Our teacher is on board with providing my twin DD's with extension work but at times she doesn't have the time to focus on them. For example, this week the Kindy kids had to write an animal report after visiting the zoo. It was a simple activity--> a box for a picture to draw your animal and the remainder of the page was blank allowing the child space to write about the animal. The average child drew their animal and then wrote maybe two sentences (often with assistance to spell or prompt ideas from the two classroom teachers). Our girls drew their animal and wrote maybe four sentences (using more sophisticated language, spelling and grammar). They got no assistance other than the teacher prompted them to "write one more sentence"--> which they both dutifully did. They brought their report home to me and were beaming with excitement to show me their report. At home that night, I told them I love their report so much that I'd love it if they could write another one for me on a different animanl they saw at the zoo. I produced the same piece of paper and then pretended to be very busy doing the dishes etc and offered no assistance. One girl wrote all about whales (there was no whale at the zoo)in very small text using up every square inch of the paper and proably 10 sentences in total and stating things like it being a carnivore, mammal etc. The other girl wrote about an animal she saw and when she ran out of space asked for more paper and continued on. Meanwhile, I just busily did the dishes and offered no assistance and wasn't asked to either.
The difference in school work versus home work is huge. I just don't get it. Why do they underperform at school? How can I get the teacher to realise that despite their two reports being the best two in the class they were still grossly underperforming? Does it even matter that they underperform, when both thoroughly enjoyed the task and "did well"? Should I be teaching them to self extend and if so how? (I refrained from sayig "wow this report is miles better than what you did in class" but boy did I want to)
Thanks for reading this far
Last edited by all pink; 11/20/10 04:19 PM.
