Homeschooling Report Card #1
This is not an exciting post about RV (mis)adventures or exciting/fun/exotic activities. It's a journal entry about being a homeschool teacher.
Today (Sunday, 9/1), we manufactured an hour of peace and quiet so that I could teach an inaugural phonics lesson for Ali and Cate. We've picked a curriculum called Explode the Code, significantly because it provides an online teaching option. Amidst the chaos of the last week, we also failed to get our devices online in a reliable way to do teaching. Awesome.
So here's what it takes. Henry went off kayaking with his aunt and uncle. Elise took Lily and cousin Claire to go shopping in town. I put cartoons on the TV. It took me the first half-hour episode to get the classroom set up, including getting the laptop on a steady and strong wifi signal (required personal hotspot). Then I got Cate into the "classroom" while Ali watched a second episode before they switched.
During "class," I was often frustrated. During Cate's turn, the website kept hanging up so that I can to log out, log back in and reset everything. During Ali's turn, it took several tries to get it started. Part of it has to do with the fact that the platform is based on Adobe Flash, which is heading toward extinction. I hope it survives the year.
Fundamentally, class went well. The default first lesson focused on short vowels (a and i) as well as words that end with t and p. The hardest part is that teaching online requires the kids to have sufficient computer skills. They're pretty good at using the mouse. I was actually surprised that they could find keys on the keyboard when it was time to type (which wasn't a skill I think first graders should need, but anyway).
What's weird about this platform is that it "grades" them based on their accuracy and speed. Their computer skills, or lack thereof, played significantly into their speed, or lack thereof.
The best part is that the girls immediately asked if they could do more after lunch. I feel like having desire to do more outweighs all the other complaints, especially the technical-difficulty ones.
The biggest question that this raised for me, which I'll raise with our online charter school teachers, is determining how much time to spend in a session. I gave myself an artificial constraint today by linking each child's teaching time with a 30 minute cartoon.
I'm also curious about how it will work when the girls don't have such an isolated, quiet, un-distracting learning environment. I really can't see how they could do this well elbow to elbow with other learning activities. Huh.
Today (Sunday, 9/1), we manufactured an hour of peace and quiet so that I could teach an inaugural phonics lesson for Ali and Cate. We've picked a curriculum called Explode the Code, significantly because it provides an online teaching option. Amidst the chaos of the last week, we also failed to get our devices online in a reliable way to do teaching. Awesome.
So here's what it takes. Henry went off kayaking with his aunt and uncle. Elise took Lily and cousin Claire to go shopping in town. I put cartoons on the TV. It took me the first half-hour episode to get the classroom set up, including getting the laptop on a steady and strong wifi signal (required personal hotspot). Then I got Cate into the "classroom" while Ali watched a second episode before they switched.
During "class," I was often frustrated. During Cate's turn, the website kept hanging up so that I can to log out, log back in and reset everything. During Ali's turn, it took several tries to get it started. Part of it has to do with the fact that the platform is based on Adobe Flash, which is heading toward extinction. I hope it survives the year.
Fundamentally, class went well. The default first lesson focused on short vowels (a and i) as well as words that end with t and p. The hardest part is that teaching online requires the kids to have sufficient computer skills. They're pretty good at using the mouse. I was actually surprised that they could find keys on the keyboard when it was time to type (which wasn't a skill I think first graders should need, but anyway).
What's weird about this platform is that it "grades" them based on their accuracy and speed. Their computer skills, or lack thereof, played significantly into their speed, or lack thereof.
The best part is that the girls immediately asked if they could do more after lunch. I feel like having desire to do more outweighs all the other complaints, especially the technical-difficulty ones.
The biggest question that this raised for me, which I'll raise with our online charter school teachers, is determining how much time to spend in a session. I gave myself an artificial constraint today by linking each child's teaching time with a 30 minute cartoon.
I'm also curious about how it will work when the girls don't have such an isolated, quiet, un-distracting learning environment. I really can't see how they could do this well elbow to elbow with other learning activities. Huh.
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