Boys! Have you ever wondered why sometimes your son doesn’t seem to hear you or why he doesn’t describe nouns like your daughter? LeeAnn Smith, mother of two boys and author of the blog “3 for school,” recently attended a virtual home school conference hosted by Heart of the Matter. Not surprisingly, one of her favorite speakers was Andrew Pudewa whose talk was titled “Teaching Boys Who Would Rather Be Building Forts.” LeeAnn has graciously given me permission to reprint her thoughts on the differences between boys and girls. Enjoy!

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Did you know that boys and girls are wired differently? Literally neurologically differently. Read Why Gender Matters by Leonard Sax.

Here are some practical differences including reasons boys and girls don’t do well in the same classroom. Now I finally know why I chose to homeschool my boys and am more ambivalent about my daughter. In words not just feelings.

For example, boys don’t hear quiet sounds. They don’t ignore me. They just don’t hear me. Pudewa suggested that if both boys and girls are in a classroom, the teacher should seat the boys on one side and the girls on the other and then stand in front of the boys so they can hear. He said many boys don’t do well in school because they cannot hear the teacher. I thought of the wiggly boys in Primary trying to hear quiet women’s voices. He also suggested that if our sons cannot sit still to do math, have them stand up to do it. See further down for more reasons.

Boys optimum learning temperature is 68 - 69 degrees. Girls is 74-75 degrees. Note to self: keep heat low this winter and have dear daughter and me bundle up.

Boys eyes have more m-cells which are connected to rods. They tend to track speed and motion. Girls have more p-cells connected to cones which track color and texture. Do you know a boy that draws with black and attempts to draw action? I do! Boys draw verbs in black; girls draw nouns in full color.

That sums up boys in language arts: they recognize verbs. Girls see nouns and descriptors. So when a boy writes a story with info left out, I can’t instruct him on adjectives and adverbs. He suggested something like, “Great story. Let’s add some action.”

How they handle emotions like being upset: Boys stomp around and make lots of noise. They need to stand up if they are upset because they think better on their feet, moving around. So don’t make them sit down to talk about it. They can’t if you want them to work through it. If a girl is upset, you have to go find her first. He suggested that you can usually find her on the couch with a blanket pulled over her head. Her bedroom in our case. No need to search for a boy unless he took off on his bike.

Related info: Boys react to pain with an increase of blood flow to the cortex. He suggested letting them hurt each other or they will hurt themselves. He recommended explaining to them that girls do not do well with pain so they need to take it out on each other, not on girls! I realized that in our society of today with so many women in positions of responsibility, we don’t allow our boys the freedom to do this. How many times have I told my boys to stop wrestling before they get hurt? Shame on me! I’ll clear valuables next time (what few I have left.) They have never been badly hurt. (Fight or flight very clear here!)

Related to this info, he told us that boys have to learn interesting, relevant, and applicable information. They see no reason for anything else. Pudewa said the most important motivator was to teach things that were intrinsically relevant. Those things are naturally interesting. He commented that knives and swords are universally interesting to boys. “They will invent them if the never see them.” How many moms can attest to that? Keep swords and guns out of the house, and a boy will invent them out of a stick!

If we try to teach our boys something that is not that intrinsically relevant but must be learned, he noted that creative teachers will invent games. But he noted that they must have positive and negative results, otherwise the boys might decide it’s not worthwhile and decide to opt out. For example, a teacher might give him a penny for every right answer, but he must pay the teacher $1.00 if he does not play. The rewards must be physical, not mental or emotional. Girls need those, not boys.

No wonder the few all-boys schools in this country have exceptional records. We need more!

Oh yeah, Pudewa suggested martial arts training for teaching boys discipline and focus. Boys have inherently short attention spans, and it helps them develop longer ones. It helps all the way around! I know boys whose parents enrolled them in tae-kwon-do to help them with dyslexia, and it does. He also suggested reading the book, The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman.

As I listened to the speaker, I realized anew that those people who have spent the last who-knows-how-long trying to change boys have failed. They have only weakened and shamed boys. When we consciously understand and value boys again, we will change our world.

