Anyone else currently homeschooling in their second/ additional language?

[NotADomesticCat]

Schools are closed. Secondary age kids are pretty self sufficient aside from technical issues logging onto overloaded websites and in dc2's case needing advice around structuring his time.

DC3 however is only 8, and has left half his books at school. Thank goodness for the explanation videos on you tube

Not exactly however we're finding both French and Arabic (particularly Arabic!!) very hard. Our youngest is learning both and 9. He'd happily quit both and just do Spanish. Not an option for another couple of years though...

Regardless, from one homeschooling mum to another, I feel all your pain..!

Yes! Collège-aged DS 12yrs needs a lot of help to get organised - the system the schools use is not at all suited to online teaching / learning, both teachers and parents are tearing their hair out trying to make sense of it. I spent two hours this afternoon making a spreadsheet listing the various ways that his 11 different teachers are choosing to contact him and provide work, whether it’s to be sent to them for correction or not... there’s no way he could have worked that out on his own!

DS 9yrs at primary is much easier: one teacher, list of work emailed directly to parents, job done. Luckily he had brought home the right books he needs, but we have a couple of friends families who would photo and share anything we didn’t have - and a class WhatsApp group too. He’s doing future verbs: great refresher for me! I think my written / read French is going to improve over the next few weeks - though I’m not speaking French at all, which isn’t good!

Yes ds is danish but has asd so mother tongue is english. There is a sofa school online so hes done a little bit but prefers working through the danish ish books from school.

Homeschool is in English (thank god) but DS is expected to do Arabic twice a week and my skills are conversational at best. Luckily I have lots of Arabic speaking colleagues who are happy to help out!

Yes! It ends up as a mix as asd DS will only speak to me in English. I'm getting both DC to so some stuff together, even if they're not supposed to, so they can help and correct each other language-wise. I can read and understand but DD takes exception to my pronunciation. DS has made huge progress is maths and I'm wondering if it's because he's out of the stress of school, because his TA isn't constantly telling him it's really hard or because he's learning it in English.
DS's teachers are really well organised and his online school tasks are easy to follow. DD's teacher is struggling.

We speak English to one another but the work is in German and there is so much of it, and so muh new content. We're doing fine, it's just hard to do anything else, like work...

I wish Living Overseas were busier. I'm shocked it isn't as the UK experience of the pandemic and lockdown reflected on the boards and in conversations with relatives in the UK isn't my experince living overseas, and the homeschooling thread are so annoying because the expectatins and volume of work are apparently so different.

We’re in Italy and DD (14) has almost full days of school between homework, projects and distance learning.
Her 3rd year Middle School exams are expected to be replaced by a Thesis on a certain multi-disciplinary topic, to be written, handed in and discussed as a video conference. Or so we believe...
She’s as happy as a lark! Writing, talking and linking in to her favourite topic, discussing most of it with me in English, getting input or help from DH and her brother (21) who have a different slant.
It’s doing her and her language skills a world of good. English is our home language and she’s a strong 60/40 Italian/English bilingual. So is DS. And fortunately where MY language skills are missing the others are here to take over.
I don’t like being a teacher to my own child. I never signed up for it but with the prospect of a national exam result she’s putting on a good enough show. With three adults’ help!

Sgtmajormummy it sounds as though it's going really well!

Are her teachers doing live lessons? (I read posts a while ago on another part of MN by someone claiming to be a teacher in Italy saying she was teaching a full day of live lessons on line, which didn't seem very plausible or practical to me).

Is her brother a student or working?

Yes, Italy is doing live teaching at a rate of 50%, so one hour of class time translates into 30 minutes of online teaching. The kids use a home computer or tablet (smartphone at a pinch) with webcam to link up via Google Classroom and Meet. The school’s online register gives homework and the week‘s schedule and homework is sent back via photo or digital document to the individual teachers. Everybody has a school email address and identity so no strangers can access the courses and the teachers work from home. The work stays on the Cloud so teachers’ computers aren’t clogged up. Homework corrections are written in and sent back. It‘s even possible to do timed tests online!

It took about 10 days to get the system working and it was certainly stressful! A baptism of fire.
I voiced my doubts about safeguarding of minors and unwanted onlookers which were brushed hastily aside “for the greater good” of teaching. This seems to be what is stopping the UK from going back to teaching. When it came to group video lessons of gym (imagine the younger or older siblings goggling at 14yo in gym gear!) I was more supported and they were stopped.
We also live in a relatively wealthy area and most kids had the hardware to start immediately. The Ministry of Education gave funds for children without tablets which came through just before Easter and those classes had to wait until everyone was equipped.
It’s workable for 11yo and up. Not sure how they manage at Primary.

DS is at University. His lessons are online too, but as his lecturers are also working with the COVID crisis there have been some disruptions. University fees‘ second and third payments have been suspended. Yesterday he did an exam he’d been studying for since October. Fully valid although it was done via video.

Oh wow. Aside from the astoundingly wrong idea of the gym classes Italy sounds incredibly on the ball homeschooling wise!

Before Easter we were getting no personal feedback - a lot of work set, answers sent out to a degree and parents told to mark and scan/ photograph and send back. There was a weekly whole class letter from class/ lead teacher each week with summary feedback but nothing individual.

Since Easter it's been more organised in terms of feedback, with children able to message teachers and more feedback on work, and some ungraded tests to ensure new material is being understood.

Feedback makes all the difference - sending work into a void was beyond depressing and demotivating.

A few teachers have made their own online videos, and dc3's primary teacher has phoned once very briefly indeed, but no live teaching here.

My middle child (age 12)'s teachers seem to be hitting the best balance, my 14 year old doesn't have enough work, although one or two subject teachers are sending lots others haven't sent anything at all since schools closed on 17th March. Dc3's class teacher is also his maths teacher and is very on the ball. DC3's primary teacher sets work that dc3 can't finish in 5 hours even with my fully focussed constant supervision, there's no way he did anything like that volume when actually attending school, but it's quite dry and there's a lot which actually requires parents to actively teach new concepts. She's recently discovered online explanatory videos, but was sending out links to numerous different paid for services initially, which is not ideal!

A lot depends on the willingness of teachers to learn new computer skills. DD has some who are close to retirement age and they tend to stick with explaining online and setting homework to mark with the odd Youtube video link. BUT it’s not a given!