The original purpose of this blog was to document the ups and downs of seeking a diagnosis for the boys, when we set off down that road I struggled to find any real information and had very little idea of what to expect.
Now we have that diagnosis I'm going to divert to another project for a while . . .
Earlier this year I became aware of the idea of "100 days of home ed," the basic premise is to document 100 days of life in a home edding family. There is a Facebook group collating blogs, and it is really interesting seeing the broad spectrum of home ed recorded there.
The posts can serve as raw data for those thinking about home ed and not knowing what they are jumping into, or as inspiration for those wobbling, or just as a way to build a sense of "we are not alone."
The days recorded range in style from formal to unschooling - scheduled days to free-form living.
So, I'm going to give it a try - I'm not really great at blogging regularly, but what can go wrong . . .
Today - Monday - day One!
We don't follow school terms as such, I often get a bit surprised when school holidays sneak up on me and there are actual *children* in the parks during the day, so whilst most of the children around us went back to school at some point over the last week, we waited for this week. Mostly because all of the kids clubs restart this week, so we had to get organised and moving.
M, J and A started the day with a home ed sports meet - they played quick cricket with a fairly large group. The younger three all enjoy their Monday morning sports, but L dropped out as soon as he could. He is not really into sport at all and at 15 1/2 towers over most of the other children there.
Whilst the younglings were out L and I hit the books for some Math and English work. We've not done English as a discrete subject for a long time, L's dyslexia made reading comprehension very difficult, so we've worked on the skills in a sideways manner - reading for other subjects, spelling in other contexts. We're aiming at a GCSE in the near future, possibly this year, more likely next, so we're beginning to formalise how we approach the subject. I was pleasantly surprised when L aced the first two thirds of the reading comp exercise - an enormous improvement, and confirmation that we've built skills and confidence along the way - he was less sure of the essay type question, so we looked at that together, discussing technique far more than the actually answering the question (which he was able to cover himself once he understood how.) The Maths was a breeze, but at this stage we're revising stuff he's already done to try and improve his grade (he took Maths IGCSE last summer, passed well enough but feels he could do better. I'd happily leave it as the grade stands, but if he thinks he can do better then I guess I have to help him.) After that we had a random conversation, and then L disappeared up to his room.
After a rest M was ready to do some work, so we looked at standard form in Maths, common and abstract nouns in English, materials and their uses in Science, and he read to me. M is very driven by external rewards, and still (at 12) enjoys books that provide stickers for encouragement. That surprised me a bit, but I'm happy to go with what works :)
A came down next, and slowly started to drive me mad. She loves workbooks, I had to limit her to four pages of maths, which is a huge difference to the boys. With them I seem to wind up encouraging them to just finish the exercise, with her it's more "that's enough lets move on to something else!" so we looked at tens and units (again!) in various forms, and did some multiplication. She worked through some grapheme exercises (looking at strings of letters that make the same sounds), did a spelling ladder (change on letter each time to make a new word from the clues,) looked at life processes, and plants, read a book, drew some pictures about the book . . .
At that point I felt as though I'd been stuck in the dining room all day, although it was really only lunch time. So the hungry hordes descended and ravaged the kitchen.
J stayed down after lunch, we did some handwriting practise - he still struggles with stamina in his hands, and has poor fine motor skills. Slowly we're getting there, but it still hampers him a lot. Then we worked on nouns in English, positive and negative numbers, place order, and words to numbers, numbers to words. He found a science book and wanted to work through that, so we did life processes and parts of a flower, then he read a life of Fred book for a while.
Later the boys went for a bike ride, A went out to play with local friends, and L is currently at a weekly games night.
In between there has been cooking, Mine craft, and random drawings.
So that's our day one. The rest of the week looks manic!
Showing posts with label IGCSE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IGCSE. Show all posts
Monday, 8 September 2014
Wednesday, 12 March 2014
Assessments, letters, conversations, and more about pee :)
It's been a while . . . there are lots of reasons for that - life has been crazy, but yet there hasn't been much to say, I've not been well, we've dived head first into exam prep, you know how it is, Life just sort of happened and here we are weeks after I last wrote anything.
Of the things that have happened, most have been pretty straight forward :
J: After the appointment with the community paediatrician to discuss frequent "little leaks" things have gone really well. J has taken to peeing standing up pretty confidently and that, combined with increased "shaking" has pretty much stopped daytime wet spots. He is also drinking more, and we are focusing on him drinking cranberry juice or water, and he is able to go for longer in between needing to go. Biggest of all we are having virtually NO night time issues! Previously he would have a small accident most nights, and a bigger one every few days. He *did* have a few nights of proper bed soaking just after we saw the doctor, but within a week those had stopped, and in the month since we've had one night time accident. Just one! Yay!
