That's great to hear, Jessica!
I am celebrating with you and your little guy today!
It is amazing how our dc are well prepared for even standardized testing, though they have learned in a CM style way instead. They just seem to know their stuff and remember it better with HOD's CM style plans. One thing I have noticed, because they are used to seeing and reading proper English, grammar, and writing, I believe they find it glaringly obvious when things are wrong. Seeing spelling, grammar, writing errors within standardized testing is not hard when you've only seen it look right. My ps students had to do Daily Oral Language drills that had them see things written incorrectly first, and then next they were supposed to correct them. I believe this seeing things improperly so many times made errors seem correct over time. We did those drills every day, and yet on testing in that area, most students did poorly.
The way HOD has dc rely on only their memories to retell back what they have read CM style teaches them to read carefully the first time. In contrast, in school we used to have dc answer multiple choice/true/false/short answer type questions. I noticed many dc would read the questions first, and then read the reading selection, simply reading for those specific answers. They never really took in much from the readings, as they just were reading to find specific answers rather than to understand the selection as a whole. Dc do not have time to do this in standardized testing as it is timed, and conclusions must be drawn from the reading as a whole.
We are standardized testing this week, and it is interesting that my dc are often reading the selections and laughing or being entertained as they read this or that - they don't even view the reading in standardized testing as superfluous.
And it's not all that living either.
I had to laugh - my oldest ds asked if we could make Gooseberry Pie, which I saw was one of titles of the stories on the test. I told him he could try to look a recipe for that up on the internet, and he said he pretty much remembered it from the test anyway. He proceeded to tell me the steps as he remembered them, and I was flabbergasted! I didn't read the story, but the steps he shared seemed to make sense, and we sure haven't ever made Gooseberry Pie.
I guess oral narration just gets in their blood. They try to do it even on standardized testing excerpts!
Neither of our sons used scratch paper for the math either. I credit HOD's hands-on activities, and Singapore math for that. Anyway, thanks so much for telling us about your ds, as this is reassuring to those starting their HOD journey especially!
In Christ,
Julie
