Home Schooling has brought a new challenge this term.
I am now home educating both boys who, besides having a 2
and half year age difference, have a 2 year, or higher, educational difference.
The planning and activities designed for both boys I have,
surprisingly, found quite easy.
As a class teacher you will see that most classes have a
group set up based on ability so my years of experience helps here when
organising work, activities and topics appropriately.
James needs to have a grasp of letter formation, use of
phonics knowledge that coincides with letter formation; this can be extended
from phonemes to graphemes.
Mathematically, James needs to be able to count in order and
have some understanding of place value. Within this it is good to have written
number formation.
These are really the basic grounds for him and the rest of
his learning comes through explorative topics and play.
This then is quite easy.
We have a scheduled Literacy and Numeracy slot every morning
and James thoroughly enjoys the warm up activities and games that we are all
doing together. The fact that William and James are different educational ages,
realistically, means nothing. The tasks are there that can be pushed in either direction.
Spelling and grammar lessons, for
example, can be layered through progression and ability.
The difficulty comes in the fact that they are both in the same
environment.
Being together in explorative learning and topics isn’t a
bad thing. We can look at the area and ideas that each child has and push on
with that. There is a lot of time put a side for discussion so the layered
ability works well.
The actual formal work in Literacy and Numeracy is
difficult.
Both boys engage in objective topics but when pencil hits
paper we have a few problems.
They want to do everything together.
I have, for example, James Identifying a phoneme and coming
up with words with it in. He might get a little stuck, which of course is fine
and part of learning, but before I get to show, teach and help him William has
stopped doing what he is doing and takes on the role.
“James, think of an animal that is…..and then think if that
is the same sound”
This is sweet, and I am glad that he wants to help his
brother but he seems to be more focused on James’ work more than his own. I get
so frustrated by it where he abandons his work to engage in an easy question.
He can see this as he often asks me why he has to write a sentence
but James only has to identify sounds or write one word. The explanation that
he is older isn’t really working; from his point of view he has got “hard” work
and James has “easy” work. He just isn’t mature enough to realise that both
pieces of work are difficult unless you have already learnt it.
Teaching for over 10 years now and this is the first time I
have come up against this. I can only assume that in the formal work most
students would see others within their group working and wouldn’t recognise the
isolation of their ability.
So what can I do?
To be honest I don’t know. I have been racking my brains to
figure how I can get this balance. The worst thing for is if William’s progress
slows because he is more concentrated on what James is doing.
However difficult this is I do love the fact that I have a
challenge on my hands. So watch this space and see if I can come up with a
solution or if it naturally resolves itself.
If any Home Schooling Parents or even Teachers have any
advice then I would greatly appreciate it.
1 comment:
Ok let's try this again ;-)
I have somewhat of the same difficulty with my 7 and 5 year old's. We do science and history all together, but when it comes to language arts and math they are at such different skill levels that we have to do those subjects separately. I have run into a similar challenge in that my 7 year old always wants to help his sister. Sometimes I will tell him to focus on his own work, but often times I will allow him to help. They say that you truly grasp a topic when you can teach it, so I figure that by allowing him to teach/guide/help that it is deepening his understanding of the topic. Then to make sure he isn't falling behind, if we are working on something for the first time or that is more difficult to grasp, I will just let one of them go to the other room and play with manipulative's while I focus with the other one. (I also have a baby and 3 year old, so sometimes I will ask one of them to "babysit") I think that is one of the joys of homeschooling, that you can come up with unique solutions and find what works for you. And the family relationships. I personally think it is good when they want to help each other :-) I hope this helps a little. I'd love to hear what you come up with!!!
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