We decided to get Jai this extra support as we needed to home school Jai for an entire term and we knew that juggling work and home schooling would mean that Jai’s schooling wouldn’t have the attention that it needed.

Reading

In our first session Jai told me didn’t like reading aloud and like many of the older kids at Omatas he raced through a chapter of his school reader with very little expression. While Jai was able to answer questions about what he had read the text offered few challenges and I felt that it was below his reading level.

 I chose the Hardy Boy adventures to read to Jai as I felt that using a book written nearly 50 years ago by an American author , which I had enjoyed, would provide us with lots of interesting, unfamiliar words and phrases to explore. I felt that encouraging Jai to think about what he was reading would slow him down and through listening to my reading he could see how tone, volume and expression could be used to make a story more exciting.

 Learning the meanings of many new words and encouragement to try and make connections also strengthened Jai’s comprehension skills .

Science

Jai made a rain gauge and a chart to record rainfall with help from his dad. These activities reinforce measuring skills and develop an understanding of graphs and charts.

Maths

A goal with Jai’s maths coaching was to work on multiplication to develop automaticity. Jai can work out the answers but his mom wanted him to speed up a bit.

He enjoys “arts and crafts “ activities and making the number lines and multiplication circles appealed to his creative side.

Jai created a  6 x table ladybird number line where  pegs are not attached to the number line and have the division operation on the back of them.

The 12 sided dodecagon makes a great multiplication wheel.

Making these 2-D shapes supports the fraction work that Jai is doing at school. It was his idea to use colours and patterns to create  medulla to represent the fractions.

Cooking / Baking

Jai has loved baking for his family. The recipe Jai used when he baked gingerbread with his dad, included fractions. As well as reinforcing the skills of measuring mass and volume , baking also provided practice with fractions, adding 3 digit numbers and multiplication and division.

Parent recommendation

Caroline was able to adjust each lesson to suit Jai’s understanding and use questioning techniques to recap and extend learning. This was not only done on a session basis, but during sessions. If Jai was less engaged in a prepared activity then Caroline would find a different way to present the activity to achieve the same outcome but engage Jai back in. She was also great in keeping in touch with me to let me know if there was anything that we could do to help prepare Jai for activities, if he needed any additional materials etc. Some days were spent working at the table while others were doing maths baking a cake in the kitchen (which I think is still Jai’s favourite lesson!)

This helped boost Jais comprehension up by 3 levels during lock down, especially across reading and mathematics. Comments from his teachers at the end of this year mirrored this gain in comprehension as well as expressing that not only was Jai’s comprehension in reading better, but his reading of text out loud had become expressive with the use of tone and inflection.

 Jai’s end of school report was excellent this year, which we were very excited by, especially as we had been in lockdown for half of the year, with school being delivered exclusively online. Not only did these sessions benefit Jai, but allowed us peace of mind that he was still learning at a high level as we balanced lock down, work and home school.

I would highly recommend Caroline as a coach for any student, to anyone who is looking for their child to be engaged in interactive, fun learning.

Thank you so much Caroline for your support of us and in particular Jai, we certainly do enjoy seeing Jai’s progress and his love of helping in the kitchen (and eating cakes that he bakes!).

Justine