Sunday, May 11, 2008

Make it Relevant!

One of the things I am working hardest on lately is to make Ricki’s studies relevant to real life. While I want her to learn a bit of general information (Paris is in France, teeth have crowns and roots)… that is not enough.
Rather than try and fill her up with more and more “general” knowledge, I am trying to use her studies to accomplish two more things:
To enable us to work on vocabulary, writing sentences, sequencing, and the like. This does not need any special genius to work out.
The second task is harder: to draw from the topic to other, similar topics that she needs to learn. (For example, when studying the mouth, the text stated that the nose “checks” food by smell. I was able to use this as an excuse to deviate to the topic of food spoilage and safety.) Finding topics that are learnable in a school environment, which have some connection to the topic in class, and which are practical, needed items, can be challenging. But when I am able to pull it off, I feel that I am REALLY utilizing inclusion to its fullest.

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