eduspeak – homeschoolery

curriculum

what even is it? this master that rules us all…. I think of these lovely well-meaning, probably nice people, all sitting around genuinely believing they are doing good for children writing away, contemplating every word. I do think it smacks of what a lawyer (friend’s father) once said about the law – that a belief…

gifted

I have been thinking about this recently as I am trying to think of a way to provide educational opportunities that would make money to pay rent to have a place to provide these opportunities and I thought maybe the idea that what you provide was for gifted children would get a certain kind of…

Modeling

I am doing Masters. As it is about education, I am sharing it with my one student. Firstly, thinking about how we think of ourselves within education. Secondly, thinking about our place as pakeha in a Maori country, how to be tangata tiriti. We listened to the RNZ history podcast together. I bought a beautiful…

success

Today, I arrived at work, to the job I love, feeling a little blue. On Sunday night, I handed in my first Masters assessment for a course called Transforming Education. It was awful. I was not pleased with what I wrote. But I did learn a lot that will be useful in the long term……

the Tests

I found some UK kids tests in my teachers college stuff, we must have been given them as a ‘this is kinda like a P.A.T test with out us giving you one’ thing. They are for year 5, level 3-5. I have taught in the UK but couldn’t tell you if that us the same…

Going to a dyslexia course..

I thought this would be brilliant as I know people, big and small, who are dyslexic. I want to know more, to understand. I want to know; how we know, how to work out if someone thinks differently, what skills they have that I can help foster because I can only see thinking differently as…

secret learning to read (30.10.18)

I have done no ‘active teaching’ in Helena’s learning to read. I was trying the theory that you can learn to read yourself as I was never convinced that the rituals at school teaching kids to read were what was doing it. It’s all the child. The ingredients for reading are: a child who wants…

it’s Physical Education/health… (21.08.18)

Mixed with a little bit of physical geography… slope stability? Hmmm maybe I should make it history and show Helena pictures of music festivals and hippies! We went to the beach with the Tuesday homeschooling group and even better, a beach we’d never been to before. I think of the homeschooling group as all the…

more on the qualities of wax (the weekend)

We are making non plastic shopping bags (fundraising for nature, a KCC challenge) and printing on them a design of Helena’s called Happy Fish – it says “thanks for not littering” and she recently added “keep our drains clean”. So I in full on make stuff up as you go mode, experiment before reading, trace over…