I'm soooooooooo happy... I've invested in about 3 or 4 sets (I bought them on separate occasions, so I've lost track of how many I have bought) of Bananagrams - basically a word game where you form words using letter tiles in a crossword form (kinda like Scrabble without the board) with other banana-relevant rules/twists. So I bought them because they have more tiles than a Scrabble set has, and there are at least 2 of every letter...
I'm using them to teach syllabication... just so the children have something to touch and move around, rather than doing it all on paper like we have been doing so far. Anything that doesn't involve writing excites the kids... so I feel this was a good investment. I also bought them at a time when Popular was having their 20% storewide discount thing... so they came cheaper than they were when they first appeared on the market. Now they seem to be everywhere!!!
My only complaint is that the letters are all capital letters... although with lower case letters, sometimes the orientation is rather confusing.
Now, I plan to use my paint pen to colour all the vowels red, the consonants blue and mark "y" in a different colour since it sometimes takes on the role of a vowel... now maybe to create some homemade long and short vowel indicators... :)
Showing posts with label home-made materials. Show all posts
Showing posts with label home-made materials. Show all posts
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Monday, September 21, 2009
Finally, a class with Kasser!
Finally had a class with Kasser again last Friday. Brought the big kids along to his house again because they were having a holiday due to the PSLE Listening Comprehension. So my two biggies did their homework during the one hour I had with Kasser.
The OG portion of our lessons have been shortened, due to his lack of a regular English tutor now, and my discovery that he has absolutely no grammar understanding to speak of. And because his English Exams are coming up, I have to help him brush up a little so that he can make fewer mistakes with simple Subject-Verb Agreement, and do better overall, in Comprehension, Composition and the likes.
So we covered the "igh" sound again, and did Auditory Drill, Visual Drill, Reading with training for Fluency and some spelling. I also did a little on homonyms - using the "i-e" and the "igh" sounds... trying to put into context the words that he didn't know... which was most of them.
Then we moved on to SVA. Despite it being quite a few lessons now, he still doesn't get it. So I made some cards with irregular verbs for him, showing him simple present tense, simple past tense, continuous tense as well as singular and plural forms... He will have to practise sorting them at home with mom, as well as do the exercises that I had crafted for him... handwritten grammar exercises, specially to meet his needs.
I'm feeling a little discouraged with him these days - it seems that since the lessons became Free of Charge, the commitment level has dipped. Lessons are more irregular - he misses lessons more often, for more frivolous reasons... and the mom is less keen, it seems, to have me come as often as I'd like (which is only twice a week). Ah well. Next year, it will be a challenge, because he will have to have lessons in the evening, when I am busy with my own children. And because he is in the morning school, I cannot keep him too late either. So I will have to figure out how to continue to teach him, or if I should stop. We'll see.
The OG portion of our lessons have been shortened, due to his lack of a regular English tutor now, and my discovery that he has absolutely no grammar understanding to speak of. And because his English Exams are coming up, I have to help him brush up a little so that he can make fewer mistakes with simple Subject-Verb Agreement, and do better overall, in Comprehension, Composition and the likes.
So we covered the "igh" sound again, and did Auditory Drill, Visual Drill, Reading with training for Fluency and some spelling. I also did a little on homonyms - using the "i-e" and the "igh" sounds... trying to put into context the words that he didn't know... which was most of them.
Then we moved on to SVA. Despite it being quite a few lessons now, he still doesn't get it. So I made some cards with irregular verbs for him, showing him simple present tense, simple past tense, continuous tense as well as singular and plural forms... He will have to practise sorting them at home with mom, as well as do the exercises that I had crafted for him... handwritten grammar exercises, specially to meet his needs.
I'm feeling a little discouraged with him these days - it seems that since the lessons became Free of Charge, the commitment level has dipped. Lessons are more irregular - he misses lessons more often, for more frivolous reasons... and the mom is less keen, it seems, to have me come as often as I'd like (which is only twice a week). Ah well. Next year, it will be a challenge, because he will have to have lessons in the evening, when I am busy with my own children. And because he is in the morning school, I cannot keep him too late either. So I will have to figure out how to continue to teach him, or if I should stop. We'll see.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Back breaking...
I spent quite a few back breaking hours today making game pieces for future OG lessons...
First I had to make a copy of the sheet of game pieces... then I highlighted them different colours just to make them look pretty, and cut them out in long strips. I put double sided tape on them, then cut them into their individual squares. Then I removed the tapes and pasted them onto 200gsm blue paper, and cut them up again into squares (now highlighted with a blue frame around) then arranged them onto hot laminate backing, and ran the two sheets through my hot laminator... then cut up the freshly laminated pieces, making sure to round the edges.
All that, just so the kids can have a slightly more fun time differentiating between dge, ge, tch, ch, c, k and so on... but I figure, since I'm doing this for at least 3 kids right now, and hopefully more in the future, this investment in time, effort and some money is well worth it... but I need to convince my aching back and shoulder muscles that this is true.... :P
First I had to make a copy of the sheet of game pieces... then I highlighted them different colours just to make them look pretty, and cut them out in long strips. I put double sided tape on them, then cut them into their individual squares. Then I removed the tapes and pasted them onto 200gsm blue paper, and cut them up again into squares (now highlighted with a blue frame around) then arranged them onto hot laminate backing, and ran the two sheets through my hot laminator... then cut up the freshly laminated pieces, making sure to round the edges.
All that, just so the kids can have a slightly more fun time differentiating between dge, ge, tch, ch, c, k and so on... but I figure, since I'm doing this for at least 3 kids right now, and hopefully more in the future, this investment in time, effort and some money is well worth it... but I need to convince my aching back and shoulder muscles that this is true.... :P
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
