Is it possible to cover curriculum whilst homeschooling at weekends only ?

[Babieseverywhere]

We have a bright 6yo DS, who is not doing well academically and the latest email from school says he is doing as well as they expect from him....which is no progress in the last two terms on phonics wise.

We will be asking school to help but doubt they will do anything as he is "fine".

DS is a brilliant child who has some social communication difficulties (not seen at school) and OT needs to overcome as he struggles with his balance/handwriting (not seen at school) and is very hard to keep him sat down and concentrating.

DH and I are looking at whether, we could teach him enough at weekends, so he could catch up at school.

How many hours a week would have to be done to cover maths, reading, spelling and phonics ?

I also don't understand why you can't access support or gain a diagnosis via comm paed route. I appreciate it's more difficult to get them to take your concerns seriously without school back up, but they should assess your DS independently and make their own conclusions regardless of what the school says. After all, they are the only ones qualified to diagnose - school aren't.

Because issues have to be seen in more than one setting. Doctors use home and school as these settings.

Until school see an issue, we are very unlikely to get any dx. Comm Paed said in some cases schools can't see children who mask and/or are subtle.

can you tell me what level the reports had him at and how old he is? please

Phase Three phonics in year 2 and 6yo.

But there needs to be an independent person who will go into school and make their own observations. This is usually the ed psych I think. Teachers really aren't qualified to have an opinion I don't think, my DDs teacher told me she's had a half days training course on ASD.

i can see why school are saying that he is not massively behind but i agree with you that he could be further on.

what phonics stuff does he do at home? i am not talking sitting doing work on paper which can be dull. does he play on the computer at all?

phonicsplay is a fab website which has some great phased games. what about education city? another great site for playing games that might help him?

you can print off some fab resources like word dominoes, or sound sheets for him to mess about with.

i would also spend lots of time with him sharing books for fun and maybe at the start of the book say 'shall we play a game? shall we see how many words we can find with the 'ai' sound in? ' or whatever sound...

schools veer away from 'levels' now and prefer to measure progress. so if a child makes 2 levels of progress then even if they are still not at an age appropriate level then [shrug] they are still making progress.

i also agree that the reading/phonics is the one thing to concentrate on as being able to read enables you to access every other area of the curriculum properly.

Sounds like the school is letting him down, you say 'it's a good school', in what way are they a good school, a school can be great for one child but the opposite for another. I moved my dd from 'a good school' to a supposedly 'not so good school' and she has done much better. We are lucky to have a diagnosis and a statement in place. Not all children can be taught the same and the school should be going out of their way to find something that works well for your ds even is he is not diagnosed with anything ( all kids are different ). I don't understand why the school won't let you take him out for OT, I took my dd out for one day every 2 weeks for therapy and the school never questioned it.

Because you have a diagnosis and we don't...We have to justify why a child who is 'fine' needs OT sessions Hopefully the OT report/lady will sort that particular issue out.

Thanks PP for links and suggestions, we will start them this weekend.

www.phonicsplay.co.uk/

Well worth paying the small subscription to access the whole site.

Thanks

You shouldn't have to justify anything - just say he has an medical appointment and take his appointment letter/card in if they request it. The school are acting out of their remit, if a qualified OT has recommended OT sessions and offered him appointments, it is not the place of the school to say that he doesn't need them, and you aren't required to justify it to them either.

The offered daily sessions are via NHS OT. No idea if these will run or not....school should tell us next week.

The offered weekly OT sessions are via a charity but a respected one run with trained OT's. The NHS OT would like us to take up the offered place. The school wants the governers to decide IF we can attend.

I would just take him to the sessions - what can the school do about it? If you have an appointment card/letter, no judge in the land is going to allow you to be fined for taking your DS to a medical appointment, and whether it is NHS or not is irrelevant. OT is a recognised therapy, the NHS therapist is recommending it. The school has no say in whether he attends.

sorry to be rude but 'marking place' as dashing out and want to come back to this thread.x

Does not sound like the best school for your son, not letting him access NHS medical support. Don't even think that's legal to be honest.

Anyway, to address the initial question....

Before school would be best. If you simply get up half an hour earlier and add some phonics and focused reading tuition to the beginning of the day (10 min of each), you'd see huge progress. That supposes you know what you're doing though, and if you're not 100% sure you do then you need a couple of sessions with a tutor. These will assess your son and tell you what you need to do, and how.

In the meantime, get some good phonic apps on a android or apple tablet (search on here to find the best ones) and encourage your son to go on them for ten minutes a day (pref before school when he's not already tired).

The NHS OT should copy your school into any correspondence, so they need to put it in writing to your school stating they'd like him to attend the weekly sessions.

But in the meantime I would be TELLING the school he will be attending, and taking him. The school can't really stop you. Any attendance concerns that arise you can eventually point them in the direction of the letter from the NHS OT.

No idea what the governers have to do with any of this, I doubt it is official procedure to ask the governers permission for a child to access medical appointments whether they're run by a charity or not. The charity will be commissioned to run these sessions - probably by the local CCG (NHS!).

TBH the school sound utterly utterly bonkers.

Babieseverywhere I'd suggest you google 'afterschooling'. It sounds to me like you more want to build up a few things rather than home educate and teach everything and there are communities of families who do so for many reasons who can give you guidance on programmes and things you can fit into time without taking the remaining free time your DS has on this. Along with talking to SEN parents who know more about getting schools to cooperate as already recommended, I think you'll find resources and guidance you're looking for.

As a home educating parent, if phonics is the sticking point, I would look into Piper Books - you can order their books from their website and the description of each set says what they cover so if you can find what areas your child is stuck at, you can find books to match and progress from there. Daily usage takes about 5-15 minutes. I used them with my struggling with phonics eldest and it worked well to get him past things. There are similar tools used for very short periods of time things that can be done for other topics.

You don't need all the weekends and evenings, small consistent steps will make a world of difference. If you want other recommendations, you can inbox me (though I still find maths difficult to do in short time bites other than fact drilling).

Thanks Spork. Will look at piper books etc.