J also had an ultrasound on his kidneys and bladder, just to check that everything was fine, and it was.
So, *that* issue is pretty much sorted.
We had a response to the letter challenging the report of the last meeting we had at CAMHs (if you followed that!) It was really just a place-holding letter, saying they would look at their notes and be in touch. So that one is still on-going.
M: On the 4th of March M had an ADOS assessment. ADOS stands for Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule. He was nervous going in, we couldn't go in with him, but when he came out he was very VERY bouncy. And really that's all I can tell you. The two ladies who did the assessment said they'd be in touch, but couldn't give us any idea of when. So now we wait some more.
L: Well, there are a few points for L. Firstly he is doing very well with his exam prep, he is getting his head around tricky maths concepts, and remembering more names for Biology too. He is working his way through the books, and we should be right on schedule for the exams. What's not so great is that we have gone WAY past my own maths knowledge. I got a C at school 20+ years ago. This stuff is a lot harder than I remember and quite a bit of it is new to me. Still, we're learning together I guess.
In a week and a bit L will be rejoining a local youth scheme that tries out various sports, they are kicking off with a roller disco, but last year they did canoeing, rock climbing and lazer tag (and a pile of other stuff before he joined.) He's nervous but looking forward to it. It's interesting seeing his attitude to sport (that it's pretty pointless) given that he is probably the most physically able of the bunch.
The most interesting point though was a random conversation. L asked me when we first heard of home education. I had to think quite hard, but remembered it was when I was having trouble nursing L. For some reason home ed was mentioned on an old Usenet group, though as it was a US based group I suspect it was called home schooling. So the conversation went on - when did we decide to try? I explained that we had considered home ed before L went to nursery, but decided to give school a go first. Things moved on and he wanted to know the reasons - that surprised me, I thought he knew, but he wasn't sure of the details. He knew he wasn't happy at nursery but couldn't remember why - so we talked about those bits.
L didn't like nursery, he hadn't been keen since a week or so into things, but it just got worse and worse. He didn't get stressed at being left, he just didn't want to be there at all. He remembers doing "just enough" so they would let him go off, and that seems to relate to the fact that this particular pre-school nursery only recorded a child as being able to do something if the child did it when they were being assessed. So once or twice a week they'd get each child to sit with their specific worker and do stuff. L seems to have disliked performing (!) and so did as little as he could. That will be why when he left - 8 months after starting - the nursery staff still thought he could only recognise the numbers 1 - 3, but at home he was working with 0-12 . . .
There were lots of other things, of course, specific incidents that stayed with me. I mentioned one about drawing. L - being about 3 - had done a drawing that was all scribble an enthusiasm, not so much actual drawing. He'd shown it to one of the workers and she had said something along the lines of "Oh what a lovely XXX" - I never did find out what she thought it was. Whatever she said though was NOT what L had drawn. On the way home he ripped up the picture and threw it away. He got very angry that he didn't draw what he had meant to draw. And that was it. No more drawing from L. As we were talking I could see that he hadn't entirely remembered the incident, so I asked him what he did remember. He said he remembers being told his drawing was rubbish, remembers enjoying drawing before that and not feeling confident enough to draw after. He remembers trying to draw afterwards and just not being able to because he knew it would be wrong. So he remembers the lingering emotional effects even now - 11 or more years later. He feels that he would love to draw, but that he has lost years of practise and training muscles to do what he wants. And it makes him sad. Very sad.
We've talked it through, and he's going to try a handwriting program that is actually designed to train the hand, brain and proprioceptive system at the same time. I hope it isn't too late, but I guess we'll see eventually :)
Lastly we have A. She is bumbling along, mostly happily but every now and then extremely stroppily. She has just learnt to ride her bike without stabilisers (still a bit wobbly though!) She can read but is very reluctant to, she can write and is wanting to more and more, and she loves to draw and create. Not much more to say really!
Maybe tomorrow I'll have a visit to tell you about - if all goes according to plan!
Of the things that have happened, most have been pretty straight forward :
J: After the appointment with the community paediatrician to discuss frequent "little leaks" things have gone really well. J has taken to peeing standing up pretty confidently and that, combined with increased "shaking" has pretty much stopped daytime wet spots. He is also drinking more, and we are focusing on him drinking cranberry juice or water, and he is able to go for longer in between needing to go. Biggest of all we are having virtually NO night time issues! Previously he would have a small accident most nights, and a bigger one every few days. He *did* have a few nights of proper bed soaking just after we saw the doctor, but within a week those had stopped, and in the month since we've had one night time accident. Just one! Yay!
