A very basic question with an answer I have not yet found.

[Biobytes]

DS is experiencing difficulties in school and is getting a bit behind. I believe he needs more one to one attention that the poor teacher, dealing with another 29 children, has hardly any time to provide.

To be honest, I am still quite in the dark about how to find/ do a program of activities that cover the curriculum .

I have found the National Curriculum website and read a few web pages on HE, but does anybody know where can I find information on activities to achieve those targets and particularly, on how to plan the day to day with him to ensure those targets are met?

How old is your ds?

I could have written this post 18 months ago when I first started out!

I depends what kind of HE you want to do, you are under no obligation to follow the National Curriculum anyway.

To be totally honest, if you look at the objectives for each year, they are pretty laughable. My ds would be in year 2 now, and I looked at some of the year 4 literacy targets for the NC the other day and he has supassed them already (and he is pretty much average in his abilities). We do very srtuctured home ed, I kind of use the NC as a basis for maths and English anyway. The science, history and geography in the NC I have found to be a waste of time as it is so limited, especially for KS1 and those subjects are where my ds interrest lays, so we do totally our own thing through projects which he enjoys. Again if you look at the 'targets' for those subjects, he passed them long ago, but we expand on everything, and do not really use it all all for literacy as to me it seems very dummed down.

We use workbooks for each key stage (WH smith do their own, you can buy all sorts of workbooks in most bookshops), so they follow the NC, but we expand on them with our own work.

When I read about NC targets and guidelines, read teaching packs etc, the NC just seems so limited and one size fits all. But, if you look at what children are expected to have achieved over a certain year it's nothing much as far as I can see.

Are you thinking of removing your ds from school to HE?

Thank you for your post.

I agree with you that the NC expectations are very low, DS surpassed many of the KS1 expectations before he finished reception.

We were lucky in that he could attend a very small school where the teacher had a lot of one to one time with him so he became advanced when compared to average schools but nothing special when compared to his peers.

Problem is that we needed to move and he has ended up in a very big school where the teacher has not even yet had the time to learn how to write his name properly (it's not her fault, I can see she is extremely busy with so many children).

Having the concentration problems DS has always had, he is now getting behind so I'm trying to make up for the lost one to one time to ensure he doesn't get severely behind. He is in Year 2.

I confess I toyed with the idea of home education some years ago, but now I'm a single parent and benefits are stopping for us next year, I'm afraid I can not afford to do it.

I have got books from WHS smith for writing and maths, is there anything available for all the other subjects or a resource that I can use to do some fun activities in the afternoon to keep him in track?

Hi, sorry to hear about your son not getting what he needs in his school. It must have been quite a tough teansition going from a small school to a large one. Have you voiced your concerns to his teacher?

If you go to any bigish bookstore, you will find books for english, Maths and Science. Or look online at amazon.

For online resources, my ds quite likes www.educationcity.com The do online Maths, English, Science and languages. There are online activies to do and worksheets to print out to go along with them. It's about £29 per year, but I think you get a months free trial. You can put in your childs school year and it follows the NC.

www.primaryresources.co.uk is good for worksheets for subjects, lots of things you can print out from there.

The BBC schhols website is also very good, my ds enjoys that as well.

Am absoluley shattered from wandering around trick or treating with ds, but I hope that helps.

hello biobytes

I would recommend reading more than anything else. the ercomeendations for bbc etc are good. but m ore than anything else, reading is the thing. the most enjoyable, least pressurised, activity, and the activity nmost likely to benefit. it osunds so dull. but reading and simple maths outside teh national curriculum will definitely keep him in trackL: the straightforward stuff you learned in school youreslf.

jeez sory will revisit this crap post tomrrow but am so disillusioned with the nc i think you can revist your own instincts as to hat he needs adn start from there.

sorry about crappy speelling etc.

excuse all that, just come back from a night out

I do think that trying to keep track of the National Curriculum can be rather pointless. If you help him with reading, times tables and the simple maths methods you yourself learned at school it will be of much more benefit than trying to follow something which is failing so many children.

From experience: ignore advice not to use a simple maths method rather than the clunking, time-consuming and tedious methods that are currently the rage.

I think I can manage the reading, maths and even other languages, ok. The writing it's a different animal, he is having a lot of problems to write. Sciences, apart of maths and anything involving manual activity from art to sports are in serious need of attention.

Thank you again for the links, will have a look and come with more questions