Foreign Perspectives

Although we’ve been at the Kip McGrath for a couple of months now, we’ve still not really gotten into the different way of operating it as a system.

So, for example when we found that one of the little guys was racing through a particular section of the homework we were thinking that they’d just up the number of sheets handed out which was the Kumon way of dealing with an easy section. However, in Kip McGrath it triggered a rethink about how best to deal with the issue for James.

What’s happening is that we’re trying him out for a couple of weeks on the spelling sheets a couple of levels above what he’s been doing and, for a week or two, been getting very bored with. Also, she’s had a run-through of a reading comprehension exercise with him with a view to maybe moving him on to that. She’s also starting to up the ante with the maths. Altogether, it’s a change that makes it more interesting for him which in turn should help his progress.

Interestingly, the course was basically changed to suit James rather than requiring him to plough on with work that he was finding boring. There’s also none of the sense of having to work outside the system as happened early on with James in Kumon as the Kip McGrath approach seems more aimed at getting the learning process working through whatever means are required and not getting too hung up on rigidly following “the system” as Kumon did.