J also had an ultrasound on his kidneys and bladder, just to check that everything was fine, and it was.
So, *that* issue is pretty much sorted.
We had a response to the letter challenging the report of the last meeting we had at CAMHs (if you followed that!) It was really just a place-holding letter, saying they would look at their notes and be in touch. So that one is still on-going.
M: On the 4th of March M had an ADOS assessment. ADOS stands for Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule. He was nervous going in, we couldn't go in with him, but when he came out he was very VERY bouncy. And really that's all I can tell you. The two ladies who did the assessment said they'd be in touch, but couldn't give us any idea of when. So now we wait some more.
L: Well, there are a few points for L. Firstly he is doing very well with his exam prep, he is getting his head around tricky maths concepts, and remembering more names for Biology too. He is working his way through the books, and we should be right on schedule for the exams. What's not so great is that we have gone WAY past my own maths knowledge. I got a C at school 20+ years ago. This stuff is a lot harder than I remember and quite a bit of it is new to me. Still, we're learning together I guess.
In a week and a bit L will be rejoining a local youth scheme that tries out various sports, they are kicking off with a roller disco, but last year they did canoeing, rock climbing and lazer tag (and a pile of other stuff before he joined.) He's nervous but looking forward to it. It's interesting seeing his attitude to sport (that it's pretty pointless) given that he is probably the most physically able of the bunch.
The most interesting point though was a random conversation. L asked me when we first heard of home education. I had to think quite hard, but remembered it was when I was having trouble nursing L. For some reason home ed was mentioned on an old Usenet group, though as it was a US based group I suspect it was called home schooling. So the conversation went on - when did we decide to try? I explained that we had considered home ed before L went to nursery, but decided to give school a go first. Things moved on and he wanted to know the reasons - that surprised me, I thought he knew, but he wasn't sure of the details. He knew he wasn't happy at nursery but couldn't remember why - so we talked about those bits.
L didn't like nursery, he hadn't been keen since a week or so into things, but it just got worse and worse. He didn't get stressed at being left, he just didn't want to be there at all. He remembers doing "just enough" so they would let him go off, and that seems to relate to the fact that this particular pre-school nursery only recorded a child as being able to do something if the child did it when they were being assessed. So once or twice a week they'd get each child to sit with their specific worker and do stuff. L seems to have disliked performing (!) and so did as little as he could. That will be why when he left - 8 months after starting - the nursery staff still thought he could only recognise the numbers 1 - 3, but at home he was working with 0-12 . . .
There were lots of other things, of course, specific incidents that stayed with me. I mentioned one about drawing. L - being about 3 - had done a drawing that was all scribble an enthusiasm, not so much actual drawing. He'd shown it to one of the workers and she had said something along the lines of "Oh what a lovely XXX" - I never did find out what she thought it was. Whatever she said though was NOT what L had drawn. On the way home he ripped up the picture and threw it away. He got very angry that he didn't draw what he had meant to draw. And that was it. No more drawing from L. As we were talking I could see that he hadn't entirely remembered the incident, so I asked him what he did remember. He said he remembers being told his drawing was rubbish, remembers enjoying drawing before that and not feeling confident enough to draw after. He remembers trying to draw afterwards and just not being able to because he knew it would be wrong. So he remembers the lingering emotional effects even now - 11 or more years later. He feels that he would love to draw, but that he has lost years of practise and training muscles to do what he wants. And it makes him sad. Very sad.
We've talked it through, and he's going to try a handwriting program that is actually designed to train the hand, brain and proprioceptive system at the same time. I hope it isn't too late, but I guess we'll see eventually :)
Lastly we have A. She is bumbling along, mostly happily but every now and then extremely stroppily. She has just learnt to ride her bike without stabilisers (still a bit wobbly though!) She can read but is very reluctant to, she can write and is wanting to more and more, and she loves to draw and create. Not much more to say really!
Maybe tomorrow I'll have a visit to tell you about - if all goes according to plan!
Friday, 27 September 2013
Maths makes my head hurt!
Today I am very proud of L. Well, I have been all week really, but today especially so.
Over the summer we spent a long time talking about which IGCSE's he felt able to tackle, which he was interested in, which would be useful, which I felt he needed, and finally which he felt he needed for his future plans.
We settled on a retake of Biology, and doing ICT and Maths this year, with more to follow. He feels ICT looks "easy", so we may add another once we see how we go with these three. One of the benefits of being an external candidate is that we don't actually need to decide which exams to enter him for until February next year, which gives us plenty of time to sus out how it is going, and tweak our plans accordingly.
