My 2 kids are complete opposites when it comes to school. Warrior has always found school very easy, but Sugar Pea has struggled from the beginning.
Warrior has always been at the head of the class. At our old school in LA, he was constantly in trouble because he would be the first one finished and would then look for ways to entertain himself. I went out and bought a bunch of workbooks for him to work on during these times, but his teacher would never give them to him. Always said she was to busy to hand them out to him. BUT she was never to busy to call me and complain that he was disrupting class again.
We moved just before he started 5th grade. This school has been awesome for him. Right away his 5th grade teacher realized that he needed more challenging work, and she would set him off to the side with something else to work on when he finished class work. Once he started 6th grade, he was put into 7th grade math. This year as an 8th grader, he's taking his math class at the high school.
This school has been really great for Sugar Pea too. She started this school in 1st grade. That's when we found out she has an auditory processing disorder. The easy way to explain it is its like dyslexia for the ears. Things she hears get jumbled up and makes it harder for her to understand verbal directions.
Had she been tested in Kindergarten, we would have had ahead start on dealing with it. She was in a speech class at the old school, and I even went and talked to the teacher once a month and sat in on a few classes. However I didn't find out until after we moved up here that he never really did anything with her. He used her as a body in his class, but never did any of the required testing. It was his last year before he retired and he just didn't care.
So in the last 3 years we've been working on her speech along with finding ways to make class time easier for her to understand. She's come a very very long way in such a short time. We still have a long way to go.
She also has a problem getting things from her head to the paper. She knows what she wants to say, but it doesn't always come out like that on paper. She is to the point that she knows this is happening and gets frustrated and shuts down.
So we've been trying to work on these things at home as well as school. Right now we are working on her being able to say her math facts in a pinch. Meaning less than 5 seconds. If she has enough time to think she knows them, but we need to get them down so she can just say them without having to think.
The Math Worksheet Site is one of my favorite websites for printing up worksheets. We've been working on timed tests. Each day Sugar Pea will take 2 timed tests. One after school and one before bed. Last night she decided she wanted to chart her progress so she can see how well she's doing. Which I think is an excellent idea.
The timed test she takes right after school, then problems she misses or has to skip, she has to write 10 times each. Like -
9 x 7 = 63 7 x 9 = 63
9 x 7 = 63 7 x 9 = 63
9 x 7 = 63 7 x 9 = 63
9 x 7 = 63 7 x 9 = 63
9 x 7 = 63 7 x 9 = 63
Some people think this is a little much, but we've learned that with certain things that she learns better if she can see it and write it.
She also likes playing multiplication bingo with her brother. Especially when she wins.
Do you have any tips on learning math facts? I'd love to hear them!
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