Garman blog mod6

Parents’ Q. I will interview 3 parents, each one should have children with different age groups than the others.

01/ 02/ 03/ 04/ 05/

Parents play a role in what tools children use for learning.

Purpose : to Investigate parent’s attitudes and points of view.

Do you believe that digital tools might help your child learn Arabic? Do you have any concerns?

Knowing what parents think is the good place to get teaching resources for Arabic.

Purpose : to Investigate places where parents go to find educational materials.

Where do you find the best resources for Arabic teaching materials for your child?

Some people care to learn a language through it’s culture.

Purpose : to Investigate parent’s interest in excluding cultural references when Arabic.

Do you care if the educational tools are not directed to teach the Arabic culture?

May be I should ask them to draw this.

Purpose : to Investigate new tools.

What is the best tool that you think could help your child learn Arabic?

It is important to find ways to educate parents about the best digital games that teach Arabic.

Purpose : to Investigate where the parents get their information from.

Where do you hear about any educational digital games for teaching Arabic?

Parents’ Interview 4 // K.K // Mother of 3 kids ages 15, 12 and 9 years old. + R.S // Mother of 2 kids agers 6 and 4 years old

K.k: Arabic, not only in USA, it is in general a very hard subject and it’s very dry one for kids. The way the teach it here is still very traditional, like they use printouts about alphabets, and matching and circling, stuff like that. And the teachers are not fun enough for kids in here, kids need more fun activities to learn such a dry subject. Most the teachers here are teaching Arabic just because they know the language, but they don’t really have any educational background.

The Islamic schools lately are going to so many workshops nowadays to improve themselves.

My kids goes for one hour every week to a private Arabic tutor. I feel that One on one works better for my kids, they were not getting much from a class with a group of other kids.

He is a boy teacher and I feel that my kids, 3 boys, like male teachers better! He is very nice and he talks to them a lot, he explains a lot of concept to them through talking to them. The hour is not all about learning in a traditional way, I mean they work on reading, writing and printouts, but as I mentioned he tries to speak to them more, he tells them stories and they like to listen to them. And because it is something where there are no grades, I feel that they are not stressed out, they are just relaxed and they are doing better in this environment. The Sunday school sounds for stressful for them, because they actually don’t like to go to school in the weekend since they are going to school all week days and they need a break, and because Arabic is very dry in the Sunday schools, my kids complain a lot when they go there. During the weekdays seem to be working better.

01/

Do you believe that digital tools might help your child learn Arabic? Do you have any concerns?

R.S: The digital tools that are available are very limited. I have just couple of Apps, I couldn’t find a whole lot of Apps, I would to see more Applications, because my kids are so much into screens and games, not much interesting TV shows either. The other digital tools I have just toys, like Fisher-price toys in Arabic, and they seems to be helpful, I got them from Qatar, my family brought them to me. It’s basically a pencil that reads the words in Arabic, They download the story and the pencil helps them read the words.

I noticed that my kids would be more engaged with the digital tools when they are playing with other kids.

I have traditional blocks with Arabic Alphabets, and others with English, I noticed that they play with the English blocks more, because they learned how to play with them in school.

Karen: Even in the Sunday Arabic schools, the teachers speak in English with them, to make them understand the concept. But I would like to see something better than that. Like make the instructions in Arabic where kids have to be more engaged and start love this language. The language would feel and sound more familiar to them this way.

Our kids are not forced to think in Arabic, they are just translating, and the literal translation is not correct most of the time, plus the other problem is that we have the dialects that we speak with them at home, So learning Arabic with parents is not the best way, Introducing the instructions in Arabic, even if the kids don’t get the first time, they will get it by repetitions.

Back to your questions about the digital tools, I agree with R.S that there are not much Apps available, I found one that is good, but my kids found it boring because they always compare it to the other games available for them, which they become to be used to their standards and won’t be interested with others than provide less than these standards. This is an issue specially with teenagers because the games they play are very engaging visually, the kids are getting used to these strong and fast paste games, So the Arabic games available today didn’t do it for my kids. I couldn’t make them play them for long, they are too simple for them.

I don’t mind if my kids used the digital tools to learn something, but I don’t think that they should only be learning through digital tools. It could supporting other things. Because, I know that my kids are attracted to digital games, so If there are good Arabic games available, I would let them play these since they would be spending a lot of their times playing games anyways.

R.S: I see the value of Arabic games as a tool to make kids love Arabic, not that they will be learning a whole lot of Arabic by playing them. So it is more like identifying this language with fun.

K.K: The games should be well structured games and should be similar to the games they are playing now. The attention span for my kids is very short, so need something with strong visuals to match the level of the games they play so it would make them play for longer time.

R.S: The games available in English are designed in way smarter way than those in Arabic. They are more fun and more advanced at the same time.

02/

Where do you find the best resources for Arabic teaching materials for your child?

K.K: I get them from Lebanon. I try to find things like magazines with a lot of pictures with a description of these pictures. Or something for conversation.

Me: Do your kids read these magazines?

