Learning in school, with the reinforcements from home, both are necessary, if a child is to succeed in learning, translated…
“Mommy, I earned a ninety-eight on today’s exam!” as my young son who’s in the first grade got out of school, he’d told me the news excitedly, seeing how his face lit up, I was, reminded of how it was like, when he’d first begun in school as he’d learned the phonetic alphabets.
His older brother never took the pronunciation lessons, and just, entered into the elementary years, and he’d not bumped into too much hardships in learning, plus, I’d believed, that the most precious years of play occur from before entering into the elementary years, ands o, I’d, allowed my younger boy, to play all the way, but, being serious as he was, he’d, bumped into the very first trial—the Chinese phonetic spelling became a sort of a Morse Code to him, like an unsolvable puzzle.
ilustration from the papers online
Now, I’d taught him the phonetics and the spellings together, and finally, he’d, learned to differentiate the phonetic alphabets, and soon, he’ll be spelling, and reading the articles. The weekly cramped courses, he’d gotten a ton of information cramped inside of his mind, and, he’d learned the new materials, forgotten the old, and, reading the text became, such trying to him, and my younger boy, he’d, cared too much about the grades, and, would always, made bad grades on his weekly quizzes, he’d started, becoming, scared of opening up the textbooks, and, hated the tests administered at school.
Although, the grades were a result of the moment of the tests, but to help my son rebuild his self-confidence, I’d become, his personal instructor on the quizzes, as his, commander. At first, he’d, made little improvements, then, his grades went up and down, and up, and down, while we’d engaged in wars often now, I saw his working hard, but, seeing him, getting trapped by the lower grades he’d made, I’d felt, so awful for him.
a young child, learning to write the alphabet here
And if self-confidence was yet to be built up, let’s, help him find his love for learning back first then. The recitations of the text, it’s hard, for him to connect, and so, I thought of an activity that brought the text into his real life, made a mailbox, with everybody’s name in the family on it, and whoever received a letter, will get their names raise up high. Because my son felt it was interesting, he’d, wrecked his brains, to write things, and tossing it into the mailbox, at first, he’d only written the hard-to-understand letters, with the phonetic alphabets, then, he’d started describing the weather with his spelling, and, his feelings of the days, after a day, I’d, received, a ton of letters from him.
Slowly, he’d, learned to write more, and, the contents of what he wrote elevated to how everybody feels, for instance, “mom, you’d worked too hard, making the meals for us.” “daddy, did you have a good time at work.” “Brother, how’s your video game going?” “Younger sister, do you love me?” Seeing how he’d picked up his pencil and start scribbling, he’d found the love for language now, and that cloud that casted that shadow over him, finally, subsided.
The ten-week long phonetic spelling lessons, passed, in the frequent letters, and, it’d, made me realized, that we should NOT focus on the results of learning in the moment, that learning is a slow and accumulated process, and perhaps, it would take someone, a long time to finish, but that would make what is learned last, for life, something that someone can use, for the rest of her/his life.
And so, the key to learning here, is slow and steady, and, this young child went from hating the phonetic lessons, to loving it, all because his mother used the techniques of reinforcements, to help him learn to love to learn the phonetic spellings.