what do you mean when you say you're going to "try a different approach"?

[Miss Mousie]

Subject says it all, I think; I don't want to add too many narrowing qualifiers, except to limit it to the field of homeschooling.  Essentially - when you say, "I was doing X, but it wasn't working for me/my DC, so I'm going to try doing Y," what are X and Y?

 

:lurk5:

[texasmama]

Here are two examples:

 

Rod and Staff grammar was not getting done so we "tried a different approach", which was Easy Grammar Plus.  Rod and Staff was much more thorough, but it helped no one sitting on the shelf so I got a program which was simple and "git 'er done" for my boys last year.

 

AoPS Algebra was not working for one child, so I "tried a different approach" and chose Foerster's Algebra and a tutor.  This did not work so I "tried a different approach" and enrolled him in Jann in Texas' Algebra class mid year.  This worked.  I kept "trying a different approach" until we found something that worked for him.

[Dmmetler]

Saxon math made my DD moan, cry, and say she hated math, so we switched to Singapore. We also started on LOF for high school math, then shifted to AOPS because the AL board told me to-and in our case, it worked.

 

For Latin, we started out with LfC, but DD didn't retain it, moved to Cambridge, which she loved, and are adding in Latin Prep this year to make the grammar more explicit since she struggled with that part of the NLE last year.

[dragonflyer]

Sometimes a different approach could mean changing curriculum, but it could also mean:

Math facts were not being mastered, so I added a fact review.

Handwriting was a fight so I added a timed monetary incentive.

Sometimes it means changing the time of day that something is done.  Or making sure that I am not doing four language arts in a row, so I break up the subject.  It could mean that I am focused on staying at the elbow of my student or that I am trying to back away a bit so they learn to focus without constant prompting.

Changing my approach could mean dropping a concept for a month or three until it is more developmentally appropriate.

It could mean that I take something that is not being memorized well and put it to music.

It could mean that I changed the pace to speed up or slow down material.

Sometimes it is just me as the teacher taking a big step back and examining my own presuppositions to decide if this material must be taught now, and if it must be taught now what are my goals for the material.

[Peaceful Isle]

I am using a "different approach" for my girls this next year.

 

Last year, I was more relaxed, used a read a loud style History and Science, and I wasn't too worried about sitting at a desk. 

 

This next year, I need the girls to have more structure, and less mom intensive time, so I am using a distance learning program. This will free me up this next year, and hopefully will help me be more organised in other areas of life. lol

 

[EmilyGF]

I switched approaches in March.

 

I was doing basics - 3Rs, letting the kids  read and play a lot, and explore. I was getting burnt out (though I thought this would eliminate burnout!) because I was bored.

 

I switched to a complex Charlotte Mason curriculum. Now I am learning again and we are all making connections.

[YsgolYGair]

Earlier this month, my son was struggling to understand addition to 20 with Singapore. So we took a step back and tried a different approach. We started working through Math Mammoth. Once we get this cemented, we can go back to Singapore. All of education is "trying different approaches" until you find one that works with the child you're teaching!

[SnMomof7]

We were using ACE for social studies. It has even been working for the past three years, generally speaking.

 

Two weeks into our new school year I suddenly decided (I found a text I was excited about and thought I would acually use) that we would read our history together and do narrations with The Story of the Ancient World by Guerber/Miller for the under 6th grade crowd. I've always wanted to do this, but never found a text I could jive with.

[Sahamamama]

Subject says it all, I think; I don't want to add too many narrowing qualifiers, except to limit it to the field of homeschooling.  Essentially - when you say, "I was doing X, but it wasn't working for me/my DC, so I'm going to try doing Y," what are X and Y?

 

:lurk5:

 

Examples:

• We started 4th grade with Horizons Math, but it was too visually cluttered and was also moving too slowly for this student. We switched to CLE Math and that was a good change.

• Up until this past school year (2nd/2nd/4th), I've let the girls just read whatever they've wanted to from our bookshelves. This upcoming year (3rd/3rd/5th), they are going to have Assigned Independent Reading from various categories (e.g., Bible, Science, Biography, Literature, Civics, History, Math, Composers & Artists). We are all excited about this!