LeeAnn Smith
3forschool.blogspot.com

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Thank you, LeeAnn! This sure makes me think twice about the methods that I use to teach my son and my daughter. Maybe I’ll write a practical post on how to teach boys after I finish the series on step 3, “Supervising the Subjects.”

If you haven’t listened to my interview with Andrew Pudewa, hear what he has to say about how his homeschooling philosophy has changed over the years. He moved to Idaho to enroll his kids in Douglas Wilson’s classical school (based on the 12 year public school paradigm that I want you to toss!) and has gradually moved more towards the leadership model of Oliver DeMille. I know you’ll enjoy it! Next up, I’ll continue my series on “Supervising the Subjects” with a post on raising our teens to influence the culture.

Progressive responsibility and appropriate consequences are two characteristics of self-discipline in a classical home school. But those are not the only attributes. Supervised independent study is the pinnacle of self-discipline to which all parents using this classical homeschooling method should aspire. When your children have substantially mastered language, thinking, and communication, pay attention. You will probably notice that your preteen or teen is also regularly teaching himself the material instead of relying on you to relay knowledge.

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David and I belong to a local health club. During the first few months of our membership, we hired a personal trainer to (1) perform some tests, and (2) show us how to use the equipment correctly. We had to fast from food and drink (no coffee…oh the headache!) the night before the first test, and when we arrived that morning, we had to wear this strange mask that measured our resting heart rates over a 20 minute interval. Next we both got on a treadmill and, still wearing the masks, ran a difficult course of increasing elevation to determine our body’s minimum and maximum metabolism. We were told to do as many push ups as we could (I hate pushups), and timed abdominal crunches. Finally, we were weighed (gasp…did I really weigh that?) and the dreaded pincher tool grabbed our thighs, waists, and arms to measure body fat percentage.

After all the results were entered into the computer program, a concise report was generated which gave us our personal baselines for improving our health IF we ate a healthy diet, exercised aerobically, and lifted weights. Personal goals for weight loss, strength, and body fat reduction were established. We then began a 12 week program with a personal trainer who used our personal plans to teach us how to use each piece of equipment without injury. Each week we saw improvement in strength, endurance, and weight loss as she challenged us to work at our maximum abilities.

When we began the program, we had high hopes that we would see results immediately (after all, we had doubled our exercise time!), but each week, we only saw little gains. However, now that the entire regimen with the personal trainer is over, we clearly see a difference in the way we look and feel; the physical results are measurable and positive. Neither one of us met the computer’s prediction by the end of the 12 weeks, but we are both still faithfully working towards those goals and know that, with time and practice, we will arrive at our destination even if it takes longer than expected.

Although we greatly enjoyed our personal trainer, we no longer need her help. She gave us all the guidance and even shared copies of her twelve plans with us so that when we were ready, we could launch out on our own fitness adventure. If we need any help, we can find her quickly and resolve any concerns or questions that we have.

Supervised Independent Study is like a Personal Training Program

Coaching your maturing child to the point of supervised independent study is like starting a fitness program. Imagine that you are the personal trainer, and he is the trainee. After all those years under your careful guidance, he has learned how to use the language to express his thoughts in writing and in speech. In essence, you have taught him how to learn!

As he gains confidence and age, he begins to take ownership of his own learning as he acquires more knowledge and interprets the meaning of what he’s learning. Not only have you taught him how to learn academics, but you have taught him administrative skills, too. Over the years, you have no given him more and more responsibility. You’ve shown him how to regulate his own schedule. Perhaps you even have him check and correct his own work now.

Once you determine that he is ready to begin the systematic study of subjects like economics, history, and philosophy, your role as personal trainer changes. Just like our personal trainer showed us the ropes then released us to implement the regime on our own, so, too, you need to release your child to supervised independent study when it is time.

If there are subjects that you or your husband are especially qualified or eager to teach them, then by all means, continue teaching those subjects! My husband, David, is an American Civil War buff, so there is no better mentor in that area of U. S. history for our kids. I love to write, so I take responsibility for supervising their increasing competence in composing speeches and essays. However, we employ the expertise of outside personal trainers in some areas: Meredith takes voice and piano lessons from a university professor, and we use video, audio, and live instruction from other experts as necessary. I regularly download the mp3 lessons from The Teaching Company, and I’ve spent too much money taking the kids to debate camps and Andrew Pudewa workshops!

