Back to School: strategies for English improvement

Well, we've been back at school for a couple of weeks, and happy to be back into a regular routine (not that the summer wasn't fun - we had many excursions). Subjects Shane is taking this semester are: English, General Learning (an ASD course), Auto Service, and Phys Ed. English is a repeat of grade 10, so hopefully we will be successful this year. We will also prepare for the grade 10 Literacy Test in the Spring.

 

So, the focus now is English. This is a good thing, as I believe overall language skills will help him in everything: even in other subjects, the questions are worded such that strong English skills are required.

 

Strategies:

• Shane reads a book (any book) for 1 hour every day. This was kept up during the summer. Shane's reading level and comprehension have improved immensely since we implemented this last year. At the end of each book, Shane will write a 1-page book report. He writes the title and the author of the book, then answers: What happened in the beginning? What happened in the middle? What happened in the end? Did you like this book - why or why not? The book report at the end make him pay a little more attention to the plot, and not just focus only on details.
• Handwriting practice. Shane has a notebook in which he writes "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" 5 times. We started this only last week, but he is trying very hard now to form the letters properly. Spacing between words is still to come.
• I surfed the web for worksheets, and found a few sites where I could print off free worksheets on nouns, capitalization, punctuation, etc. When I have a bit of time, I will start to make my own worksheets and I will post the images here.
• Shane's tutor very kindly provided us with a stack of short stories for Shane to read with questions at varying challenge levels. These stories are perfect - 1 page each with about 12 questions. We go over the questions together after he reads the story. Sometimes I write the answers so he doesn't have to concentrate on 2 things at once (answering the questions plus physically writing). Sometimes we do it orally. Sometimes Shane writes the answers. His comprehension is improving.

Key Learnings:

• Consistency. Shane knows he has to read for 1 hour every day. He chose the time, and that's now the rule. Read from 4pm-5pm every day. Making it a routine means no arguments and he is in control of the time and the book he chooses to read, so it is enjoyable.
• Practice, practice, practice. Writing has always been a challenge, so to save time, in the past I have done the scribing for some things. Now, Shane must write everything himself, and he has slowly improved. To make handwriting more rote, he simply has to put in the time.
• Learning in a way that suits his style. Shane is auditory. I am visual. In the past, I have tried to teach him things in same way that I learned them, but that never seemed to work very well. Now, we do more things orally. We make up songs or rhymes to memorize things. I ask Shane what things in the story sound like.

On a side note, the Parent Council meeting is this week at the school. I am as involved as my work schedule permits me to be on the parent council. It is really important to be as involved in your child's school as possible.

I hope your kids are off to a good start this school year. Cheers,
Lisa