K.K: Again, because it is in Arabic, the language in these magazine is a bit hard for him to read because Arabic is his first language, and these magazines are designed for Arab kids. I have to help him to read them, but I think it is much more fun than the transitional books. I have got a lot of books but my kids never interested in reading these a lot too, they are not much fun to begin with to be honest, and I would love to see some more fun books to engage the kids.

R.S: To make your kids learn Arabic, you have to be dedicated as a parent for this task. Part of it is us really! The means that we have might not be the best but a big part of this is us the parents.

And the other part is that they should learn it with other kids, that would motivate them a lot.

K.K: Getting the kids to learn Arabic is easier when they are at the ages of 4-7. After 7 you have to explain the them why they are learning this language. You have to create motivations for them in order to let try to see an objective in learning this language. My son is 15 now and I have hard time making him go to this one hour a week to do Arabic learning. He has to see a good reason for this.

That’s why going to Lebanon is important, so he could see a reason to learn this language.

R.S: my sources are all from Lebanon, but in USA there is a series of books, “Arabic without tears” (it’s the translated version of English without tears I think)that I use, my son learned a lot from this.

I find that the successful Arabic teaching materials available here are the ones similar to the ones used to teaching English, like flash cards are good, for early childhood teaching these things work because they use the same strategies and ways that the schools use. I don’t know about higher level though K.K: My kids are teens and its a challenge to find materials that engage them, it was easier when they were younger, but I feel it is a challenge to find any useful materials that would improve their reading and writing. Kids love stories a lot, so I would be happy if there is any story that would make them interested, a story that should be something familiar to them, they should feel it when they listen or read this story. They also like to listen not always read things, that’s how I feel that my kids love to listen more than to read!

R.S: Bed time stories are good too, I translate the English ones into Arabic and read these to them.

But it would be better if I can find storybooks in Arabic where kids can see the words to get more visually engaged with the Arabic letters. I have an English App for stories, where it helps the kids reading the story, the words are highlighted to them and I wish there is something similar to that in Arabic because I feel that this App has helped my son to learn how to read.

K.K: I think with younger kids, using strategies that involve senses would work well. Like watching, listening and touching things.

R.S: I agree for younger kids, you probably don’t want to use a lot of screen time. But ages 6 and above the digital games could be aimed towards education.

03/

What is the best tool that you think could help your child learn Arabic?

K.K: I think that it has a combination of tools, I don’t think using traditional ways alone is good, nor is using just digital tool. The most important thing is the tools should be age related. Young kids like to learn through using their 5 senses, but as they grow in age, they might like something more abstract.

I think something that would relate to food! Kids love food, flash cards that have food on them with the name in Arabic.

Me: what about tools that would improve kids ages 9-14 reading and writing skills?

K.K: Kids at that age should be knowing how to read and write, so may be they should write paragraphs like they do in English, for an example, getting some pen pals for them, and they should write to them!

Me: I love this idea.

K.K: You should get people interested and the kids can write to them in Arabic about their daily lives and vacations, stuff like that. Another idea would be to let the kid where he design a poster in Arabic about things he does in a week and then he/she has to present it in Arabic to others.

R.S: I would like kids to learn through field visits, for an example they go the fire station and the tour should be guided in Arabic where different new vocabularies could be introduced to the kids. My son loves these when they do it at school, they bring people from different professions to speak to the kids about that profession, and the kids learn a lot through this. Kids love these people, they are their heroes!

Find engaging strategies and things that kids do at school and do them in Arabic, I think Arabic would become less dry and more appealing to them. Keep in mind, kids are smart, the more you engage them in something that has a concept the better they become motivated to learn about it. Things that could have some kind of a discovery, would let them more interested in learning them. And the more you create a tool to challenge them mentally, the more they would love it, of course the challenge has to be designed to their level, otherwise it would become frustrating.

04/

Do you care if the educational tools are not directed to teach the Arabic culture?

R.S: I’m already so selective about teaching my kids things from the Arab Culture, so I would prefer to have tools that relate to the culture here in USA. K.K: Any thing that has common sense and values. It doesn’t have to be related to the Arabic culture.

Any materials that would teach kids good morals, I’m with that.

R.S: It would be good without, because sometimes cultural things could vary even for people who are coming from the same country. So it is good idea to not get deep into cultural things.

http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/more-than-half-u-s-kids-reading-ebooks-new-reportshows/ 54% of U.S. children aged two-to-thirteen are reading ebooks, About a third of kids who e-read do so more than once a day. And 85% read an ebook at least once a week.

Key finding: — Of the 54% of parents saying that their kids aged 2-13 read ebooks; 85% are reading digital books at least once a week — Children e-read on tablets more than any other device, with 31% of all children reading ebooks on a tablet at least once a week — Among the 54% of kids who have access to tablets, 56% of them use tablets to e-read at least once a week — Of the 28% of kids who have access to e-readers, 57% use them for e-reading at least once a week – similar to the use of tablets — 70% of parents say their children read a combination of both enhanced ebooks and regular ebooks — Tablet-owning parents place the highest value on enhanced ebooks, expecting to pay an average of $7.76 for enhanced ebooks, compared to $5.80 for regular ebooks The ABCs of Kids & E-books Understanding the e-reading habits of children aged 2-13

By Playscience