Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Where do we go from here?

What to do....what to do....

We don't meet with our teacher for another week or two so I'm trying to come up with a game plan until then.  Tricky business when I don't have a whole picture as of yet.

We started the math text book...I have to go into the resource library to see if there are any manipulatives or something fun to go along with the units we are covering.  Math can be pretty boring and I'm not entirely certain how we're going to 'do' math other than to 'do' math.  There are some fun math websites so I'm going to do some research to determine if there are any extra games he can play that might enhance concepts such as number patterning etc.

We're trying out software this week - AMAZING stuff.  AMAZING.  All the stuff I desperately needed him to have last year is right at my fingertips now.  We have the 30 day trial of Inspiration and we downloaded the 30 day trial of Kidspiration.  I think he could benefit from both, for sure.

Yesterday the kid did a little research sheet on Terry Fox (by his choice) and learned to make the brainstorming links etc. with Inspiration.  He said he had seen this software at school and played on it in computer class but never got to use it in the classroom.  There's a disconnect, for sure.  Plus, the teachers didn't know anything about it.....Interestingly enough, the Pro-D day that is happening this month (if that sort of thing isn't kiboshed by the strike) is on the Inspiration software.  Go figure.

Today, he used the question/answer type sheet with Kidspiration.  Pretty great set up.  He can even hear the sentences that he types out which is a neat feature.  I picked a random story out of one of the Language Arts books and we did the question/answer thingie that goes with it.  Hoh-hum....BORING.  Not relative to my kid at all and he hated it - this is what he was doing last year.  A random story has no meaning to him...he's not interested and can't see any connection between the story and himself.  He's not motivated to read it nor is he motivated to think about it.

This kid needs big thinking....I'm not sure if I know how to capture his interest to get him WANTING to learn and answer questions about things.  I hate apathy. He needs to get to a point where he WANTS to write things down.  That will be the only way we improve his writing - he needs to WANT to learn about it.

So, today wasn't a total bust.  Tomorrow we are trying Photostory and we'll see how that goes.  We went to the Aquarium on Monday and he took a lot of pictures that he is going to document and manipulate.  I'm going to have to stay pretty up to date with my computer knowledge this year, for sure.

Now is the chance for us to get comfortable with the software and the kid likes computers so I'm trying to use that to our advantage.



2 comments:

  1. The actual IRP has some good ideas that you can adapt for one person...go to the classroom assessment model section http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/irp/pdfs/mathematics/2007mathk7_5.pdf

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  2. Thanks. That IRP has become my best friend as of late. I shall check it out.

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