EDUCATION Defence against the summer slide
what to talk to your teacher about now
Most teachers begin their school year expecting to reteach a certain amount of material from the end of the previous year. Spirits run high in the last weeks of school, teachers are writing reports, the sun is shining and, on the whole, no one really has their head in the game. Trow in a play, a concert, a party or two and it makes sense that September is dedi- cated to settling in your new class and re-establishing the baseline from which you hope to teach.
One of the notable differences in children who learn dif-
ferently is memory – both storage and retrieval. For some children, getting the information processed through the sen- sory system can require a great deal of time; this can degrade the information, making storage tricky. Help for children who process differently, or store and retrieve differently, will include a great deal of repetition of material. Some kids need this because repetition acts as a ballast to new material awaiting filing.
Children who learn differently can be terribly affected by six to eight weeks off tuition. On the one hand, they work the hardest and truly need (and deserve) a break. On the other hand, without some engagement with whatever material they find most difficult to re- tain, they won’t raise their head from the para- pet until October. Playing catch up is an awful place to be and while I get that it doesn’t feel loving to force your child to study over the holidays, I would argue that it is even more unloving to set them up for a game of catch up in the first term.
Teach a reluctant child to play poker and blackjack and I promise they will be happy to do maths.
16 FOCUS The Magazine May/June 2019
www.focus-info.org
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