Most of all, I’m delighted that both kids are able to let the text teach them! The tools that we have given them (like annotation and abstracts) enable them to have a “conversation” with the author of the text that really helps them to get to the bottom of the author’s intent and take ownership of what they discover. Later in this series, I’ll outline the scholar’s tools.

Four Mental Attitudes

Self-discipline is often about pushing yourself to accomplish tasks or adopt behaviors even though you’d really rather be doing something else. Every time that I had to do those push ups, I inwardly dreaded them but willed myself to move forward. Obstacles to progress, temptations to slothfulness, and hardships along the way will inevitably arise. You need to train your kids in rejecting immediate satisfaction for the greater good. Here are four lessons that David and I learned in the gym.

1. Identify your goal.

Before you can make progress, you need to first establish the baseline from which you are starting. Ask yourself, “where am I in terms of…?” Accurate assessments, no matter how embarrassing or painful, will help you realistically set achievable goals. Decide what steps you need to take to get there. Which steps are easy, and which steps are challenging? Be realistic.

2. Take the plunge.

As the Nike ads say, “just do it.” Once you have decided on a course of action, it’s time to move forward. Train yourself in tackling the project sooner rather than later. Don’t procrastinate. Attack the steps identified in reaching your goal systematically and strategically. It helps to break the goal up into to baby steps, plus you’ll get more endorphin rushes when you check off more to-dos!

3. Work hard.

Achieving your goals is hard work, but you need to work hard to achieve them. The challenges will be great, but so will the reward. Learn to use your time efficiently so that you are productive and effective. The pain may seem unbearable, but you will get through it.

4. Keep moving.

Don’t give up. There is such a joy to pushing through the pain even if you think you cannot take another step. The sense of achievement is worth the difficulties that preceded the goal. Move on even if you don’t feel like it. Keep your eyes on that vision that you established earlier and imagine what can be. Persist. Persevere. It’s worth it in the long run!

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The maestro who can bring a musical score to life or the Indy Car driver who can observe the signs of an engine problem have both learned how to interpret meaning. Insightful interpretation comes after a full knowledge and understanding of the topic is mastered. In my next two posts, we’ll look at the challenges of interpretation and three methods for interpreting meaning from face-to-face interactions to textual clues.

In post one of this series on mastering the three skills of the classical trivium, “How Do You Measure Mastery?”, I compared classical homeschooling to Indy car racing and defined the finish line, the driver, and the crew. In “Diane’s Must-Know Mastery Checklists,” I compared the content to the Indy car and shared my personal “must-know” checklists for teaching language, critical thinking, and communication skills. In this final post on mastery, we’ll look at pit stops and how to evaluate your child’s progress towards mastery.

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The Pit Stop

Indy Cars enter the pit for one reason: maintenance. Periodically throughout the race, the driver pulls into the pit for fuel, tire changes, and for other engine or body work. The experienced pit crew member assesses the situation and prescribes a solution. Personally, in the “Lockman Racing League,” we like regular pits! I probably reassess the kids’ progress about every 12-18 weeks. I use my “must-know” checklists as a gauge and adjust the schedule and content accordingly. Weaker areas get more time. Sometimes I’ll even table all other work and do a quick intensive to make sure they are getting the concept. We’ve been known to stop everything and do a “grammar camp” or nothing but algebra until I was satisfied that they “got it.” Feel free to use my content “must-know” checklists as a guide to help you develop your next 12 week strategic plan.

The Score

Indy Car drivers accumulate points over the racing season as they compete in multiple races around the country. You need criteria for judging mastery, too.

How will you evaluate the learning?

In our home, we have one performance philosophy: do it well or do it over. We don’t accept mediocrity. Once Connor was performing poorly on his math lessons averaging about a 60-70%. My husband took control of the situation and started grading his work. Instead of circling the errors, he simply told Connor how many he missed and told him he had to find them. Basically, he had to do every problem again to find the errors. Although it was a painful lesson that took a couple of weeks of endurance, Connor learned to take his time, check his work, and master the material.