Earlier this year (January-ish) we focused on ploughing through his biology text book. We did do some maths - looking at handling data and recording results etc - but mostly it was biology all the way to prepare for the exams in May.
When L decided to tackle maths I was more than a little scared. Maths is not something I am very good at - I just about scraped a C 21 years ago, and I was *very* glad to leave the frightening looking stuff behind!
We picked up a workbook from CGP that covers Edexcel's IGCSE maths. I looked at the first page and panicked. It is straight into complex stuff!
11 x (77 / 7) + 121 - 2 x(10+1)2 (< read that 2 as squared, I can't work out how to do superscript!)
and that's one of the easier ones, because I can't find most of the symbols on this keyboard!
So, as I said, I panicked. Then I had a long think - the options were either I pass on my illogical attitude (that I *just can't do it*) or I learn with L. It seemed a simple choice really. I found some good videos on the Khan Academy website, prepared ahead of time, found a page on Facebook for home ed maths, gritted my teeth and got him started. I also know a lovely home edder who is a maths tutor - if it all went (or still manages to go) wrong I plan to smile sweetly at her and beg for help :)
We watched the first video (about BODMAS and the order of operations), talked it through, and off he went. He didn't exactly whizz through them, but he worked steadily through the first set of ten sums, and got them all right - with the exception of needing to be shown that a squaring was outside a set of brackets, but that was a dyslexic moment rather than a not-understanding moment. With just a little preparation both he and I now understand it :)
Today he is looking at roots as well as order of operations. I hunted out a good explanation, we looked at it together, and now he is off working independently again - so far (4/5 of the way through the set) he is doing perfectly.
So, I am proud of L - he is grasping concepts I find tricky, he is hitting the ground running and getting his head around it all really well, he is listening to the explanations and isn't afraid to say "Hang on, I don't get that bit." His attitude to this has really impressed me, and I'm so glad he is seeing the sense of how this stuff works. At this rate I can't see any clouds on the horizon.
All in all, a very good start to the year from Mr L :)
Over the summer we spent a long time talking about which IGCSE's he felt able to tackle, which he was interested in, which would be useful, which I felt he needed, and finally which he felt he needed for his future plans.
We settled on a retake of Biology, and doing ICT and Maths this year, with more to follow. He feels ICT looks "easy", so we may add another once we see how we go with these three. One of the benefits of being an external candidate is that we don't actually need to decide which exams to enter him for until February next year, which gives us plenty of time to sus out how it is going, and tweak our plans accordingly.
Earlier this year (January-ish) we focused on ploughing through his biology text book. We did do some maths - looking at handling data and recording results etc - but mostly it was biology all the way to prepare for the exams in May.
When L decided to tackle maths I was more than a little scared. Maths is not something I am very good at - I just about scraped a C 21 years ago, and I was *very* glad to leave the frightening looking stuff behind!
We picked up a workbook from CGP that covers Edexcel's IGCSE maths. I looked at the first page and panicked. It is straight into complex stuff!
11 x (77 / 7) + 121 - 2 x(10+1)2 (< read that 2 as squared, I can't work out how to do superscript!)
and that's one of the easier ones, because I can't find most of the symbols on this keyboard!
So, as I said, I panicked. Then I had a long think - the options were either I pass on my illogical attitude (that I *just can't do it*) or I learn with L. It seemed a simple choice really. I found some good videos on the Khan Academy website, prepared ahead of time, found a page on Facebook for home ed maths, gritted my teeth and got him started. I also know a lovely home edder who is a maths tutor - if it all went (or still manages to go) wrong I plan to smile sweetly at her and beg for help :)
We watched the first video (about BODMAS and the order of operations), talked it through, and off he went. He didn't exactly whizz through them, but he worked steadily through the first set of ten sums, and got them all right - with the exception of needing to be shown that a squaring was outside a set of brackets, but that was a dyslexic moment rather than a not-understanding moment. With just a little preparation both he and I now understand it :)
Today he is looking at roots as well as order of operations. I hunted out a good explanation, we looked at it together, and now he is off working independently again - so far (4/5 of the way through the set) he is doing perfectly.
So, I am proud of L - he is grasping concepts I find tricky, he is hitting the ground running and getting his head around it all really well, he is listening to the explanations and isn't afraid to say "Hang on, I don't get that bit." His attitude to this has really impressed me, and I'm so glad he is seeing the sense of how this stuff works. At this rate I can't see any clouds on the horizon.
All in all, a very good start to the year from Mr L :)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)