Friday, February 03, 2006

school

S is driving me crazy. She is smart - high average on the iq scale, but she performs about three grade levels behind in school. At first we blamed this on the issues and trauma she's dealt with over her life. Now, it has come down to old habits and laziness.

She was genually surprised when I asked her to tell me about the chapter she's working on in Social Studies. See, she glosses over the text in the chapter, then answers the questions at the end by finding the key words back in the text and writing whatever it says. The key words are usually bolded. She actually said, "I read the whole thing. What do you expect me to do, read it over and over until I memorize it?" ha ha. I said, "Well, maybe not memorize, but at least remember the important parts." She responded that she doesn't have to do it that way and she is way ahead of all the other kids in her class. I tried to explain that the way she was doing it didn't really constitute 'learning', instead she was using a quick technique to skim through information.

I don't understand how her teachers teach. The kids don't have books assigned, so I can't look through them and see what they are supposed to be going through at home. At the most, they bring a few worksheets home.

Holly is trying to get everyone to approve home schooling S for three classes every day. She'd still go to band and science and one other class at school, then Holly would do the rest. Everyone likes the idea, except that home schooling is not acceptable under the foster care regulations. We have to get some sort of special approval. At least S would actually LEARN stuff. She still may not catch up, but she'd have some knowledge.

1 Comments:

At 6:11 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh dear. I was horribly lazy in highschool, and learned atrocious study habits. It took getting bad marks in university first semester to shake me awake. Does S get good marks (with her skim and fill method), or does she just not care if they aren't good? Sounds like the homeschooling is a good idea. I hope you get approval.

 

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