Huge sighs of relief were heard in our house this afternoon. It’s taken
nearly 12 months of ‘closing the lack of foundation in learning’ (to quote her
school) but this afternoon we cracked it (at least some of it)
There were lots of Lots of Hi5’s at the end of her weekly tutor session..
Mark has the best way of enticing her to learn without her even
realizing it, which in a way has been our issue of late. MissM couldn’t see
that the stuff she was doing on a Monday with Mark resonated in school. Guess
she is only 8 years old, so why would she?
Trust me, I’ m your mother and I know what’s right - bulls***. MissM doesn’t fall for that for one
nano second.
So Marks been coming up with all sorts of games the 3 of us
play/work/learn together and MissM’s non the wiser.
Today we all had a piece of paper and had to write the opening paragraph
to a story. Then, after 4 minutes, we had to give our story to the next person
who continued – a bit like written Chinese whispers.
Well! Mark turned MissM’s princess story into a dream that a teenage
grunge band member had; he took my sweet puppy dog story and changed it to a
very naught puppy the pee’d everywhere; while we took his story of a stormy
night the week of Christmas and turned it into a family reunion.
MissM laughed thru the three readings. She started to correct Marks’
poor spelling and horrid grammar, at one point asking for a green pen to
correct.
He asked her questions in such a way that she wanted to answer them.
Mark doesn’t realize he’s teaching me as much as he’s helping her.
Then MissM willingly took out her math homework and started to do the
trickiest sums.
The worksheet was a series of adding 10’s or 100’s or 1000’s to numbers
and MissM knew which column of number would change and how …. Even using the
magic ONE to carry over when dealing with 9’s.
Mark and I just smiled at each other over MissM’s head as she worked
away, self correcting, talking herself thru each question.
When she was done, Mark said how proud he was of her. That she has
mastered this within the first half of term and he remembered when she couldn’t
do it cos she simply didn’t have the foundation math.
She went all coy.
She kept on going with her homework!
‘But my handwriting and spelling are still so bad’ she said.
‘Well. It’s not that bad’ he said, ‘I’ve seen worse, look at mine. Would
you like to do some work on it next week’ he asked.
And so next week’s session is agreed.
The switch between systems has been much harder than we thought it would
be. MissM has coped so very well, much better than DH and I have.
We’re so proud of her. She has welcomed all the extra help her teachers
have offered her; she has embraced Mark (tho we’ve had a few bumpy sessions
recently) and as of today she can see that the work we do at home has a
positive effect on her in the class.
All expats with school-aged kids go thru this – the back and forth
between school styles. It must get harder as the kids get older, and have to
choose subjects for GCSE’s (UK) or SAT’s (USA). The International Baccalaureate
(IB) from what we’ve seen is a brilliant leaving certificate/HSC and extends
and excites the kids, offering them the opportunity to apply to pretty much and
college/university in the world (pending final marks of course)
We hope the ‘traditional’ style of learning that MissM is acquiring
while we are in the UK will hold her in good stead … who knows where we’ll be
for junior high school, let alone senior/leaving certificate.
All I know is that thousands of expats with kids have done this before
us and all have survived …… and we will too.
With friendship
x
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