CHALLENGES KIDS FROM POOR HOMES ARE FACING

I have taken my time to dig into this matter. A lot of kids from poor homes are facing real challenges in terms of learning. In the first place, parents in this group take their children to small and fledgling schools-schools that lack standard facilities for learning. Because of been of little means, such parents are unable to buy textbooks for their children. Their priority is to pay school fees only.

The school deliberately refuse to emphasize the purchase of such items for fear of losing their students. For this reason, kids do not have enough material to work with while at home. They often play away their valuable time. In the end, the kids performs poorly.

Furthermore, kids from poor homes, sometimes if not always, suffer from malnutrition. A child that is not well fed faces challenges learning an d retaining information. Since they are at a developmental stage, any shortage in the right nutrition goes a long way to affect their proper mental functioning. I observed that kids in this category have problem recalling information as against their counterpart from rich homes.

Another factor contributing to their challenge is that poor homes lack modern gadgets which in one way or the other enhances learning. On the other hand, kids from rich homes watch educative programmes or even have toys that involve some kind of learning.

QUESTION FOR READERS

1.       What accounts for the different learning abilities of children from different backgrounds?

2.       Suggest how parents can handle the problems pointed out above

HOW PARENTS UNWITTINGLY CONTRIBUTE TO THEIR CHILDREN’S POOR PERFORMANCE

These days a lot of children are having a hard time getting along in the classroom. Who should be blamed for this situation? Very easily, parents are quick to point accusing fingers at the school more especially the teachers. For this reason, some parents withdraw their children. They keep changing schools. In fact, parents hardly see themselves as partly responsible for their children’s poor performance.

Here is the truth: some parents do not show any interest in their children’s school work.  This gives the children unlimited play time. 

They watch different TV Channels without restriction. Hence, school work is given little or no time at all. This habit is repeated throughout the term.

In the end, parents get angry at their poor performance. Parents need to know that monitoring their child’s activity should not pose a big challenge. All that needs to be done is to establish rules in the house. This involves setting restriction for certain activities such as no watching of television unless all homework is done. This rule should be enforced consistently. This way children come to know them properly and stick to it.

QUESTION FOR READERS

1.       How do parents contribute to children’s poor performance?

2.       Is it right for parents to monitor the activities of their children?

3.       What kind of rules should parents set for their children?

TEACHING KIDS THAT SEEM DULL

If you don’t have the skill, teaching could be a difficult task especially if your pupil or student is a kid that performs very poorly at school. Sometime ago, a parent sought for my services. I was to brush up his three kids. All the kids had their peculiar challenges. 

There was a twin of boy and girl both in primary one. While the other kid was in primary two. The twins had serious academic problems: they could not write numbers 1 to 10 correctly, they could not write the alphabets. To worsen the situation, they could not read two-letter words.

This was a big problem for me as their teacher. For weeks I was frustrated. They only made minimal progress. Also, they had very low retentive memory. Sometimes I went home with headache. After many months of coaching, they soon started to make observable progress. At last my patience started to pay off.

QUESTION FOR READERS

1.       What are the challenges the teacher faces?

How do you help students with poor retentive memory?

HOW TO TEACH DIFFICULT CONCEPTS TO KIDS

Teaching kids at school is not an easy task. The teacher needs a lot of training in this regard to be able to pass knowledge effectively to the young minds. It is important to understand children behavior and psychology. A lot of hardwork and patience are also required to achieve a  better result. Sometimes the teacher is faced with the challenge of explaining certain concepts in a manner that is easy to understand.

At one time, I was having this challenge. I was teaching a six year old pupil mathematics. The topic was ‘arranging numbers according to their size starting with the biggest’. The pupil didn’t know the meaning of the terms ‘arrange’ and ‘biggest’. Explained the two terms the best way I could. Yet, he didn’t understand. Then I paused and thought long how to explain it using familiar terms. Suddenly I realized I could use a simple illustration he was familiar with. 

I used three oranges: a whole orange, half cut orange and one quarter orange. I placed them on the table for him to see. I asked him to pick out the biggest. He quickly picked the whole orange. Again I asked him to choose the smallest; likewise it was easy for him. Then I further asked him to arrange all the oranges from the biggest to the smallest. He did the right thing. Indeed, he understood the topic.

QUESTION FOR READERS

Do you think the use of illustration is an effective teaching tool?

5 REASONS WHY OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM NEEDS OVERHAUL

Nigerian school system needs to be thoroughly reviewed. Over the years it progressively changed from good standard to a terribly poor system. Following are the reasons why our education system has collapsed:

1.       Increasing rate of examination malpractice: this is perhaps the worst situation in the country. From an early stage children learn how to cheat during examination. Children writing primary school leaving certificate examination are often assisted with the answers. This is negative programming. They carry this habit through to secondary school and the university.

2.       Too much emphasis on paper qualification: it is quite funny to observe that we glorify certificates and despise those without it. As a result, students cut corners just to have it at all cost.

3.       Overwhelming learning programme: private schools in particular are known to overwhelm pupils and students with too much academic work. Besides, they close late from school and arrive home late, weak and exhausted. Hence, they have little or no time to study their books.

4.       Our curriculum lags behind time. Unless our curriculum is regularly updated we will always have a mismatch between it and reality. Application of what is taught in school in real life is difficult.

5.       Change of learning behavior in the classroom. The advent of so many technological gadgets have uttered students learning pattern. Our curriculum needs to key into the technology drive.

QUESTION FOR READERS

1.       Any hope for our education in Nigeria?

2.       What is the permanent cure to exam malpractice?