Literacy For Grades 7 And 8, Home School

Literacy For Grades 7 and 8

About Our Literacy Packs

The literacy topics in the worksheets for Grades 7 and 8 offer lots of variety.

• Lessons on history, geography and technology and
• Some fictional stories that encourage empathy.

There’s something that will suit every upper primary school child and into secondary. Lessons are being added on a regular basis.

• The vocabulary in the reading tasks is more extensive than in the earlier grades.
• The sentences are longer and more complex and writing tasks more demanding.
• Students at this level can work with increasing independence.

How To Help Your Child

Sit next to your child for most of the lesson. Sit on the child’s left if they’re right-handed and the opposite side if left-handed. This enables you to see what they’re writing. Encourage them not to give their other arm a holiday under the table. That hand is needed on the work.

We can’t assume all students are reading competently at Year 7 and 8. Many have missed out in primary school including ill-health. Some kids have had undiagnosed medical problems. For struggling students at all levels the  techniques are broadly the same.

1. Always give the child time to work out a new word, and
2. time to answer questions that you put to him or her while reading or between reads.
3. It helps to take it in turns to read. Children gain confidence from this joint activity with a parent. It also helps to share the reading if the text is long.
4. As always, I recommend two readings. This could be daunting for some students in one sitting. So read the text one day and the second reading the next day. The first reading is for decoding – that is working out the words and the relationship between the words, (who did what to whom, when and where).
5. The second reading is for comprehension and to give the reader a good opportunity to get an integrated idea of the account. On the second reading many things begin to make more sense.

Conversation with the student/s during the lesson helps comprehension and enjoyment.

Help Your Child With Creative Writing Tasks

https://www.tutoringprimary.com/product/creative-writing-help-child/

The link here is both a post and a free item with different titles. Download it and keep it in a folder to help you direct the task the student is asked to do. It gives you the cues and the language to use if you and your child get stuck.

Problem: Children Reject Parents Teaching Them

Instructions for the student make it easy for the parent. Just follow through. If you feel you’ve forgotten things since school, don’t worry, it’s all there for you.

If your child rejects your help the most likely reason is a lack of confidence. All kids want the high opinion of Mum and Dad and they don’t want their weaknesses exposed. So guidance and encouragement go a long way.

Solution: Do It Gradually

If this is your situation, I suggest downloading an item and letting them work through it alone. Stay in the vicinity but appear to be otherwise occupied. It’s called hanging around. Offer to help with anything that is a bit tough.

The student may prefer to work alone. It’s better to see them sitting close by and working on tasks than not at all.

1. Then ask how they found the material.
2. How does it compare with the literacy material at school?
3. Was it too easy or too hard?
4. At this point you can ask if you can see how they went on the written tasks.
5. If this approach works, up to this point, build positively on what they’ve done.
6. Resist too much marking. Perhaps sit with them and give positive feedback. Being positive will keep your child working willingly.
7. And moving on to another task – hopefully with closer support – is what you want. And improvement will come.
8. Some students like to jump into the task without reading the instructions. This leads to mistakes. So always ask the learner/s to read the instructions aloud. Check that they know how to proceed with the task after reading what they have to do.
9. Every parent is capable of correcting the task when complete. The tasks usually get harder as you move along so it’s a good idea to correct each task before doing the next one.
10. You don’t have to mark every mistake. Draw the student’s attention to noticeable errors and leave the others. Look out for patterns, such as often forgetting to start a sentence with a capital letter.

In Conlusion

I hope you enjoy the material. If you are interested then the student will be too. Rest assured, students will progress with regular supervised literacy lessons available on this site.

It was my intention to help parents but tutors and teachers can use these materials as well. Many have embarked on Home Schooling too. For one-to-one teaching and small group instruction these lesson packs are ideal.  I wanted to help those in isolated locations or who have an unwell child. For many reasons parents want to teach their own child.