Although I do use letter grades for recording high school level work for the transcript, I prefer to evaluate mastery using a scale that I found in John Milton Gregory’s The Seven Laws of Teaching. Basically, you pick a skill and answer the following question. For instance, how much do you know about analogies? punctuation? bibliographies?

• I know nothing about…

• I am somewhat familiar with…

• I can generally describe the steps to…

• I can illustrate and explain how to…

• I am beginning to understand the deeper truths of…

• I am changing my behavior because of…

When they reach the changing behavior status, you know that they have mastered the material. Additionally, I really like to have them teach others the concept. You cannot teach what you do not know, and there is nothing like having to prepare a lesson that clarifies your misunderstandings or weaknesses. By the way, the word “master” is defined as “one who has such extensive knowledge and comprehensive skill that he is able to teach others his specialty.

The Training

Alas, mastery is hard work for both parent and child. Parents who may not remember (or maybe never learned) the “rules” of the race need refueling to restore long-forgotten knowledge. Thankfully, a rusty parent can come up to speed rather quickly with a little review. The child, however, begins each of the three skills of the trivium as a novice, and consequently, his or her journey towards mastery will take years of learning and practice before language, thought, and communication skills are finally conquered. To continue with the race analogy, the parent runs a sprint while the child runs a marathon!

Mastery of the three skills is not consecutive; the skills are usually built concurrently over time. In other words, your child doesn’t master language then master critical thinking then master writing then master public speaking. In fact, your child can work on mastering all three skills at the same time. Consider the child who is learning about multiplication. As he learns the vocabulary like factor and product (language), he makes ordered stacks with the colored tile manipulatives (critical thinking) and sings the multiplication songs to his little brother (communication).

Additionally, you may find that your child has substantially mastered one skill (like the spelling component of language) but is still working on another skill set (the grammar component of language). Instead of drilling the spelling rules, devote that time to diagramming sentences.

The good news is this: if you have dropped the 12 year public school paradigm, then you are free to spend as many years as it takes teaching only 3 major skills: language, thought, and communication. In some families, mastery of these three skills takes 6 years; in others, it takes 8 years. Even if you spent the first 8 years guiding your child toward full command, that still leaves 4 years for your teenager to dive deep into the study of subjects and, in the process, compile a very impressive transcript. Don’t worry about how long it takes; teach them language, thinking, and communication until they are able to teach others and become masters of their skills just like Indy Car racers!

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In Adopt a Radical Position…Be Counter-Cultural, I discussed four qualities that need to be nurtured in classical Christian home school kids: (1) mastery, (2) self-reliance, (3) interpretation, and (4) influence. Now that we’ve covered mastery, it’s time to examine the rising scholar’s level of self-reliance, independence, and responsibility, all of which are the subjects of my next post.

Have you watched my free parent tutorial yet on The 7 Laws of Teaching? In this free ~30 minute flash presentation, you’ll learn more about mastery for you, the parent! You can take your own assessment and see what areas of language, critical thinking, and communication you need to work on to teach your kids. Let me know if you enjoy it, and please leave any suggestions for improvement by taking the online survey. Thanks!

In “How Do You Measure Mastery?”, the first post of this series on preparing to transition to the supervised study of subjects, I compared classical homeschooling to Indy car racing and defined the finish line, the driver, and the crew. Today, we’ll talk about the car, and I’ll share my personal “must-know” checklists for teaching language, critical thinking, and communication skills .

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The Car

An Indy Car driver does not learn to drive in an expensive race car. He probably drove his Daddy’s tractor, dirt bike, or old beat up Chevy around the farm before he was invited to drive a million dollar vehicle. Simple concepts precede complex concepts.

We use different vehicles for different purposes. Indy Cars are made to travel on a wide oval track, Formula One cars travel on tight European city streets, and good ‘ole boy stock cars are made for intentional frequent crashes! Mountain bikes have fat tires for scaling rocky uphill terrain. Racing cycles are lightweight with thin tires for speed and manueverability on pavement. Gargantuan cruise ships carry loads of vacationers while shrimp boats are perfect for fishing and hauling seafood. So, too, there are different purposes and rules for using language, thinking critically, and communicating effectively. Whether you are transitioning to a classical model or just beginning, you need to decide what basic rules of operation you want to teach your child for each particular skill.

