Friday 22 May 2015

SED 21 - helping with homework

Things are really back to normal now: I've just finished helping S with his spelling homework and given A his weekly Arabic lesson. Both of these things are part of our Thursday afternoon routine. 

S has a spelling quiz every Friday. His teacher gives out a list of 30 words every Monday, divided into 3 groups of easy, middle and difficult. When we first arrived, S was doing the easy and middle words, but within 6 weeks he was moved to the middle and difficult group. He learns all the words, anyway, and I give him dictation every Thursday evening. This week's topic was words with TH, CH and SH. Interestingly, after only a week's break, S did much more poorly than usual - he normally get less than 5 words wrong, and this time he got 8 "wrongs", as he calls them. He was quite philosophical about it, and it was proof, to my mind, of the importance of reading in learning spelling - he read much less than usual in Israel, and even not having his cell phone this week hasn't meant that he's read more than usual, since he and A have played a great deal together (and of course, they have had to make up the lessons that they missed). 

A's Arabic lesson went as could be expected. After a week's break, his reading had deteriorated, but I remember that happening to me after the summer vacation as an undergraduate. I am glad that I've set a specific day and time for the lessons, because they are actually happening and he's not dropping too far behind his class. After the Memorial Day weekend, we'll start having two lessons a week, beginning with a review all the vocabulary of the current plus the present-future tense (more correctly, the imperfect).

ETA: this is uploaded on Friday, as ADC came home just as I was about to do so yesterday.  

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