SAT's revision

For Easter Holidays Small Boy has had a Level 3 Maths paper and a Level 3 reading paper for revision and practice.

The maths was no problem - he wanted to do it and enjoyed doing it. It took 15 minutes and the only issue was with subtracting when he needed to carry a ten. I have taught him to subtract with numbers in columns, carrying a ten (up to 4 digit numbers) - not a problem.

The reading on the other hand has proved to be somewhat trickier. He spent 30 minutes answering just 5 of the 21 questions. Two of these were incorrect. He had no idea how to tackle a comprehension exercise like this, and said he'd only ever done one at school, where the TA read the questions out to them and they wrote the answer down on a bit of paper. He got incredibly upset that he had got them wrong, and said it was because he didn't understand what he had to do.


I got incredibly cross that the school have sent this home for homework and not done anything with him first at school.

We already have some KS1 SAT's booklets, and will be looking at the reading parts of those to help.


He has been a "free reader" for about 12 months now, and reads regularly  - but not books from the free reading box at school as he will only bring home Roald Dahl (which we already have a full set of) as the other books are too long or don't look interesting. We spent some time yesterday in the local library, stocking up on a more interesting selection of books. Current favourites are Geronimo Stilton and Oliver Moon. We're also trying Terry Deary's historical stories this month.


And as for the writing, the thing he does find really difficult - what homework did we get for that?

Nothing.

Music success

Small Boy has now had about 9 lessons on the tenor horn. He had been playing for about 6 months in a band situation, with me helping him to practice and teaching new notes as we went along. He could already read music from a year of fife lessons at school.

Just those few lessons have made an enormous difference. We can all see huge progress, and he's more enthusiastic to practice which is good! He even managed a small recital at Christmas to grandparents.

This week his music teacher asked me to buy some harder music, so I was very pleased! 

Success!

It was Parents' Evening last week. That was partly a success (brilliant at maths, science and topic with a good general knowledge) and partly not (won't write - not even enough to assess at a level!).

So, I've been on a mission this week. I bought some KS1 SAT's books (despite a life long teacher's hatred - you can not teach 3 years worth of education in 1 book!) - however, with my assistance they have been ideal to discover what Jonathan can do and can't do. And I discovered he can (as I thought) do the technical things without any problem.

The crises have arisen when he's had to write more than an odd word. Even 3 sentences has caused horrendous screaming temper tantrums. He's done it, but it's appeared to be a complete OTT reaction to something he appears to be able to do easily.

Then today we had a half hour journey in the car. I love long car journeys - no escaping from important conversations! We talked over his feelings about writing, and as we were talking and I was chewing it all over in my head, some things suddenly started to stick together. Then I asked, if, when writing, he thought he had to know every single thing he was going to write before he started. "Yes." And if he thought famous writers like Roald Dahl (current favourite) who wrote long books knew every single word they were going to write when they started a book. "Yes."

Well! No wonder he won't write anything of any length! There's no way he can think it all through, retain it and then write it down in a short space of time. This explains why he always says "but I was still thinking" as an excuse to not writing.

He was equally surprised to discover that no-one else does that, and that they make a rough plan before deciding on their writing one sentence at a time, writing it down, reading it back and then deciding on the next sentence! So despite teaching him to think it-say it-like it?-write it-read it back, I'd obviously not made it clear that that was for once sentence at a time, not the whole piece.

So, hopefully now I've worked that out, we can work on things together and get over this terrible fear of writing more than one sentence in one go!

In other news, he's done loads of horn practise this week (and is sounding fantastic), and has read a lot of books (including one walking back to the car from the library, finishing it before we actually got home!) so he's had a really positive week so far.

Super stuff!

Thank you letters

Look!! Proper joined up writing!! Correctly formed!! Still got a bit of work to do getting it all on the level, but I am so proud of him!

Fantastic writing session today!

Gosh, Small Boy has done well today!

1. cursive handwriting - il, it, lt, ul, ut
2. spellings practise for school - half, your, would, here, there
3. Recount - opening sentence (when, where, why, who, how)

Small Boy wrote:
Last night I went to the Opera house to see Horable histreas with my mummy and daddy.

4. Discussed time connectives. Small Boy had 10 minutes independent writing then to continue with the recount. He wrote:

First I sore the Romern armey singing a song, next a wumern apeared and seid "you carnt bild a road threw my farms. its bendey." and the Romern armey seid "aaaaaa!" because they are frirtnd of the werd bend.

5. Up levelling work.

We up levelled each sentence, by adding adjectives and adverbs, and using other words instead of said.

It ended up as: (now correct spellings as I wrote each sentence out and he added adjective and adverbs in the spaces!)

Last night I went to the Opera House to see Horrible Histories with my mummy and daddy. First I saw the fierce Roman army singing a song loudly. Next a disgraceful woman appeared quickly and shouted, "You can't build a road through my farm. It's bendy." The Roman army screamed "aaaaaaaa!" because they were frightened of the word bendy.

A very rewarding session, and Small Boy was incredibly proud of his work today!

Just spent a pleasant 45 minutes watching these videos online and completing the adverbs quiz (all three levels) so Small Boy now knows all about adverbs, adjectives and connectives! I wonder what effect it will have on his writing later?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/video/adverbs

http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/quiz/en26adve-l1-quiz

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8NPZfIrdcg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1dXaDy5Mpg&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ajmg5--J0nI&feature=relmfu

weekend plans

1. cursive handwriting - lt, il, ut,
2. recap recount writing - who, when, where, why, how, time connectives.
3. uplevelling work - higher level connectives, adjectives, adverbs - what is small boy's knowledge of these?
4. write a recount of theatre visit
5. select sentence to uplevel