What content will you teach your children?

Now if you were expecting me to lay out a full “scope and sequence” for teaching the trivium, I’m sorry to disappoint you. When I go to home school curriculum fairs and see the words “scope and sequence,” my eyes glaze over, and my brain goes numb. In my opinion, scope and sequence is a phrase invented by professional educators to intimidate home school parents into thinking they need experts to tell them what’s best for their children!

Besides, anyone who tells you what to teach by grade level is advocating a public school model, not a classical model. Remember you just need to focus on the big picture: teach three skills! You don’t need a 12 year plan, and in fact, you need frequent pit stops to reevaluate progress, so I suggest you make short-term plans. Personally, I like to reevaluate progress about every 12 weeks, and I always end up adjusting the course as a result to better meet my goals. Here are my short lists of “must-know” content for the three skills.

Diane’s “Must-Know” Checklist for Language Skills:

• How to read (alphabet, phonetic method)

• How to spell (spelling rules)

• How to write (handwriting – print, cursive, and later typing)

• How to punctuate and capitalize

• How to use proper grammar (all 8 parts of speech)

• How to decipher unfamiliar vocabulary

Diane’s “Must-Know” Checklist for Critical Thinking Skills:

• How to classify, describe, compare, and contrast

• How to identify and complete sequences

• How to identify and interpret analogies

• How to solve problems (math equation and word problems, puzzles)

• How to structure logical arguments (syllogism, fallacies)

• How to think inductively (particular to general) and deductively (general to particular)

• How to perform an experiment using the scientific method (including prediction)

• How to analyze literature

• How to research a topic

Diane’s “Must-Know” Checklist for Communication Skills:

• How to have conversations (face to face, telephone, letters)

• How to write a proper sentence and vary the structure (compound, complex, phrasing)
  

• How to write a correct paragraph, transitions, introduction, and conclusion

• How to add stylistic elements (dress ups, openers, decorations, triples)
  

• How to take notes (key word outline, stick & branch, annotation)

• How to write essays, reports, abstracts, research papers, and speeches

• How to footnote, write bibliographies, and edit

• How to develop a thesis statement and prove it with evidence

• How to give a speech (all 10 NCFCA categories)

• How to listen well and interpret meaning

Each family will teach content in differently. Let’s take an example. Learning how to research and develop arguments are two components of critical thinking. These skills can be taught in various ways. For instance, my husband, David, is an attorney who often finds himself before a federal judge. Learning how to research and debate a national or international resolution meets my husband’s criteria for teaching research skills, developing an argument, listening well, and giving a speech. Consequently, participation in our local debate club is mandatory for the Lockman kids! Whereas, your husband may be an engineer who believes research is best learned in a lab setting and communicated in a research paper. Tailor the content and methods to best meet your family’s abilities and preferences.

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In the final post of this series on mastery, I’ll share my 12 week pit stop plan for evaluating progress in acquiring the three skills of language, critical thinking, and communication.

For your convenience, I’ve prepared my “must-know” checklists for you in pdf format, so click on this link and print out your copy today!

As I explained in Teach the Skills of the Trivium, classical homeschooling begins with the following three skills: (1) learning the primary language, (2) learning to think critically, and (3) learning to communicate effectively. “Learning the primary language” is the topic of this series. In Learning the Language through Listening, I discussed three steps you can take to ensure that your kids are learning the language through hearing. In Reading Aloud: the Key to Language Development, I gave you 8 suggestions for raising kids who love to read. You might think that your child is translating the symbols on the paper into sounds in their head, but what he is really doing is translating the letters on the page into meaning. Comprehension is the subject of this post.

