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hillsdown

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This is a post to continue on from my rant earlier about gr 6 math and how things are progressing. We have been working very hard (my nephew is amazing in how hard he works and how much he cares) and my nephews math teacher has spent a few lunch hours going over his weaknesses . In 2 weeks he has brought his grade up 17 percent to 75% .

However he was having trouble in science which I did not know until grades were posted and he is struggling in that as well , same teacher as Math . So now we have to work on that too . Trace evidence is the subject and what it has to do with gr 6 science is beyond me as it can be interpreted many ways by a lack of data or information given .

Anyways we have one month left with this teacher , so hopefully not too much damage is done and I am looking into getting a tutor for him ,someone a year or 2 grades ahead so the curriculum is still relatively recent for them .

He is doing phenomenal in all other classes, 98% in language arts, 93% in social studies ,80% in French and the high 80's/mid 90's in Gym, Art, music and health .

He really wants to get on the honor roll this year for the first time . 4h club starts up on the 16th and curling the end of the month so I hope we can fit all that in and his studies do not have to be sacrificed, as that will not be an option ..
 
your a great aunt helping your nephew with his school work.an doing what it takes to help him get his grades up.
 
Thanks for the kind words and encouragement fellas !!! :heart:

He has been walking around like a cocky scholar since he got home from school .
I luv it , and it will just make him want to do that much better and work even harder . Doesn't mean much when you do not have it ,once you do, you will fight like heck to maintain it ! :nod: :tiphat:
 
God Bless you and mr.hd. :heart: Even at times when you feel like you're not getting through that kid has a backbone now that he's never had. When things get tough for him later on in life he's going to ask himself what YOU would do in that situation and that's what will get him by.
My wife and I have helped a few kids out. It's funny how the little stuff that we take for granted as what any adult should do for a child stays with them. He probably won't remember any of the school stuff that you're doing with him and it most likely won't make a difference how far he does go in school but he will remember that you loved him and that is what he needs to be successful in life.
 
cow pollinater":n4470nyf said:
God Bless you and mr.hd. :heart: Even at times when you feel like you're not getting through that kid has a backbone now that he's never had. When things get tough for him later on in life he's going to ask himself what YOU would do in that situation and that's what will get him by.
My wife and I have helped a few kids out. It's funny how the little stuff that we take for granted as what any adult should do for a child stays with them. He probably won't remember any of the school stuff that you're doing with him and it most likely won't make a difference how far he does go in school but he will remember that you loved him and that is what he needs to be successful in life.

It is threads and posts like this one that keep me coming back to this forum.....
I have been kind of blue and down on myself lately.....
just reading a message thread like this has lifted my spirits.....

CP....I think the message above is the most poetic thing I have ever seen you write....
 
I need help !!! :help: :help: :help: :help:

I need tips and techniques to help him when he does homework and in school to stay focused . It is taking way too long and it is wrong a lot of time with spelling and grammar errors which are his strongest subjects thus why he has 98 in English . If a questions asks for a sentence answer with a detailed explanation he is lost , and it takes hours to do a few questions after I make him redo it or his teacher does because it is wrong .

I cannot keep doing his work for him which is essentially what I am doing , if you are not watching over his should catching things he misses or is doing incorrectly . I am terribly frustrated and now he is getting angry and frustrated as well because we can be doing the same thing over and over again to get it right . Then I get an answer like "No more I am not doing anymore ,that is good enough I am done !"

Ready to give up , really I am . A boy needs a life too , they can't go to school all day and the homework all night until it is bed time . :devil2:
 
Is he working in a zero distraction environment? Even if doors are opening and closing, or people are walking through. It could have a bearing.
 
Bigfoot":3hw64owg said:
Is he working in a zero distraction environment? Even if doors are opening and closing, or people are walking through. It could have a bearing.

In school , the doors are closed and the kids are seated at their desks .

At home I have him at the kitchen table , no distractions TV radio etc. are always all off . When he gets to his max tolerance level I get him to get up , shake it off , go for a quick walk around , give the horse an apple etc . Learned a few weeks ago that if I give him more than 5 minutes to 'shake" it off we have to start from scratch again. We bought him a new desk for his room and got the corner all set up for him do study and do his homework but he does not like to use it yet .

Big Foot , you are correct though, he is much too easily distracted except when it comes to TV or video games (which he has not been allowed to play anymore because of his eye problems ) But what 11 year olds are not distracted easily when they are doing something that they do not enjoy . :roll:

I am at a loss.
 
hillsdown":18aq6t96 said:
I need help !!! :help: :help: :help: :help:

I need tips and techniques to help him when he does homework and in school to stay focused .... . :devil2:

Just throwing this out:
Could he be have difficulty collecting, organizing and remembering his thoughts or taking notes? I have two ideas or thoughts: teach him how to build an outline and organize his thinking; teach him, show him how to mind map or do fishbone to record and collect info and the relationships between the information. I believe the two tend to go together and have helped me in the past organize my thinking when there was a seemingly endless amount of data and info competing for attention.

Best of luck!
 
