As every other parent of a special child, we too leverage the ecosystem of our support, whichever way we can. We have encouraged our DS's grandparents, cousins and my (DD) friends to write to DS via email. Early on, we needed to sit with DS for him to go through his gmail account and prompt him to respond. The framework DW used to teach DS, was that of a train - it has an engine (greetings, how are you, etc), the carriages (body of the mail with content) and caboose (the final byes, etc etc). The train analogy was used, since DS is a vehicle lover.
Now-a-days, no one needs to sit with DS - every saturday, he logs on to his gmail account and starts responding to emails.
Now that he was on auto-pilot on this, we had asked my (DD) dad, 6-8m ago, to ask him some math questions, in a way, that it is not overwhelming to DS; but position it as something my dad learned when he was the same age and had trouble learning it. Thus, a little by little, DS had graduated to solving progression etc. Last week, he had solved, 3, 5, 8, ___, 17, 23 progression !! (Yay!!!)
So we decided, it is time to up it, a bit. So we asked my dad to ask DS another question (#2) apart from the Math Q (#1). The math question would be the routine, but the second question would be some fact-finding. The intent of asking the question is NOT for him to find the answer. But discover the process of finding the answer. To get my dad to understand, here are the samples that we provided my dad with:
Now-a-days, no one needs to sit with DS - every saturday, he logs on to his gmail account and starts responding to emails.
Now that he was on auto-pilot on this, we had asked my (DD) dad, 6-8m ago, to ask him some math questions, in a way, that it is not overwhelming to DS; but position it as something my dad learned when he was the same age and had trouble learning it. Thus, a little by little, DS had graduated to solving progression etc. Last week, he had solved, 3, 5, 8, ___, 17, 23 progression !! (Yay!!!)
So we decided, it is time to up it, a bit. So we asked my dad to ask DS another question (#2) apart from the Math Q (#1). The math question would be the routine, but the second question would be some fact-finding. The intent of asking the question is NOT for him to find the answer. But discover the process of finding the answer. To get my dad to understand, here are the samples that we provided my dad with:
Who were the presidents of USA before and after Clinton ? DS will not know - but the knowledge/resolution process could be:
- DS asks us (or)
- he asks his teacher at school (or)
- he googles
- ...
How many 100s/centuries Sachin Tendulkar has made in his international cricket career ? DS wont know this; again, his options would be:
- he can ask me (or)
- he can google (or)
- he will figure out just like cars sites (that he loves to go and visit), there are cricket sites too...
So, the intent is, to make him discover the process of learning by himself (functional) rather than finding the answer (skill/knowledge). The belief is, if the process is set, the learning would be a resultant.
The first installment of questions have come through to his mailbox. We'll know how DS handles it soon !
The first installment of questions have come through to his mailbox. We'll know how DS handles it soon !
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