Remedial & Special education blog

We have a new school listed on the RemSpecED website:

The SpiritedKidZ LearnsPace is a full service school which caters for children with mild to moderate learning support needs. The child’s IDP includes the academic goals as well as the therapeutic objectives. The school offers one-on-one teaching approach with daily therapies (occupational therapy, speech therapy and physiotherapy) in addition to art, music and guided reading. Each child has their own teacher who is trained in each child’s specialised program. We offer the service of training your facilitator or we can introduce you to suitable SACE registered teachers. The school offers education, exchange forums and financial guidance to the families with special needs children.

Full details here.

If you would like to have your school, product or practice listed on RemSpecED – South Africa’s leading remedial & special education resource – please e-mail sales@rival.co.za and our team will assist you in putting something together.

There are two new pages on the RemSpecED site.

We now have a Business Services Page which includes a number of service providers including those in Financial Services, Consumers Goods and Healthcare sectors.

We have also added a handy tool on the landing page for searching for travel and accommodation for medical professionals going on conference or simply looking for a place to take a holiday after a stressful year.

Please support our merchants so that we can continue to bring you the highly regarded RemSpecED content.

RemSpecED has a new Remedial Therapist listed on the site.

Reinette Palmer is a mobile remedial therapist located in Johannesburg / Northern Suburbs area.

You can find out more by visiting her profile listing on the RemSpecED website here.

To list your services on the RemSpecED website please contact sales@rival.co.za

The RemSpecED website has a new Educational Pscyhologist listed on the site.

Simona is based in Parkhurst in Gauteng.

For more information please visit her listing on the RemSpecED website here.

If you have any interest in marketing to a highly targeted base of consumers in the baby and parenting market with an esteemed & award winning organiser, the SABC Education Baba Indaba is your only partner of choice! The SABC Education Baba Indaba is a highly recognisable exhibition brand amongst parents and presents the opportunity to expose brands to a huge audience of an estimated 145 000 visitors in 2010.

Read the rest of the article here.

There is an interesting article on IOL about homework being “a waste of time”.

The article cites research by US author Alfie Kohn and his “new” book ‘The Homework Myth’.

Just for clarity sake the book was originally published in 2007 and readers can buy it from local online retailer Loot for R117.

Anyway that aside, Kohn argues that teachers dish out homework simply because its what is expected of them and that society has this concept that children must do schoolwork after school.

You then have tired children coming home to then deal with tired parents who have spent a long day at work. The parents want to then rest and the children are hammering on about having to sort out projects or homework in each subject and you end up creating a tense learning environment.

Kohns research seems to indicate that there is no correlation between doing homework and academic achievement  / professional success which on its own is probably not groundbreaking.

On the flip-side  of that a lot of kids do need repittion and to be taught the self-discipline of having formal homework time.

But then I look at our typical working day as it stands. We both wake-up before  6 and between getting the kids ready we are doing some form of work including checking e-mail and planning our day. Our kids (two in Grade 1 an 1 in Grade 6) go to after-care where they do formal homework sessions as well as an extra-mural activity.

We fetch them between 4:30 and 5:30. They come home, they’re exhausted from a long day and they just want to flop. Then it’s dinner and bath-time. The little kids are in bed by 7:30 and the older one is having to work until 8.30pm to get her homework done. She is often not asleep before 9:30 and this is in primary school.

Yes this child procrastinates and doesn’t have the best time management skills but the reality is that she cannot finish her day-to-day  in the allotted hour for homework.

Maybe I am wrong but I see it like this:

• There are roughly 190 school days in a year
• The average 12 year old child receives about 2 hours of homework a day which translates into 380 hours which translates into another 16 “days” of extra work outside of school.
• During that time she is not really learning much. She is simply going through 20 or 50 repititions of a particular concept.
• During that time she could be reading a book or surfing the internet and growing her general knowledge. Go and ask your child some basic general knowledge questions about things which are topical at the moment e.g. what is in the news. A lot of them will draw a blank simply because what they learn at school is limited to what was in a textbook printed years ago. Kids are not stimulated to respond to what they see on the day to day basis.

Would love your thoughts on the subject.

One of our community members is seeking a “Cranial technology physical therapist” (assume this means craniosacral therapist) in either South Africa or Malawi.

Presently the community member is based in Malawi but is prepared to travel to South Africa if necessary. If you have any recommendations for a suitable therapist please post below.

There has been a lot of debate in South Africa around the inclusion policy and whether or not the mainstream schools are in fact able to support the needs of those children who have remedial requirements.

Paula says that as both a parent and a therapist she is not convinced that it is actually working. What are your thoughts on this and what you would like to see change.