I recently posted on social media the reviews that my daughter did. They were for the 1st 6 weeks of our 2nd grade year. I got asked a lot about them. How did I make them? How did your daughter remember all of this? I also got comments that it is too much, public school does not do that, your history is too involved, etc. So let's start off with how I make a review. For math it is very easy I make a list of everything she learned. On the last week of that 6 or 12 week any math she does that is on that list counts towards the review. Anything on the list that is not done during the week I give her a few problems on each. Because I want to make sure that she has understood the concepts I make the problems hard. If they are too easy there is no way for me to know if she really understands or if she can just do easy problems.
For history I make questions based off what I have read from the textbook. I pull out the key information. We also do social studies and geography. I make question based off the worksheets that we do. Because we do not go over the stories or the pages again once we do them there is a lot of time for her to forget the information before the review comes. What I do so that she retains the info is I ask her the questions every time we have that class. I make sure to ask the questions in random order so that she can't just remember the answers in order. If she has forgotten then I explain things again or we do extra work on the things she helps with. So she is constantly going over the old stuff that was the most important while learning the new stuff for that day.
The next class that we do is thinking skills. Just like with math everything that she does that week counts towards the review. If anything is left I giver her problems for them. We do a lot of critical thinking games as well as workbooks. This is a class that isn't in public school and some people have told me that I do not need to do. While I understand that public school does not have a thinking skills class I feel it is very important for people to be critical thinkers. Everything that we do is age appropriate so she is capable of doing the work and often does not even need me to explain what the instructions are saying.
Up next is science. I read over the textbook and our daughter does the worksheets that go along with the textbook. Just like with history the questions I make are over the more important and main bits from the textbook. I go over these every time we have the class and add more work or explanations if she doesn't remember. We also do experiments at the end of every chapter that incorporates what the chapter was about. So when we go over the review questions every time we have the class if she doesn't remember I can always ask her about the experiments to help her remember the answers.
The last class that gets a review is English. This class has 3 in one. We do writing, spelling and reading. Writing is very easy to review since she has a writing assignment everyday. I look to make sure that what she has written goes long with the topic given. As well as if she has correct punctuation and has capitalized everything that she should have. With spelling I do things differently than public school. I do not have a spelling list where she has to remember only those words. Instead I am making sure that she has understood the rules of spelling so that she can spell any word she wants. I give her a few words that have the rules she has learned. Some of the words contain more than one rule. Just like with reading I am making sure that she has understood the rules and can apply them without help. So I give her words that incorporate the rules. Another thing I like to do is give challenge words for both spelling and reading. These could just be harder words that she could spell and read or even words that she has yet to learn the rules for. It is just to see how she does so it is perfectly fine if she can't spell or read them.
I hope this helps for anyone who would like to make a review. If you make your own reviews and do them differently then please let us know what you do in the comment section below. Likewise if you do not review then how do you make sure your child has retained the information and knowledge given to them? Do you have another way to make sure they are really learning? Let me know below.
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