• We started Building Thinking Skills a few years back, but it felt like busywork, so we dropped it.

That's the kind of thing I mean when I say we're going to "try a different approach." HTH. ;)

 

 

 

 

[Pegs]

Although I am still wary of the risks of dysteachia*, I am no longer afraid that direct instruction will risk my child's natural curiosity and drive to learn. He trusts me to assist him in acquiring skills and knowledge that are worthy of his time, so I do my best to honour this trust.

 

It's not so much that unschooling wasn't working for us, - he was certainly learning - but I wanted to be free of the dogma of hands-off. It's been great. :)

 

 

*I saw this term on an old thread not long ago, and loved it! I can't remember who coined it though, sorry.

[kirstenhill]

In 4th grade my DD was in tears every day with Right start math even though it had worked in the past. She wanted math instruction she could read for herself. CLE has been a much better fit

 

We used a textbook for science last year (Science in th Ancient World), and we stuck it out for most of the year but didn't really like it. We're going back to more interest led/topical units approach with a couple of shorter spine texts, library books, and projects selected from DIY.org

 

So far we've always done history together. My DD loves history and the depth in Vol 2 and 3 of MOH is a good fit for her but will be too much for the boys, so we will separate them in history and be in the same time period but they will do SOTW.

[Mimm]

That could mean anything. A different curriculum, a different schedule, a different method of teaching (ie, instead of me teaching it, we'll try a math program with video instruction). It could simply mean adjusting our expectations or goals. (Instead of traumatizing my child with cursive, I "tried a different approach." That approach was not caring about cursive anymore.) ;)

[lllll]

nm

[Athome]

We use to do a traditional school year schedule but I needed to to see things in smaller chunks. So we switched to 6 weeks on 1 off! It's been so refreshing. Looking forward to our first 6 weeks of a new school year starting mid Aug.

[Desert Strawberry]

We started with unschoolingin prek, then traditional, then classical, then more Charlotte Mason, back to traditional, now back to classical. Not such huge changes as would be noticeable from the outside, but the goals, influences, methods, and application vary depending on our immediate needs.

So, for example, in prek, we totally winged it. We saw a caterpillar, and I read The Very Hungry Caterpillar, we read about the lifecycle of a butterfly and we drew butterflies. 

At school age, I bought him workbooks and we sat at the table and worked through them. 

I wasn't happy with his writing progress, so I came here, bought FLL and WWE, and started working through those. 

Once I got in the swing of that, I wanted to add more beautiful and good, so we went with more Charlotte Mason style stuff. By now we were starting with the second round of kids and they benefited from my increased experience.

But then I was pregnant and miserable and had a new baby, so we stripped it back down to traditional 3 rs. Math workbooks, phonics program, that's about it. 

Now I'm better, were settled in our new house, I want to spend this year on deeper academics and lots of logic.

[Haiku]

For me it was switching from language-heavy curricula to image-heavy curricula when I realized my son was visual and hands-on and not auditory (and also dyslexic). We stopped doing so much learn-from-reading stuff and started doing more learn-from-watching and learn-from-doing stuff.

[Miss Mousie]

Wow, I didn't realize the responses would cover such a wide range!  No wonder I was a little confused.  ;)

 

I thought of it more in terms of 'rethinking' how I was doing their schooling.  And, like Mimm said, that could include just about anything - schedules, books, methods, locations, groupings of kids - anything.  Were you looking for something specific for some reason? 

 

I'm not looking for anything specific.  I just see that phrase a lot here, but to my mind it meant mostly what Tara said (below), and that didn't seem to be what other people meant.  The only modification I would have made to Tara's post is that, instead of choosing different curriculum, I thought people made those changes (like presenting to a different learning style, or re-explaining a concept in a completely different way) entirely on their own - and I couldn't imagine that so many people were so easily able to switch gears like that!  I mean, I can assign a project instead of a paper, or decide to read history aloud because DS wasn't reading it very closely on his own, but I would find it very difficult to keep switching around.

 

For me it was switching from language-heavy curricula to image-heavy curricula when I realized my son was visual and hands-on and not auditory (and also dyslexic). We stopped doing so much learn-from-reading stuff and started doing more learn-from-watching and learn-from-doing stuff.

