A Great Opportunity to become YOUR child's Number 1 Mentor.

Suli Breaks

One of the big complaints within our community is the education of our children; the lack of black teachers and the fact that the system does not work, especially for black boys. So if your child struggles with learning in school,this is a great opportunity to be their mentor and create warm, memorable moments.

It can seem daunting taking this on but actually, we just need to keep it simple, break it down into steps and focus on quality not quantity. The starting point is reading as it crosses all subjects and disciplines; you can vary the books and topics; take turns and increase or decrease the difficulty.

• Tip 1: Read to your child, before you ask your child to read to you. People forget how important this is but we learn by watching others.

 

• Tip 2: Work with your child's body clock. If they are not morning people respect that. Schedule your sessions to suit them.

 

• Tip 3: Think about your child’s soft skills (speaking, timekeeping, listening, patience, etc); list which ones need improving and then select one that you want to work on.

 

• Tip 4: Be consistent and help introduce new habits. So if you've chosen to do your sessions at 2pm, then keep to that every day; children need consistency.

 

• Tip 5:  Understand that they do have bad days; plan what you're going to do on their bad days when they just can’t focus. Instead of reading, both of you could listen to an audio book.

To help your child step up with reading you need to check their understanding.

• It's simple, every so often, just ask your them questions about what they have read. 
• Get them to guess what happens next in the book.
• Once it's finished, you can ask them to tell you their own ending.
• Can they tell you their own version of the story.

If you child is really good then ask them to write their ending or their version of the story.

Writing Tasks
It sounds old fashioned but ask a member of your family or friend to write a letter to your child and email it to you.

• Your child can then handwrite the letter, scan or take a photo and email it back. 

Create a story that's updated once a week. This is an interesting one.

• You or your child can choose the opening sentence, then each week they add to it.

Now the beauty of this is that during the week, you can get them to make notes about things they like that could be used in the story. e.g:

• The best part in another story or film.
• Their favourite character(s).
• Something they watch on the TV or heard.

Remember, to turn off all devices including the TV and the Phone as this help them understand that the session has started but also when it’s over.