As with everything in life, this is a process. The earlier ChumS with SumS has the opportunity to give input and the longer the parent and child is willing to stick to the programme regardless of other duties and extramural activities, the bigger is the impact we can make.
What happens in the classes?
The classes are planned carefully and is what determines our success and makes us unique to a great extent. We don’t sell booklets, work charts or lesson plans and we don’t prop up a kid before a computer screen. No – we prepare thoroughly and present a GOOD lesson. We are in touch with your kid and teach him where he and his group leads us. Lesson content is reduced to the essence, lesson plans are developed, teaching aids are carefully selected, purchased and implemented to make the lesson enjoyable and child-friendly.
Kids gain as much as they are willing to put in – though every one of our tutors give their best, a kid can only benefit as much as they are willing to give and the best progress can be expected with continuity and dedication.
A kid that misses every second lesson will not progress at the same rate as one who are in class every week. Our parents quickly learn that dentist appointments and similar excuses are to the kid’s detriment. If he misses a class, he misses A LOT.
How do the groups work?
The best progress takes place in homogenous groups and therefore we focus on grouping kids with similar potential. We can accommodate any type of child – we just do it through differentiating. Enrichment and remedying cannot take place in the same class and we don’t try to do it this way.
We differentiate between 3 groups of kids based on their potential: enrichment classes, underperformers and the ones who struggle.
We protect the kids against each other. An enrichment-pupil can’t sit around and wait for the ones who are hopelessly slower than him. The one who’s struggling doesn’t want to be watched by the bored brightspark. We keep them in separate classes.
The programme is developed in Afrikaans and English (we offer both languages) and all werk charts are available in both mediums.
What is the outcome?
We pride ourselves in our pupils mastering certain concepts extremely well. Feedback has confirmed that a child who’s been under our tutelage until Grade 7 has, for example, properly mastered DECIMAL NUMBERS and FRACTIONS. Our ChumS are comfortable with square roots and cubes, they can properly distinguish between factors and multiples, prime numbers and compound numbers AND many other concepts. However, we only see pupils once a week and we’ve chosen to do what we do THOROUGHLY rather than squeeze everything into the programme.
Our ChumS UNDERSTAND what they do and they can EXPRESS themselves mathematically correct. They enjoy the classes and they have the courage to DARE in small, homogenous groups. They learn SOMETHING, each time.
Kids aren’t given work charts to take home to “catch up”. Class activities are of such nature that lessons can’t be caught up. ChumS shouldn’t miss lessons. They learn this quickly.