Dega Moo":37llmd3e said:
hillsdown":37llmd3e said:
I need help !!! :help: :help: :help: :help:

I need tips and techniques to help him when he does homework and in school to stay focused .... . :devil2:

Just throwing this out:
Could he be have difficulty collecting, organizing and remembering his thoughts or taking notes? I have two ideas or thoughts: teach him how to build an outline and organize his thinking; teach him, show him how to mind map or do fishbone to record and collect info and the relationships between the information. I believe the two tend to go together and have helped me in the past organize my thinking when there was a seemingly endless amount of data and info competing for attention.

Best of luck!


I think that is it Dega Moo ! :tiphat: I did a quick search on mind mapping and it looks like there is a lot of software available on this . He love computers and finds learning on them fun , this just may do the trick. Is there a specific program that you like and suggest we try .

Thanks for all of your replies, I appreciate you taking the time to help me out !!! :)
 
Break it up a little. One of the main reasons we home-school is to deal with my son's ADD. We (mostly she) do ten minutes of focus and ten minutes of him buzzing around the room making strange noises and then back to ten minutes of focus. Anything more is a waste of everyone's time.
Accept that learning is the goal and what the school says is secondary. Find what he's interested in and teach him that for a while and let the school complain all they want about where he is compared to other kids. Once he's in "I want to know MORE" mode it's easy to start slipping in other stuff. My son hates reading but I can plop a book about anything mechanical in nature in front of him and he's there for hours because it's something HE WANTS. My daughter hates math but loves all things cattle so I hit her with EPD's from a few bulls of different breeds and an adjustment table and ask her to find me the best WW in the bunch and her eyes light up.

In my mind, it sounds like the focus needs to shift away from trying to FORCE him to do good in school and go to helping him be a happy person. School work will get easier for him in time but trying to force it will push you two apart and not help the schoolwork at all. ;-) He doesn't need school anywhere near as much as he needs to just have time to get over all the drama he's had in his life.

Lots of really happy, successful, well balanced people were not good in school... It won't be the end of the world if he isn't either. ;-) He needs to hear you saying that you love him regardless of how he does in school and if you really care you need to mean it when you say it.
 
... Is there a specific program that you like and suggest we try .

Thanks for all of your replies, I appreciate you taking the time to help me out !!! :)[/quote]

I use to take notes on paper just scratching out things in my own hand done style then follow up with software. I have an iPad (not with me right now) that has a rudimentary program that is surprisingly good. I'll post the name when I get home and even the price - but think it was free.

Former corporate life we used a program that I believe was called Mind Manager available both MAC/PC. It was expensive but truly full featured. I'll see what I can dig up on those apps.

I was taught in middle school to first outline any paper I was going to write, capturing the overall goal of the paper and goal of each paragraph as well as key points and the overall flow of the paper. Coolest thing was how easy it was to change the flow or progression by simply moving headings and subheadings around.

To be clear, I think outlining helps us to express ourselves in a manner coherent to our audience while mind mapping helps us capture facts, our own thoughts and our own understanding. I really believe the two go hand in hand.
 
I have two mind mapping apps on my iPad. Mindjet Maps is an iPad app that also has software for PC and MAC. It's free on the iPad. We used it in the Engineering Department where I use to work. Fully functioned and very useful but also cost us quite a bit of money. I'd think it's overkill for your purposes.

iThoughtsHD for the iPad has a pretty good feature set and I think reasonably intuitive. This is the app I use. MyThoughts is the MAC/OSX version and sells for $49 which is really cheap. I have it but really don't use it much - prefer the iPad.

Here's a link to the i|myThoughtsHD web page: http://www.ithoughts.co.uk/iThoughtsHD/Welcome.html

If you need to chase PC software google Mind Mapping Software for Windows
 
Dega Moo":28z0he61 said:
hillsdown":28z0he61 said:
I need help !!! :help: :help: :help: :help:

I need tips and techniques to help him when he does homework and in school to stay focused .... . :devil2:

Just throwing this out:
Could he be have difficulty collecting, organizing and remembering his thoughts or taking notes? I have two ideas or thoughts: teach him how to build an outline and organize his thinking; teach him, show him how to mind map or do fishbone to record and collect info and the relationships between the information. I believe the two tend to go together and have helped me in the past organize my thinking when there was a seemingly endless amount of data and info competing for attention.

Best of luck!
I give up :dunce:
What is fishbone?
 
My fault Ryder - I just kind of threw that out there in an off handed way. Essentially you start with say a horizontal line(spline) and from that line draw shorter lines sweeping up and back as well as lines sweeping down and back. The spline is labeled with a main idea or concept and the 'rib bones' are labeled with short descriptive aspects, questions, whatever of or about the main concept. The diagram takes on the appearance of a fish skeleton stripped of flesh.

They are used a lot and much more formally determining and documenting cause and effect relationships but our personal use was more on the lines of simply quickly recording information about a subject. Every fish skeleton was a main or important concept we wanted to capture information about. At the end of a session you could find yourself with a stringer :) In the end though they're really not but another mapping tool it's just that the software based can be adorned with many types of info and media.

If you really want to dive into the subject Google "Fishbone Charting" and you could get more official definitions.
 

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