Monday, October 28, 2013

first assessment for little Renzo - I CAN READ

The highlight of the past busy weekend, was an assessment I scheduled for Renzo at I CAN READ school, to understand how's his progress in terms of reading, or simply put, to test his English skill.

We arrived at the school on time at 2:30pm and this lovely teacher who's going to conduct the assessment, was already standing at the door and waiting for Renzo. Daddy decided to let Mummy go in with Renzo since Mummy is always more concerned about Renzo's learning progress.

The assessment lasted for about 20 minutes or so. The teacher first asked Renzo about his name, his age, his school and his class, and lastly he was asked if he knows when is his birthday, which according to the teacher, not many kids could answer. The only thing he could not answer, is "which year were you born?", and the teacher jokingly commented, no answer is better than an answer of "a year of rooster, or dragon" that she got from most of the kids she assessed. And Renzo didn't seem to be disturbed by the teacher's strong Australian accent, he could understand and converse well.

Then she went on to flash a full page of items, there are 27 of them, and Renzo could recognize 26 of them (except for the word "witch" which we have never introduced to his vocabulary), and when he recognized "igloo", the teacher looked pleasantly surprised.

She then went on to test Renzo the first sound of all those 27 items, he got them 100% right.

The next page of questions are very repetitive, he has to read the letters from A - Z, and tell the teacher what sound does these letters make, and in my opinion, these questions either make the kids more confident, or bored. For Renzo's case, I guess he was a little bored.. LOL..

He was then tested on a handful of letters and their sounds randomly, again, not a challenge to this little 4 years old who grew up with Leapfrog..

Next he was asked to read a whole list of words, from simple ones like "THE", "ONE", to slightly tougher ones like "COUGH", "THOROUGH", Renzo did not complete that test as he was already exhausted (probably from the morning dip in the pool and 1 hour of piano class) and couldn't focus well. I noticed when he wasn't sure about his answer, the moment the teacher questioned, "Do you know that?", he will shake his head without any further attempt to figure it out. So if you are coaching your kid to read at home, boosting their confidence level is definitely the key! It doesn't matter if they could not pronounce correctly but try not to ask this kind of closed-ended questions, because it's very easy for them to give up trying and say no. Some of these words here, he could definitely read if they were put into a context of a story. So I strongly believe that Renzo reads mainly by sight words, his strong phonic foundation helps but it's not all about phonics, when they are not trained with a proper system on how to read, breaking down the words or relating them to something they know, is the way most people learn to read. For example, if they know how to read "rice", most likely they will figure out words like "price", "thrice"..

The last part of the assessment, was a short paragraph and a long paragraph for him to read, he finished 2/3 of the short one and we had to stop there as he didn't wish to continue anymore. Then the teacher proceeded on with the pronunciation of "ch", "sh" and "th", it was a breeze for him and he told me he learned all from his Leapfrog although I always thought he wasn't paying much attention to that disc which teaches blending of 2 letters like these. Lastly he was tested on the first sound, last sound and middle sound of words like "elephant", "fish", "hen", etc, I heard that kids usually struggle with middle sounds, but I bet Renzo's ability to recognize middle sounds, must be the clincher for the teacher to decide which class he's qualified to attend at the end.

Renzo looked absolutely ecstatic when I told him that the assessment is over and as promised, he can go and eat his chocolate icecream!

Back to the assessment result, the teacher had only one thing to say: " Mom, wow, I have to consult my senior colleague and come back to you again.."

So we waited for another couple of minutes before the teacher re-entered the room, and shared this programmes recommendation chart with us. According to her, Renzo is ready to take I CAN READ Programme straight away, but problem is, that is a 1.5 hours lesson and he will be sitting in with another 6-7 kids who are definitely older than him, but some might not be able to read this well like him. For his age, it's hard to handle that. But if they were to put him at one level lower, which is the ICR Preliminary program, he will get bored easily so the best recommendation she could suggest, is to start him on the I CAN READ Programme but get him a one on one teacher, so that he could have one hour of lesson catered to him based on his pace, with the teacher's full attention. But such lessons cost around 80 dollars per hour and are only conducted during weekday afternoons, apparently we just couldn't afford to send Renzo for it.


I looked through the I CAN READ textbooks and I do love their system, their teachers (or at least the one who did assessment for Renzo), and most importantly, it addresses my concern about spelling, which I have no clue about how to teach Renzo at all. Daddy is never in favor of enrolling Renzo to any kind of enrichment class for now, he even thought the assessment questions are like "What is your favorite color?" kind. So we both agreed that Renzo's skill of reading based on phonics or breaking down the words, definitely requires reinforcement, but whether to reinforce by sending him for an enrichment lesson at I CAN READ or not, we will probably wait for another year to figure out..

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

the one and only one enrichment for Renzo - Piano

About exactly a year ago, we brought Renzo to Yamaha music school for his very first enrichment class, and 6 months later, we withdrew him from the class due to the fact that the class schedule didn't work out very well for us, and he was not enjoying the lessons due to change of class and teacher.

So this time, on October 06, 2013, we finally manage to send him for his real piano lesson with a private tutor staying near to our place.

I guess many parents have the same questions in mind like us, Yamaha music school or private tutor?

Here's a great read:
http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Forum/2/topic/008222/Number/0/site_id/1#import

You have to believe that there's always 2 sides of the coin so there's no real right or wrong. So let me just highlight the cons (skip the pros as I believe people are more concerned about the cons when comes to such kind of thing, LOL) of these 2 options:

Yamaha Music School:
- One parent is required to attend the class together with the kid, for kids aged 4-6 years old , which is definitely time consuming no matter how much we parents love music, or rather say love the bonding with our kids.
- They do not teach  CDEFG, instead they use Do Re Me, there's a huge difference here because under Yamaha,  teachers focus on ear training and music appreciation, and they do not really teach much about how to read the notes, that means if it is a piece of new music, students won't be able to play it right away simply because they could not read the repertoires independently
- Teachers could not focus much on each kid as they have a whole class to take care of, hence bad hand posture and loud playing habit become  more and more common among kids

Private teacher:
- Since parents are not attending the class, we might not get to understand what was taught each time during class
- more expensive?


So the answer is pretty clear, we are getting a private teacher for Renzo!! Don't get me wrong, Yamaha Music School is definitely great, it's just that we prefer a different approach and arrangement for Renzo in this case. And we quickly bought Renzo a new Yamaha U1 piano which makes him, and his didi Rynus super excited!

We are lucky enough to meet this great teacher introduced by my sister. My niece has been attending Yamaha Music School for 2 years but my sister had the exact same concerns like what I listed above, hence she decided to switch her to a private teacher. It's in a way tougher for my niece as she needs to forget about all she's learned under Yamaha, but she managed to adjust quickly and her improvement is so obvious that even I know nothing about piano, I can tell by looking at her videos recorded and sent to my sister by this super caring teacher! That action of recording and sharing class videos from the teacher, addressed the one biggest concern I have with private teacher instantly!

Renzo enjoyed his first lesson, and his strong interest in numbers and alphabets definitely helped as writing / coloring is required for his age, and he could read the lyrics on his own when comes to learning songs. Practicing the song he learned during piano lesson has been added to his daily study routine at night, and it's pretty fun to hear little Renzo asking frequently, "Mummy, did I wash my hands?", that basically means he has just washed his hands and he wants to play piano!
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