Post by Melissa on Feb 6, 2016 22:49:23 GMT 9
My youngest daughters (ages 4 and 5) started at a ml school 2 weeks ago. Everything is going perfectly so far. They are so happy there and their ml is blossoming, they come home actively trying to speak ml with me, whereas in the past, they would almost always respond to me in the ML.
We wanted my 8 year old son to start at the ml school too, but they would like his ml fluency and reading to be at a higher level first. They suggested I speak only ml to him, work hard at increasing his ability to read in the ml and then have him tested again in the summer to hopefully start in Grade 4 at the ml school.
My son is EXTREMELY motivated to get into this school. I have never seen him work so hard on something before. I really want to see him succeed at this and would like your suggestions to my plan.
1) I am having him start with kindergarten level learn-to-read books and hope to progress rather quickly to grade 1. He is reading the same books (each book is really short) and new ones each day.
2) I am teaching him new vocabulary, spelling, synonyms, homonyms etc through fun, interactive lessons on world events, geography, history, science, art.
3) We are doing a structured French course for children called L'art de Lire to learn verbs and conjugations, sentence structure, listening to stories and answering comprehension questions.
4) We are doing simple math to learn the vocabulary and counting in ml (currently he cannot count past 25 and is just learning how to say the different operations in the ml).
5) I plan to put him in the ml camp for the summer so he has more opportunities to socialize in ml.
His interests are Sonic, transformers, Lego, cooking and sports. So I am trying to incorporate these themes into his lessons and reading materials as much as possible.
I feel I have to still teach him his grade level math in the ML so he doesn't fall behind in math. I hope that we can catch up with the language so that he can finish off the grade 3 math, in French. Otherwise, I hope he can easily transfer the math concepts he has learned into his ml math class next year and not be behind.
I'm not sure what to do about English reading. At his school, they don't have any English classes until grade 4 (the grade we hope he will be entering). Should I continue to have him progress in English reading or should I use that time to focus more on French reading?
We think he has dysgraphia (currently going through assessment process), so he is having therapy for that in the ML. We are having really good results with his therapy. I'm torn if we should continue or switch his therapy to a provider who can do it in the ml?
Any more ideas or adjustments I should make to my plan? Does it seem realistic that he could catch up in the ml with intense work on both of our parts in 7 months? Should we get a tutor in the ml in addition to the work he is doing with me? My thoughts around the tutor are that I am amazed at how hard he works for his therapist. So far he has been working really hard with me, but I'm not sure if his motivation will last the whole 7 months we have to catch up.
Thanks Melissa
