Jeanine Maakal Psigometris/ Psychometrist

With Covid -19 upsetting our lives and the school calendar constantly changing, many parents were either forced to or have opted to home school their kids.  Today I will share some advice on how to teach a child to read. Please do remember that every child is unique. What works very well for one child might not work as well for another. That might mean that you will have to try different methods. Be patient and keep on practising. Reading material Make sure you choose age appropriate books for your child to read. It can be very disheartening for a child if the book he/she has to read is to difficult. Rather begin with a book that is easy for your child to master. It will build his/her confidence. If you are unsure of what  is age appropriate for your child, the Department of Education has free readers that can be downloaded on to a tablet or you can print it out. It is also divided into grades from easy to more advanced. You can find it here:  https://www.educat...

The person- environment fit approach to career assessment is one of the most popular methods used for career assessment today.  How does it work? The goal of this approach is to find the perfect fit between a client's self knowledge and his/her knowledge of the world of work. This knowledge is primarily obtained by doing psychological assessments. Normally a test battery would include the following tests: an aptitude or cognitive measure for example the Differential Aptitude test (DAT) or the General Scholastic Aptitude test (GSAT), an interest questionnaire for example the 19 Field Interest Inventory (19FII) or the Self-Directed Search Questionnaire (SDS), a personality questionnaire for example the 16 Factor Personality Questionnaire (16PF) or the Jung Personality Questionnaire (JPQ) and a values assessment for example the Values Scale (VS). After an assessment is done and the results interpreted a fit can then be made. A client will be advised ...

Worksheets are useful tools in any teachers arsenal.  During the Covid 19 pandemic many schools were forced to send out worksheets to their learners as a means to continue teaching. It works well as it is easy to send out via Whatsapp or can be downloaded from the internet. Unfortunately we have seen an overuse of worksheets in recent years, especially in the foundation phase. This can be attributed to large classrooms and overworked teachers. Worksheets in the foundation phase are easy to mark as they often only requires writing a word or a number for an answer. This saves time and more work can be done. But why is this a problem?  Many children struggle with creative writing and mathematics when they reach the intermediate phase.  The problem in creative writing is they never learned how to write proper full sentences. The more you practice writing sentences, the better your vocabulary and sentence construction will be. For creative writing I often explain to child...