Primary home schooling?

[Dramalamaindeed]

My son is in primary 4 and seems to be doing well in school.

I’m wondering is there a breakdown of what they learn in primary 4 and where he is on this?

I opened a twinkl account and printed stuff off for him but some of it was too difficult for him. It was asking for him to highlight nouns, adjectives, adverbs. He wasn’t sure and I was trying to explain but I didn’t know how to do it in the correct way as let’s face it I’ve forgotten exactly what an adverb is .

Is there a way to teach him new things which I can follow instead of my crap explanations which make him confused and frustrated?

How do I do this?

Sumdog is the only maths homework he gets even when schools is open so I’m very concerned he’s way behind where he should be.

Sumdog is "fun" stuff (actually, I am not really a fan).
Get on Khan Academy, that is the best place to get started (and it is FREE!!) and once you get a feel for what is going on you can get some workbooks.

DDs school haven’t set any work, we got logins for Sumdog and BugClun but that’s it. The school has gone silent

I really worry about my abilities to teach her anything

Don’t know if at all helpful but the Primary textbook publishers in Ireland have made their books and worksheets accessible for the duration of the pandemic
My.cjfallon.ie
Folens.ie
Edco.ie

I don’t recognise this. My kid has been doing adjectives, adverbs etc. Tons of work set on Google Classroom, in fact so much that we are falling behind (and we are a “swotty” family). I can’t say I am impressed by the other kids’ writing skills on the “Stream”, though. Spelling and grammar very poor, but I assume this is either them not taking care or that they don’t read much so don’t have the practice ?

I suppose I do recognise an issue with kids not being corrected. For example, the story you mention. Apparently it stifles their creativity or something. I do correct my child when we write anything at home and we read a lot which means literacy isn’t really an issue for us, but I have a feeling the others don’t really get corrected (or not every time), which is a problem for those from families who are not capable of filling in the gaps or who assume that school is taking care of that. I do wonder how this is supposed to reduce the achievement gap.

My son is primary 3 and learning nouns, adverbs etc. I think his whole school have been amazing. They got google classroom up and running for loads of kids within a few days, uploaded work and my sons teachers helped all the parents to get online links the first weekend. My son has ASN needs so has PSA support at school his 2 favourite messaged him daily last week.

As for the teaching of nouns etc. OMG I have no clue but I am dyslexic so struggle anyway with that stuff. I messaged his teacher before the schools broke up and asked what apps he recommended as I didn’t feel able to teach him this stuff. Ask for he’ll once’s the schools are back most teachers or schools will do there best to help.

And here we are at the end of the second week of "Distance learning" and now we have the Easter Holidays.

My experience so far has been OK with one teacher and (to me) dismal with the other.
Teacher 1 tries to get in touch, sometimes gives you feedback (but only if you are lucky) and posts some actionable worksheets (some others not so much, but we can't have everything).
Teacher 2 drives me round the bend. Every day she posts a list of activities but she also writes in LARGE BOLD underlined characters that you may do whatever activity you like, and that you don't have to hand it in. When you do hand it in you pretty much get nothing back. What is the point then? I pretty much stopped downloading stuff because I couldn't be bothered with "prepare a post about the Titanic" and such like and even when we put effort in, it was unacknowledged. And what about the worksheets with the answer printed after the question?? (and she is a young woman, not some old biddie unaccustomed to computers).

Going forward I feel I will disregard what teacher 2 does, unless my kid goes on line and downloads the stuff. I have no motivation to do otherwise.
We'll see what happens with teacher 1.

What about you lot? Any comments on your "distance learning"?

Note, I know this child and he is lovely and comes from a nice home, so he does not belong to the "disadvantaged" or "learning difficulties" or whatever group
I have a nice home, my ds is lovely, he has learning difficulties and I'm struggling with teaching him at home tbh. If you are talking about a primary level child they could easily have an undiagnosed learning difficulty.

DDs school finally emailed saying there will be work prepared from the 20th so just need to keep winging it till then

I bet there will be plenty of winging needed after that too :D

My son is Primary 1 and he has actually been taught how to write ‘healthy’ sentences with capital letters and full stops etc. but I know other parents who gave different experiences. You often hear that the standard of teaching is very variable under the CfE with some teachers going way beyond others, and I suspect that this will come to light more now. It seems to be a major structural flaw in the system.

In terms of the work from the school, we’ve pretty much burned through everything that was sent home (which I’m sorry to say was too easy) so I’m improvising with various online resources. We’ve done the Twinkl CfE and key stage 1 material, and generally I find the KS1 is at a more appropriate level and less fluffy (great way to describe CfE I think). We’ve also signed up for the Carol Vordeman thing, and I’ve gotten various worksheets in various subjects by googling.

There must be huge variation - my elder one’s primary 1 experience was just like that, wonderful teacher - sentences, capitals, pushed on reading and gave detailed feedback but the younger one doesn’t seem to have done much more than write cat so far and on the starter books. They sent home the next set of phonics cards and a log in for sumdog. They keep saying that p1 and p2 should be all about ‘learning through play’ which they seem to interpret as meaning free play.

I’m sure the other teacher is still doing a fantastic job despite cfe.

@lentenwonder, in my (LIMITED) experience, from P3 all the way to P7 they still "learn" through play...

BTW - it wasn't just me going mad my short term memory going: MNHQ has swapped the positions of the Bookmark and Report buttons in the app. There's a thread on it in Site Stuff.

Cue lots of inadvertent reporting of innocuous posts

They've finally come on to that thread to say that it's not a mistake and that it's in preparation for new buttons coming

Oops - wrong thread

Anyone still working through the hols?

We are because we couldn't get through all the work dc1 had before the holidays (secondary) and we can't make him work without giving something to dc2 (primary)

We didn’t get nearly enough done but he is refusing to do more now! And I thought we were a swotty lot! They’ve given a lot of tasks.... to be fair some are verging on fun. Lots of art and he doesn’t like drawing.