiplication and division, including getting division facts from multiplication facts.
- Multiples.
- How to approach problem solving, including identifying language.
- How to tell the time (she is up to being able to tell analogue time to 5 minute intervals.)
- Reading and using column graphs.
- Describing and continuing number patterns.
- Basic fractions. What is a fraction? Ordering and creating fractions.
Was it all worth the effort? Absolutely!! I would do it all again in a heartbeat.
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