学校の宿題は毎日その子供のレベルにあった音読本を一冊借りてきて音読すること。本はレベルごとに色分けされていて、タカラは、「早くXX色になりたい」といつも言っている。
３年生のアラタの宿題はやはり毎日の音読と、習った単語を使った文章作成や音読本に関する作文。週末は日本でいえば夏休みの自由研究に近い課題があり、パワーポイントなどを使って発表できる形で提出する。
私が困惑するのは、ドリルや設問形式の宿題が皆無に近いため、どこまでできていればいいのか全くわからないこと。
日本の教育は学年ごとに到達するガイドラインがあり、それに向かってみんなで頑張っていくやり方。目標が明確なので家庭でのヘルプがし易いが、弊害は、能力が高い子供はそれを特に助長してはもらえないこと。遅れ気味だと、それを明確に思い知らされるということ。その上、親か塾が子供を手伝えるかどうかで子供の学力レベルが決まってくる。
そういう中で育ってきた私には、いまいちピンとこない英国式教育方法。自分の中での相対的な学力の伸びが評価されるから、学力が低い子供に過度のストレスを与えないし、できる子はどんどん上のレベルにチャレンジできる。ゆっくりでも前進していればほめられる仕組みになっている。
教科書もないから、親の出る幕はなく、全てが子供の本来もっている能力にゆだねられてしまう。私がそうだったように、ドリルをこなして暗記力だけの成り上がりで大学生になるというより本物感があるのは間違いなしだが。
Takara's second term at primary year 1 has started. As he went to a Japanese kindergarten till recently, he joined the school without any English literacy, but he's been gradually getting better.
His homework is usually only reading. Children bring back one reading book every day. Each book is labelled in different colour according to the level of the difficulty. Takara is quite keen to move up and often says, "I want to have XX colour soon."
Arata's, at year 3, homework is also one reading book, and writing (essay or sentences etc). At weekends, they are usually given a small project to research on and submit it in a presentable format, such as in power point. It's like the project for summer holiday in Japan, but it's for every week!
What confuses me most is I can't really get how and what I should help them, because they never have drilling worksheets or questions and answers type paper.
In Japan, there is a solid guideline to follow at each school year, and the class is focusing on achieving the standards all together. As the objectives are clear, it's easy for us to support our children.
At the same time, Japanese system fails to encourage very good students to move further up, and also makes the underachievers realise their standing too clearly. Whether the child has any help from tuitions or parents directly affects their scores.
I was bred in such an environment, and it's the one I feel familiar with and I get very confused about British system. I know it won't pressure much on the underachievers and will give more chance to go further to those who are brilliant. They are assessed based on each child's achievement, which means they are always praised as long as they move forward even slowly.
Children at SCIPS don't bring their textbooks back home and we have nearly nothing to do about their study. It's all up to their actual abilities. Compared to the Japanese students, who get into a good university with lots of stressful trainings of memorising everything, those from the British system are probably more real?
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