Is your child receiving classroom instruction this fall? If so, congratulations. You must live in an area in which the virus is under control.
Is your child thriving with online classes? If the answer is Yes, congratulations to you also.
On the other hand, if you have answered No to both questions, you need an alternative path to protect your children from falling further and further behind in the basic skills most essential to their future in the workplace.
The current US public-school population, K-12, numbers 50.7 million children. Because of the pandemic, more than half are not presently attending in-school instruction.
Of further concern is the fact that not all students scheduled for online instruction are receiving it. According to one survey reported in the New York Times, 34% teachers from around the country observed that only about one in four students was attending remote classes. A majority of respondents in this survey reported that fewer than half their students were attending virtually.
If your children, for whatever reason, are not receiving regular formal instruction, either in class or on line, you can still help them avoid total deprivation of necessary developmental learning.
A little is better than nothing.
The American English Doctor site offers no help with the four basic math functions, but it does offer tips and instruction for improving basic and adult literacy and general knowledge.
As little as thirty minutes of focused time a day can help keep your child’s literacy moving forward until such time as we can all go back to our outside lives.
There are plenty of things to do simply in the course of day-to-day childcare to prepare a preschooler for literacy.
For the school-age child, parents will want to begin with informal testing to find out the stage of literacy the child has reached.
Several teaching tips and mini-lessons already exist on this site and more will be uploaded.
Courage. Remember that parents were teaching their children to read long before there were tax-supported public schools. The key to learning is literacy. For the child who truly masters reading, the world of learning lies open.