It's a "new" school year.
Make sure you cover the following items found on the ITBS test. These are apparently holes in the boys' education.
1. Show them how to use a card catalog.
I don't know a library that still has this fine piece of furniture but apparently it is still an important skill. Also, go over the Dewey decimal system so the boys know that they can find a specific book instead of browsing though the stacks. (But what's the fun in that?)
2. Practice alphabetizing.
This must be a more useful skill than I realized. I guess we can practice by alphabetizing spelling words. If we write neatly, we'll call it handwriting practice.
3. Explain what guide words are.
Yes, the boys know how t use a dictionary, but the "terms" surrounding the massive book have been overlooked. I didn't know what they were either.
4. Bite the bullet and use the Rod and Staff grammar.
Worst case, I get a kid who hates diagramming but knows his parts of speech. There are worse things that could happen.
5. Figure out what equality sentences are and find out why my son has so much trouble with them when he aces all the other sections of the silly test. Once you figure them out...make the kid practice a few right before the test.
6. Keep reading.
Apparently, I'm doing that part just right.
7. Do more Latin.
It will help with vocabulary and logic.
8. Stop worrying about "Social Studies." It's too silly to worry about.
2 comments:
But mostly #8. The card catalog is important because there are still a lot of ps libraries with card catalogs. The alphabetizing helps with the card catalogs.
According to the ITBS, we neglected to teach Max word one about capatalization and punctuation. For some reason, I thought that was HILARIOUS. But I went and bought a workbook for it.
Everything else seems to be coming along nicely.
So I read:
3. Explain what guide words are.
And I stopped to think. Then I read on and thought, "oh! That's what you call them? *shrug* ok."
I finished reading this post, got a good chuckle out of it, and read it aloud to Zorak. I got to number three and he had the same look on his face... "guide words?" I explained it. "Ohhhhh. *shrug* OK."
Somehow we are still capable of finding words in dictionaries and utilizing those previously unnamed words at the top. Huh.
Just *think* how many SKILLS your boys are going to have! WOOHOO!
Dy
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