Home schooling tips
IMPORTANT: MOMS, DADS NOT REPLACEMENT TEACHERS
The best thing you can do during lockdown is believe in your children.
As children learn from home, parents are effectively running two schedules – work and school. Some children may not be able to get through all the work their school assigns in the time they have, which can leave parents feeling guilty…
It’s important for parents to note they are not replacement teachers, nor is it possible to hold down a full-time job while helping their children learn full time. Something’s got to give.
These are unusual times and schools themselves don’t expect children to cover all the content they provide, especially children in primary school.
In a newsletter to parents, the principal of Bondi Public school said: “Some days your children will submit outstanding work and other days they will submit nothing at all. I want you to know that this is okay. Our pupils very rarely work at the same level or at the same pace, so try not to compare yourselves with other families.”
There is much more to education than just getting through content. Schools struggle to cover all content in the curriculum under normal circumstances.
What education provides is the skills to be able to pick up content, or catch up on it when need be.
I research children’s learning in conflict-affected contexts, where school is often disrupted due to disease, poverty or war, and the responsibility of education lands back with families.
This research has shown me that children most able to catch up on content when they return to school are those whose families or communities promote literacy, numeracy and social skills.
In his research among European refugees during and after World War II, Professor Reuven Feuerstein observed that children whose mothers believed in them and invested in their learning skills were more likely to overcome trauma and progress their learning.
So the best thing you can do is believe in your children, and help them maintain their love of learning, as well as their basic literacy, numeracy and social skills.
1. Get your kids to read
The more words children have at their disposal, the more they can make sense of the world.
One of the most effective ways to build vocabulary is reading. If you’re having a bad school day at home but you manage for your child to fit in 10 minutes of reading, then you’ve had a win.
Reading books helps children develop cognition and sets them up for improved academic achievement. Research correlates reading with the achievement of future goals and work success.
Building vocabulary is also important for helping children overcome trauma and stress. When children can make sense of their experiences, it frees up their thinking resources for learning and development.
If your child is a resistant reader, try to build their reading stamina. Start with five minutes per day, then incrementally add one minute each day. Explain to them stamina is like building muscle.
Choose material they like to read – and celebrate the wins. If reading is an uphill battle, don’t feel like you have to conquer dense texts – reading comics and joke books is better than no reading at all. Try light-hearted humorous books. Also, tell stories. Sharing stories gives us a sense of belonging and possibility. In my study of children’s learning in conflict-affected northern Uganda, many teachers lamented the loss of generational stories due to the loss of parents and grandparents.
Stories give children connections to culture and points of reference that show adversity can be overcome. If all your child manages to do during this difficult time is read and tell or write stories, they’ll be well positioned with literacy skills for later recovery.
2. Build their maths stamina
Numbers and algebra, measurement and geometry, and statistics and probability. These strands are covered at every grade level and spiral up in complexity.
As a parent, you don’t need to unpack and interpret the curriculum, your child’s school has already done this for you.
Try to keep to the school’s plan. But if your child is finding it hard to cover everything, just focus on them doing at least some maths every day.
It is a skill better practised frequently (10-15 minutes per day) than doing all on one day (and then forgotten by next week).
If your child is resistant to doing maths, 10 minutes per day is better than zero minutes. And those ten minutes day by day build momentum.
Help them to build that stamina rather than just getting through the material. Set a timer and see how many problems can be done in 10 minutes, and gradually build up this time.
Numeracy is more than doing maths problems. It involves problem solving, sense making and critical judgement.
To keep our children numerate while at home, we should keep them counting, measuring, calculating, comparing and estimating.
3. Social skills
Educational research places social and emotional skills as considerably important for children’s development and well-being.
Social skills don’t come naturally to all children, and often need to be explicitly taught. These skills include manners, self-regulation and hygiene. The best place to teach these is in families. Help your children build social skills into their daily routine: for example, get dressed, brush your hair and clean your teeth every morning by 8am.
Insist on good manners around food, and create a cool-down space to help out with self-regulation.