Homeschooling Special Needs Students

• Sarita's email concerning special needs students

Retention, Mastery....

Question: Should a child master the material in CHOW? https://www.sonlight-forums.com/showthread.php?t=103221

Customer response:We like CHOW, but I would not expect much retention, even for myself. There's just so much information when you think about the amount of time and places it's covering. I'm looking for familiarity and pleasure while we're beginners. So what I mean by that is if/when I encounter the stories again, at least some of the stories sound familiar. I may not even remember how a particular event ends or who the major players were. But as it unfolds the second time through, I realize I've heard it before. And the kids and I enjoyed it the first time and I (and they if they're hearing it too) enjoy it again.

Unless you're going to go with a read, study, and test model (not SL) which will likely produce more retention but for a shorter period of time, I don't think mostly just reading is going to give you "could retell the story myself 3 months later" type retention for most of the stories. But would read, study, and test do that either? Did it for us in our own school experiences?

So my ultimate goal is for us to be able to discuss historical events in the context of real conversations as my kids get older- like around the dinner table or in the car or with other people who are interesting to talk to. I want my kids to be able to start to relate Bible stories to other historical context. When we're listening to or reading the news, I want my kids to be able to relate current events to historical ones. To do that, they'll need to retain that the historical event even happened and retain some details. I expect that to happen not from reading CHOW through once or twice when they're very young (or even at my age), but by having a "learning lifestyle" where we listen to the news together and discuss it. Where we re-encounter history together over and over throughout their education.

All that said, I do think more than one or two exposures to the stories (even more than they'll get from future Cores) is worthwhile and very helpful towards this goal. (I think of CHOW's level or SOTW a kind of framework to build on.) That's why I've purchased Story of the World on CD and we listen to the CD's over and over (usually about 3 times per time period before moving on to the next volume). My kids love these CD's and we do this in the car. (BTW, it took awhile for them to start to like them... I had to listen to them in front of them before they started to take). Even the third time through most stories are just "more familiar" to me. There's just so much. But we're all starting to make connections. The kids are getting older and remember more. We're hearing some stuff there and in our SL reading (now Core 4 for us). It's soooo cool.

But retention? Depends on what you mean by retention. I imagine my kids someday in a HS class or college class taking history. I expect them to need to read the textbook still because they'll be getting much more detail at that level. But I expect them to have a huge advantage because the studying they do for their tests will last much longer than just for the test... because they will have so much familiarity with the events already. So then, if they choose to be into it, read, study, (and test) will likely actually work longer term for them. Kinda like if someone asked me to read about and take a test on hsing. It's such a part of my lifestyle that anything new I read I would retain much better now than if I had read it before ever starting hsing. In my opinion, CHOW is just the beginning of the framework. It's more about familiarity than retention. It's about building a learning lifestyle that will eventually lead to intellegent conversations and even decision-making based partly on a fairly good working knowledge of history (and geography!).

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Spontaneity within structure

I thought this might be a good tip we could give to moms that can't seem to get school done, their kids balk, and so on. A lady on the NIC forum gave this idea that works for her.

• mix up the order of subjects.*

I realized that I was never getting to do the "fun" science and history stuff because I wanted my son to do the "icky" seatwork stuff when he was freshest. So we now mix it up. We start with prayer and memory verse everyday, followed by a math drill to increase his speed.

But then ds draws a card fom the box to decide what we do next. He is always willing to see what comes next. And even is it is something he is not crazy about (like handwriting) he does it because theat was the card he drew. it also makes it so "I" am not failing to cover a subject as well as others. There is an equal chance we'll skip something. And we keep drawing until we've done everything or have run out of time.

Occasionally I use an executive override because we need to do something, but that doesn't happen too often. It sounds weird but it provides enough spontanaity within structure that we seem to be doing really well with it.

Encouraging Overwhelmed Customers

Pray. Either praying with the customer right then or assuring her you will be praying for her.

Assurance. God is faithful, merciful, and gracious! We cannot do this job on our own. It is only through His daily grace. When He gives us a task, He is faithful to provide the grace to accomplish it. He is also merciful - forgiving. I daily sin much, yet He is always faithful to His promise to forgive.

Reduce. Give permission to skip things in the IG/study guides (sometimes they really need someone else to tell them it's okay).

Take a break. If a particular subject is causing frustration to parent and child (this is almost always math), it's okay to take a break. I know many homeschoolers, myself included, who reached a point of frustration with math and had to hold off on the daily lessons and just focus on drill or more natural learning activities instead for a while.

Take some time off to do fun things such as field trips, special art projects, etc. This works especially well when a customer is changing curriculum. While they're waiting for their new Sonlight materials to arrive, enjoy the break. Have fun with the kids.

Lots of other things too, but it's usually what God gives me to say to the individual. For us as advisors - pray. Ask God to give us the words to minister to each individual. A lot too is listening. I often need the reminder to "be quick to listen, slow to speak..." It can be tough to do when we're also trying to be responsible with Sonlight's time and keep the calls short. Here praying for discernment is best.

~Isn't this one of the reasons we homeschool? So we can work at the child's level, no matter where it is! If he needs to be remediated, we do it. If he needs to skip ahead because he gets it, we can! We don't have to keep a strict schedule b/c we have 24 children to keep up with!

~One way I ease up my reading load (when doing more than one core) is to have one of my older children read to my youngest. It's great practice for the older child to read aloud with good inflection. It also builds the bond between those two siblings. Another way to ease my load is to look for a RA as an audio book. I will usually find one of the 2 books as a book on tape. That way we can listen to that one together (while I fold laundry or in the car as we're running errands!) and I read the other one at bed time.

Often I will just sympathize and share some of my similar struggles and then share that we got passed them. Once I prayed aloud w/ the customer (at her request).