 

Dragonflyer, too, covers more of what I thought it meant, especially the ones I bolded. 

 

Sometimes a different approach could mean changing curriculum, but it could also mean:

Math facts were not being mastered, so I added a fact review.

Handwriting was a fight so I added a timed monetary incentive.

Sometimes it means changing the time of day that something is done.  Or making sure that I am not doing four language arts in a row, so I break up the subject.  It could mean that I am focused on staying at the elbow of my student or that I am trying to back away a bit so they learn to focus without constant prompting.

Changing my approach could mean dropping a concept for a month or three until it is more developmentally appropriate.

It could mean that I take something that is not being memorized well and put it to music.

It could mean that I changed the pace to speed up or slow down material.

Sometimes it is just me as the teacher taking a big step back and examining my own presuppositions to decide if this material must be taught now, and if it must be taught now what are my goals for the material.

 

I really didn't think most people meant "change curriculum," but clearly I was wrong about that!

[Farrar]

When I say it, I do mean change curriculum nearly always, though it could also be radically change schedule or presentation, like moving from going by lesson to going by a timer or moving from working with my kids to independent work.

 

But it often isn't all curriculum. Ages ago, when ds was struggling with math, I switched both of my boys to a new program. That worked for one of them, but not the other. He needed a more fundamental shift. I had to stop doing formal math with him for several months and use more games, living books, etc. When we resettled, then he did change curriculum, but it was more that he needed a totally different attitude and approach for awhile.

 

Last year, we switched from doing a classical history and science cycle to being more interest led for the logic stage (I hope to return to more of a cycle in a couple of years). That was more fundamental than curriculum.

[abba12]

Wow, I didn't realize the responses would cover such a wide range!  No wonder I was a little confused.  ;)

 

I really didn't think most people meant "change curriculum," but clearly I was wrong about that!

 

Changing curriculum is one thing. And it goes both ways too, not just changing from word heavy to image heavy, but for some families it's the opposite (changing from AAS to a spelling curriculum that actually gets done, for example. Or gifted kids who WANT wordy books)

 

It can also mean changing around the day. Right now, handwriting has been a struggle in multiple ways, from dislike, to actual difficulty seeing and copying. So we are trying two different approaches. One is to schedule it first thing, not later in the day. Another is to look at it from a different angle, and get some of these new doodle books which work the letters into pictures, teaching muscle movements rather than identification. We are using it alongside the old curric on alternating days, so one day we are going for muscle memory, the next we are going for recognize and reproduce.

 

It's also things like presenting fractions in cooking instead of a book. It's things like dropping memorizing maps for learning about the cultures. But it's also dropping math manipulatives for simple rote facts, and dropping a bunch of 'extras' about 'making the subject fun' to just get down to the nitty gritty. 

 

I'd say it's any time where you look at your situation, and just go 'stop. this is not working', and don't try to make it work, but let go of everything and find a fresh perspective. 

[SparklyUnicorn]

I don't recall ever saying that.  For me that would just be finding a different book.  I've done that, but not too often.

 

 

[Miss Mousie]

Changing curriculum is one thing. And it goes both ways too, not just changing from word heavy to image heavy, but for some families it's the opposite (changing from AAS to a spelling curriculum that actually gets done, for example. Or gifted kids who WANT wordy books)

 

It can also mean changing around the day. Right now, handwriting has been a struggle in multiple ways, from dislike, to actual difficulty seeing and copying. So we are trying two different approaches. One is to schedule it first thing, not later in the day. Another is to look at it from a different angle, and get some of these new doodle books which work the letters into pictures, teaching muscle movements rather than identification. We are using it alongside the old curric on alternating days, so one day we are going for muscle memory, the next we are going for recognize and reproduce.

 

It's also things like presenting fractions in cooking instead of a book. It's things like dropping memorizing maps for learning about the cultures. But it's also dropping math manipulatives for simple rote facts, and dropping a bunch of 'extras' about 'making the subject fun' to just get down to the nitty gritty. 

 

I'd say it's any time where you look at your situation, and just go 'stop. this is not working', and don't try to make it work, but let go of everything and find a fresh perspective. 

 

What a great post, and very clearly written.  Thanks!