Correspondence School

15th Feb 2015

Things to know about Correspondence School for Travellers with School Age Kids;

New Zealand children qualify for Correspondence School if they’re in a non-English speaking country, or can’t attend a normal school in NZ.
It’s free 🙂 Basically all part of the NZ Government’s responsibility to educate the next generation. I’m sure many other countries will have similar services, if you know of any let us know in the comments! (Foreign students can pay to attend)
Education is much more tailored to each student than in a classroom
Each student can download a full copy of Microsoft Office as a student of the school.
Kids are still kids and it’s still school, our boys got their afternoons back but still whinge about doing school work.
Link to NZ Correspondence School – http://www.tekura.school.nz/ Te Kura means ‘The School’ in Maori)

So far I have been really impressed with Correspondence Schooling. We started on the 30th Jan 2015 and we have been slowly getting more and more work. The Maths at the moment is through the online programme `MathsBuddy’ which is working very well for us. The online school site takes a bit of time to get around as there is so much on there, I really like that they have a forum/discussion board for all the kids to get to know each other, they can post their own threads and start up chats, it’s pretty cool.

There are 20 children in the class from all around the World, 1 living in Cambodia, 1 in Thailand, a few in United Arab Emirates, 1 in China, 1 family are going to be travelling around Europe in a Campervan (hoping we get a chance to catch up with them), the rest are scattered around New Zealand.

At the moment the boys are working on 2 projects, a `Science Project’ and one called `My Chance to Choose’, this one they have to learn how to set up their own pages in Wikispaces and they have to add all the missions they do on the pages so the teachers can view them, some of the missions are language, Technology, Maths, Art, PE and a few others, each one had 5 missions that give points, mission one gives 1 point and so on..the aim is to get 50 points..

We have also been signed up to an online Spanish course, very keen to properly get started on this.

As well as the Correspondence school work we are still getting them to write something every couple of days on there Blogs, I don’t mind what that is, can be a book review or a review on where we have just been…

Grant has also set them up on a course with DIY.org, which goes on for a month. Jacob is on an Acting course and Lucas a Comic Book course, they are both enjoying this.

To start with I wasn’t the most patient of teachers, mainly because I want to be the best teacher out there and take so long getting around the online site it frustrated me..but as we are getting more and more used to it all it is getting easier.

I like routine, especially for the school part of the day…so our routine consists of us getting out of bed at 8.30am, sorting ourselves out, eating breakfast, having a nice big drink of water and starting school at 9.00.

The boys log straight onto Mathsbuddy and do 45 mins, Reader-plus for 30 to 45 mins. After that we do 30 mins of reading through discussions and replying and or starting a new thread..and then working on which ever project they are doing at the time.

I did do my own spelling testing with them, I did 10 spellings and got them to write a short sentence on 5 of them, but as time went on they were given more and more work the spelling tests have stopped.

I do also like to try and get them to spend a bit of time writing on their Blog.

If we get time we read which ever book we are reading and wait for Grant to get up (he works until 4.00am-ish so gets up at mid-day) then he will do a bit of Science with them at some point in the afternoon, and when we sort ourselves out more we are all going to do the Spanish course together.

What we really want once we are in Europe is to school from 9 and be fully finished by mid-day, Grant get up, eat lunch and then all go out, whether that’s wandering the streets of Spain, going to the beach or checking out a museum…basically have the afternoons to ourselves.