Understanding the Language

Do you remember those first board books that you used to read to your children? You’d hold your little one in your lap and point to the pictures and words as you read out loud. Perhaps you’d move your finger from left to right as the sentence progressed. Eventually your child began to point with you, and soon he excitedly “read” his favorite book to you! Why is learning to read so compelling? Because even the young child realizes that reading is not only fun, but reading is both useful and meaningful! The child learns that in the

“hodge-podge of black on white is a story, somewhat like the stories that Dad tells at bedtime, but steadier and simpler in its variation of words and nuances. In its many rereadings, the story will become part of the child’s world of imaginative experiences. And she will crave for ever more new ones.” (Seymour Itzkoff, Children Learning to Read)

Reading is not just sounding out letters in perfect articulation. Reading is comprehending, understanding, or making sense out of the printed text. The search for meaning should be the primary purpose of reading. Even a colorful board book has meaning that the child can comprehend.

One of Meredith’s favorite board books, Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, is about a bunny who postpones bedtime by telling all the objects in the room “good night.” In this example, the cute little bunny represents the little child, and the mama bunny represents the child’s mother. Meredith may not have been able to verbalize her comprehension at the time, but she understood that, like the little bunny, she could try to stall bedtime, but eventually she would have to go to sleep. Likewise, the text of sophisticated books, newspaper articles, and instruction manuals all have one final purpose: to convey meaning.

Seeing the printed text is an opportunity for learning the language. There are certain universal concepts about the printed word which every child needs to learn:

* print contains an exact message

* print can be letters and words which have individual sounds

* print corresponds one-to-one with the spoken word

*print progresses from left to right across the page and from top to bottom (with some exceptions)

*print progresses from the front page to the back page of a book

Children are incredible problem-solvers. For the youngest children, pictures act as clues to the meaning. As the books get more difficult, the pictures become less important, and the child has to determine the meaning of the passage from the text. Encourage your child to build a meaningful story in his head as he reads. Emphasize that every book has a lesson to be learned, a story to be told, or an event to relate so that over time he realizes that his foremost task in reading is understanding. In fact, problem-solving skills start with reading comprehension, so when you teach your children to look for meaning, you are helping them develop Skill Set Number 2 of the Trivium, critical thinking!

How can you help your child understand the meaning of the text?

One of the hallmarks of a classical education is the use of Socratic Dialogue in which you ask the child what the text means instead of telling the child what the text means.

*Ask LOTS of questions before you begin the book (and have your teen do the same!) by looking at the cover, the title page, and back cover. Flip through the pages and try to predict what the story will be about by browsing the pictures.

*Ask LOTS of questions AS you are reading the story (or after each day’s chapter for a teen). Find a good stopping place, and ask whether your predictions were correct? What will happen next? How will it end? (An older child is ready for more difficult questions about character analysis, plot, or cause and effect.)

*After you’ve read the story, have your child narrate the story back to you. Make sure he can tell you the beginning, the middle, and the end. Teens should be able to identify the hero, villan, conflicts, climax, and moral or application to his own life. If you want to enrich their learning, occasionally have them write their understanding. I’ll cover this in more detail later.

Another hallmark of classical home schooling is inductive reasoning. Consider the steps: (1) observe, (2) interpret, and (3) apply. In the case of a book, your child observes the details of the story, interprets the meaning of the story, then (hopefully) applies the lesson learned. Back to my example of Meredith and Goodnight Moon, my toddler observed that on every page the little bunny said goodnight to the things in her room (observation.) Then she understood that all little bunnies (and little girls) had to go to sleep even if they didn’t want to (interpretation.) Finally, she applied the lesson learned by allowing me to turn out the bedside light and without a peep and tuck her in for a good night’s sleep (application.) When you teach your children to think inductively, you are on your way to critical thinkers.

Like critical thinking and effective communication, reading or literacy is a cumulative, ongoing process. Think of reading as a continuum of increasing competence. Classical scholars are lifelong learners who, once they have substantially mastered the tools of the Trivium, are able to learn anything! Understanding the language involves determining the purpose or meaning of the written text as well as deciphering the code of the written text. The next post in this series on “Learning the Language” will cover a controversial homeschooling issue: phonics instruction.

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Since I published the post on 3 Simple but Significant Steps to a Classical Education, I’ve received several emails from readers with questions. If you have a question about teaching your children the primary language, especially reading, please click on the “Contact” page, and ask away. I’ll answer through email, and I just might use your question in a future post because if you’re wondering, there are bound to be other readers who are wondering, too. Looking forward to hearing from you!