Three weeks on and we are all into a routine of educating ourselves. This has become quite refreshing. There are still moments where studies go beyond the normal education time frame of normal school hours, but education is becoming a life style rather than a task.
I have often wrestled with reading, writing, maths and other things that were school subjects, becoming a struggle outside 'schooling time'. Reading was a struggle for one of the children and it soon became a school only subject. Where I succeeded in teaching reading, I felt I had failed in achieving a love for reading. It was the love for reading that school failed me in, and it is what I my passion for teaching is aiming to achieve. I want to not only teach reading, but give the gift of reading to children. I believe learning to read is not always the problem, but rather comprehension. Comprehension's problem often comes from the lack of joy in reading. The lack of going beyond words or decoding, and entering the world the book has behind the words. Through allowing this young teen to take control of their study time, there has been more reading than ever before. This has surprised me. There are recommenations for reading being handed out by the most reluctant reader as they spend more time in their stories. We are reading and talking about what is being read, engaging in conversations that lead to questions of which the need to consult 'Google" cannot be resisted. The teens are looking things up that they would normally neglect, instead moving onto the 'required' work.
I am seeing cognitive theory and freedomship education at work. They are constructing their own questions, seeking the answers, constructing and conversing ideas, and maturing in their desire to learn. Some days learning goes beyond the average hours because of procrastination, most days they are going beyond the average hours because they have found something worthy of their time. I am enjoying being the mentor and standing back watching them learn, while learning more for myself.
Over the past couple of weeks, the Institute for Excellence in Writing posted a podcast on 'Strategies for maximising the high school years'. I found it interesting to listen to and thought it worthy of sharing the link http://iew.com/help-support/podcast/episode-48a-strategies-maximizing-high-school-years-part-1 and http://iew.com/help-support/podcast/episode-48b-strategies-maximizing-high-school-years-part-2-0 There are a few good ideas worthy of listening to in these two podcasts.
We also downloaded "Great inventors and scientists - Louis Pasteur" This is by Homeschool Bits and I purchased it from Curriclick http://www.currclick.com/product/101182/Great-Inventors-and-Scientists-Louis-Pasteur?filters=0_0_0_0_0_30100_0_0 This is proving to be well worth the purchase. We are enjoying reading the linked information and it enables the student to go further than what is presented in the curriculum pages.
I will enjoy the next couple of days reading books on my own reading list and doing some of the crafts that I have in action waiting for me to take a day off. Then I will venture into another week with these teens as we continue to teach each other more than we all realise.
Happy reading
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