Planning for Last Four Weeks -- Year 6

Kieron's Spring Checklist and Syllabus

I put it up in a very basic doc form (above). Basically just a checklist. It's nice to actually be ahead of the game at the end of the school year.

In addition to that I am going to do a few lessons of Classical Writing Aesop.
And try to get out our nature study notebooks out as well.

You can see the layout here, but I will probably use source material from Our Island Story and from various encyclopedias. I'd like to get him doing a simple 2-source report before the end of sixth grade but we shall see.

About the Dysgraphia

Here is some more information, and some helps.
Here's another site.
(I don't know if Kieron actually has the underlying condition, but he certainly has the symptoms. We have worked on this through the years but it seems to be hitting particularly hard this year, partly I suppose since the gap between the cognitive and the mechanical is widening).

Some strategies listed:

1. Encourage students to outline their thoughts. It is important to get the main ideas down on paper without having to struggle with the details of spelling, punctuation, etc

2. Have students draw a picture of a thought for each paragraph.

3. Have students dictate their ideas into a tape recorder and then listen and write them down later.

4. Have them practice keyboarding skills. It may be difficult at first, but after they have learned the pattern of the keys, typing will be faster and clearer than handwriting.

5. Have a computer available for them to organize information and check spelling. Even if their keyboarding skills aren't great, a computer can help with the details.

6. Have them continue practicing handwriting. There will be times throughout a student's life that they will need to be able to write things down and maybe even share their handwriting with others. It will continue to improve as long as the student keeps working at it.

7. Encourage student to talk aloud as they write. This may provide valuable auditory feedback.

8. Allow more time for written tasks including note-taking, copying, and tests.

9. Outline the particular demands of the course assignments/continuous assessment; exams, computer literacy etc. so that likely problems can be foreseen.

10. Give and allow students to begin projects or assignments early.

I'm going to try a few of those and see how they work for him. Then I will move on to some more (there were a LOT listed).

Before I looked it up, I was thinking that I would have him do some review work every day in writing. I noticed that when the math is easy, for example, he has a lot less trouble writing (less reversals, less shaky writing, less dawdling and chewing his pencil) than when its at his level of challenge.

So I was thinking that I ought to simply switch to doing most of his work orally, then have him either:

• Do a bit of written work at an easier level (from last year's math or from earlier in this year)
• Copy out a "fair copy" of the work I've written down for him.
• Have him do math copywork.

I can do the same with spelling... use the earlier spelling words for handwriting remediation, then work with him on the more difficult words.

Same with the progym. As far as the progym goes, the dysgraphia sites say it is important to be allowed to outline and order thoughts at your level of ability rather than your level of mechanical competence. Of course, I can't STOP Kieron from ordering his thoughts all the time, whether I'm teaching this skill or not. But CM/classical methods like narration and the progym will allow easily for this.

Also, on the occupational therapy front -- the crafts will help. Fortunately, he loves crafts.

And I am going to try to have a "warm up" period before we sit down to work, where he does some of the Brain Gym type exercises.

So that is the plan for this week.

Miscellany -- Science Rabbit Trail

While I was looking for something completely different, I found this Geography Outline, using Montessori-type methods, at Lifelong Learning (it is a beautiful, organized blog with lots of sidebar resources)

I was looking for a 6th grade Science Scope and Sequence and found this general one.
Here is the World Book: Curriculum Standards for Grade 6
(Here's the Kindergarten and Preschool ones)
Here's an article by Eclectic Homeschool Online about Homeschooling S and S
Oh, and here's the YSC List of Kits
(I guess if we have a spine this year, that's it)

I'm looking this up because I just realized that I don't have the next topic for Kieron for science, yet -- one of the disadvantages of not using a traditional spine text.

Year 6 Plans -- gif form

Click on the thumbnails to make them full size if you want to see them more closely.

Year 6 and 9 Progress Charts -- Skill Subjects

I figured out how to make spreadsheets into GIFs so here are the charts in visual form if you are having trouble accessing Google Docs. You can click on the pictures to make them bigger.

I owe a hat tip to Trivium Academy: I'm doing these quite a lot like hers except sort of the opposite : )

Year 9 Progress at a Glance Charts






Year 6 Progress at a Glance Charts

Year 6 Course Outline

I completed the first draft of Kieron's course outline/checklist. A couple of readers commented that they could not get to Sean's Year 9 syllabus pdf, so I'll have to figure out what is going on with that -- I made a Google group as a repository for my PDFs, and I seem to be able to get there just fine, but apparently others can't (???).

Anyway, here is the Year 6 one. If I can find a better way to upload them, I will. It is a bit less, hmm, complete than Sean's, because the way Kieron's school year is happening, I invent subthemes based on what I think he would like or what he expresses an interest in. It is almost like units, or Main Lessons perhaps, except that they overlap considerably -- studying one thing at a time makes me claustrophobic!

So for example, right now for science he has been studying reptiles, by his request, but I'm also strewing some space/earth science type resources because Sean is doing Earth Science and it makes sense to me to use some of my research and collecting for Kieron's benefit. He just came in to narrate some material about black holes so apparently he must have picked up one of my strewn books. If I plan something he is not that interested in, I pass through it quickly --but I try to have more resources available if he is interested.

We have a big overarching theme of Discovery and Exploration this year -- which you can imagine encompasses just about everything, but it gives me a sort of focus -- a "golden thread" to follow.

In history/geography right now, in addition to the main texts he is reading, we are just finishing a sort of main lesson about Vikings. And in our read alouds, we seemed to focus for a while on World War II. The Vikings and WWII connected because of Snow Treasure, which is set in Denmark. Now we are reading the Flying Dutchman which serendipitously also connects to Scandinavia, because the story starts in Denmark, and the ship then sails down into the Atlantic.

You get the picture -- I am building the syllabus as we go. I prayed for joy at the beginning of this school year and this approach seems to bring to light at least a few little joyful sparkles.

Year 6 -- Kieron -- Lesson Plans

I've been trying to figure out the best way to do this. So here goes -- I'm going to put a post which I edit weekly by adding the link to the most recent lesson plans, and then link to the post on the sidebar. I hope this isn't too confusing to any onlookers! (if so, sorry....).

Week 12 -- Exams

Week 10

Week 9

Week 8

Roman Theme

It's just a list of ideas right now, so I'm putting it in a Google document:

Beginning Ideas for Roman Theme

Resources to Start Offf With

Here are Sean's books at the moment -- the basics we are starting with (it takes him about an hour to zip through this, barring the reading--- he finished the CS Lewis book and is now on GKC's The Man Who was Thursday, so I guess he is reading more than an hour a day)

Here are some of Kieron's books, though he isn't doing all of this, yet.... a few he will start working on next week, and this pic doesn't show the Latin he is doing with Clare.

His work, too, takes about an hour all told, so far.
















We will be adding more reading-type resources in the next couple of weeks.... otherwise this would be a dry course layout indeed.

But it's nice that we have the basic stuff off the ground, and it isn't going so badly.