Its that time of the year when things are winding up and the schools want to test how much their teachers have managed to get into the heads of their little wards. Anoushka being in Junior 1 (Upper KG) has what they call evaluations and they are not exams with marks and question papers, but more an assessment. She did not have it last year, but this year they sent in a 4-sheet notification with the portions outlined for reading, writing, spelling, maths, languages and even drawing and catechism (in our case) / moral science for the others. It basically covered the portions done in the last quarter, so with this in hand, I felt a little more confident in trying to help Anoushka with her revision.
But then came the hitch... Anoushka is in this phase now where she believes that nothing should be taught, it will all miraculously come to her when she is asked a question - so when I tried asking her to read, she would... but mainly because it was the same lesson read in class and she knew the flow. The minute it came to the little box at the end that had the new words in the lesson that they had learnt - that is where she would get stuck... and then frustrated. Add to that, my little one is the epitome of being the drama queen - so getting stuck at one spelling means letting the waterworks loose. It took a day or so till I lost patience and then a few yelling matches later realized I was not getting anywhere.
So the next day I told her strategy one - the next time baby, you do not know the spelling, don't cry... try laughing, the spelling might come back to you. Well what do you know.. it actually worked... for all of 24 hours.. One day we had spellings flowing left, right and center and they were all perfect... with our home sounding like the laughter club was having a special session... the next day we were back to waterworks.
So I tried the usual phonetics way - each word that she did not know, I would approach and tell her phonetically and she would get the answer. It worked a while but then the mistake I did here was try and get her to attempt the phonetics herself. After all she has exposure to it from Montessori... that backfired on me as well. Phonetics is not really pushed in school at present and the teachers use repetition and writing to teach spellings and words... so I took a leaf out of their book... each spelling that she did not know, I would ask her to write down 5 times. This repetition helped.
But if repetition had to work for me, I didn't have much time, because evaluations were already on. It took a night of restlessness and then I hit upon an idea... kiddie question papers. I fashioned question papers that covered bits of all the portion - a little EVS, spelling, math exercises, opposites, plurals etc. Each paper a day is different and the final set of papers covers the entire portion.
I found it worked on several levels - since they have to look at the board for questions and very smartly (they think), copy half the question in the answer, it helps with the reading and the ability to copy from the board, which is also a task. Anoushka actually started reading each word since it was in no order that she was used to. I used a thick, straight font to make it look like the fonts in her textbook. I never thought she would take to them, but she actually loves doing the papers now. I fashioned similar ones for mathematics.
Now little Miss wakes up in the mornings and without any egging (I swear) from me, picks up the papers and goes through them again. She is fresher in the mornings and so whatever she made a mistake with the previous evening, I repeat and it gets through to her.
Here is a link to the papers I made (I will keep adding to it as this week progresses) ... it covers the portions in her school and some of the English stuff is from her textbook, but the rest of it could possibly help other moms. Its not going to be that easy going further and any advice you guys have on what I can do is most welcome.
But then came the hitch... Anoushka is in this phase now where she believes that nothing should be taught, it will all miraculously come to her when she is asked a question - so when I tried asking her to read, she would... but mainly because it was the same lesson read in class and she knew the flow. The minute it came to the little box at the end that had the new words in the lesson that they had learnt - that is where she would get stuck... and then frustrated. Add to that, my little one is the epitome of being the drama queen - so getting stuck at one spelling means letting the waterworks loose. It took a day or so till I lost patience and then a few yelling matches later realized I was not getting anywhere.
So the next day I told her strategy one - the next time baby, you do not know the spelling, don't cry... try laughing, the spelling might come back to you. Well what do you know.. it actually worked... for all of 24 hours.. One day we had spellings flowing left, right and center and they were all perfect... with our home sounding like the laughter club was having a special session... the next day we were back to waterworks.
So I tried the usual phonetics way - each word that she did not know, I would approach and tell her phonetically and she would get the answer. It worked a while but then the mistake I did here was try and get her to attempt the phonetics herself. After all she has exposure to it from Montessori... that backfired on me as well. Phonetics is not really pushed in school at present and the teachers use repetition and writing to teach spellings and words... so I took a leaf out of their book... each spelling that she did not know, I would ask her to write down 5 times. This repetition helped.
But if repetition had to work for me, I didn't have much time, because evaluations were already on. It took a night of restlessness and then I hit upon an idea... kiddie question papers. I fashioned question papers that covered bits of all the portion - a little EVS, spelling, math exercises, opposites, plurals etc. Each paper a day is different and the final set of papers covers the entire portion.
I found it worked on several levels - since they have to look at the board for questions and very smartly (they think), copy half the question in the answer, it helps with the reading and the ability to copy from the board, which is also a task. Anoushka actually started reading each word since it was in no order that she was used to. I used a thick, straight font to make it look like the fonts in her textbook. I never thought she would take to them, but she actually loves doing the papers now. I fashioned similar ones for mathematics.
Now little Miss wakes up in the mornings and without any egging (I swear) from me, picks up the papers and goes through them again. She is fresher in the mornings and so whatever she made a mistake with the previous evening, I repeat and it gets through to her.
Here is a link to the papers I made (I will keep adding to it as this week progresses) ... it covers the portions in her school and some of the English stuff is from her textbook, but the rest of it could possibly help other moms. Its not going to be that easy going further and any advice you guys have on what I can do is most welcome.
