This day and age, it’s critical that your child has a home learning corner to call their own! This can be a place to read, a place to do homework, or even a place to manage virtual learning.
After all, you probably have your home office space, or at least an area where you take care of household business. Your child’s learning is no less important. And it doesn’t even have to take up much room. It can be a literal corner or perhaps a desk. Be sure to utilize the wall space nearby for both decorating and practical things like a whiteboard or bulletin board to hold reminders, accomplishments, and even inspiration.
Be sure to let your youngster have some say in how to organize and decorate. The space can be truly their own, and that will help motivate him or her to use it as intended. Who knows? It may also even spur some additional effort on academics!
I have yet to meet a student who proofreads willingly. However, you can teach your child to proofread with less hassle using some simple strategies. Best of all, you can add some fun to the process!
Teach Your Child to Proofread Using Games
One of the best ways to teach your child to proofread is by setting up a treasure hunt for mistakes. Go through the paper yourself and make notes about categories of errors that you wish the student to find. Make note of things like capitalization problems, missing punctuation, spelling, and so forth. Be sure to figure out how many of each type of problem you see. Now send your child on a treasure hunt. Challenge him or her to find the mistakes that you already know are there.
Make the game more challenging by providing only the numbers of types of errors instead of telling the student the categories. For example, challenge him or her to figure out which type of mistake was made three times in the paper, and which one happened six times.
You can also indulge in a role-playing game. Give your child a classic red pen and have him or her correct the paper as the teacher would. Make the focus of the activity finding and correcting mistakes instead of having a “perfect” paper, and then “grade” the student’s work based on how well they played teacher.
Teach Your Child to Proofread with Independent Strategies
As your student matures, he or she will need to take on the responsibility of editing his or her own work without prompting. Instill some of these habits to help teach your child to proofread:
Always use the grammar checker and spell checker built into most word processing software. There is absolutely no harm in using the tools that have been provided. Just be sure your student realizes that these are far from infallible, and there is no substitute for going over the writing by hand as well.
Show your student how reading through the paper backwards can disrupt tricks of the eye where we see what we expect to see. By reading from the end to the beginning, your learner will need to concentrate on each word individually, and will catch spelling mistakes and even some punctuation and capitalization errors.
Create a proofreading and editing checklist with your student. List categories of errors, with a focus on the common types that trouble him or her. Use the checklist to guide proofreading and editing. Go through the paper once for each category, just looking for that type of error.
Do You Have Other Homework Hassles?
You’ll want to watch the free webinar: How to Eliminate Homework Hassles in 30 Minutes a Day. Nearly every parent has troublesome homework issues, but there ARE solutions. You can create peace in your household and eliminate the nightly battle over homework. Watch the webinar and grab your free guidebook that will walk you through a proven process to make homework time go more smoothly at your house.
What, exactly, are learning styles? I’m glad you asked! The term learning style refers to an individual’s preferred avenue for taking in information. When we know a person’s learning style, we can tailor teaching and study methods to allow for most efficient teaching and improve retention and success.
In a nutshell, there are three main types of learning styles. These can be combined and they can change over time and in different circumstances.
Visual Learners do best with material they can see, like pictures, charts, graphs, and diagrams. They may prefer reading to listening to a lecture.
Auditory Learners understand and retain information more easily when it is presented orally. They like to discuss, listen, and even sing.
Kinesthetic Learners learn best through movement. These are the hands-on learners who like demonstrations, experiments, and watching videos.
Here’s my favorite video explanation of learning styles:
You can discover a person’s primary learning style or styles through checklists or questionnaires, or even by observation. Here’s one example: Learning Styles Questionnaire . Now, what can you do with this information now that you know it?
Learning Styles Give Clues about What Will Frustrate Kids
Once you know a child’s learning style, you can predict what types of assignments and study strategies will be frustrating to your student. This will allow you to provide support and react in a more productive manner.
For example, your student may be a kinesthetic learner who prefers hands-on learning. This student may well find gathering information from a textbook to be boring or frustrating, since that’s a visual task. You can help by guiding your student to hands-on ways to accomplish the same task, such as copying information or acting out the information.
Learning Styles control how easily information is absorbed.
Your student will learn best if information is presented in the channel that he or she is most comfortable with. You can familiarize yourself with various presentation strategies that match your student’s learning style. Use your knowledge to reteach or re-present information when you know that the school or class presentation was not a good fit for your student.
Learning Styles show you how to guide study strategies
Teach your student how to accommodate his or her strongest learning style. School presentations are primarily auditory (lecture-style). Study materials are primarily visual (textbooks and handouts). Show your student how to find the material in the format that is most compatible with his or her primary learning style. Consider one or more of the study strategies on the following list:
Visual Learners
Write down important points
Highlight key information
Color-code information
Use diagrams, charts, pictures to organize information
Write down things to memorize and hang them where they will be seen frequently
Visualize important information
Read the text before going to class
Copy directions before beginning projects
Use flow charts to recall processes
Auditory Learners
Use a recorder to record lectures and discussions when possible
Listen to recorded information while driving/riding, while doing household chores, etc.
Read in a whisper or aloud when possible
Discuss with others, quiz orally
Sing or set ideas to music
Read text after class (unless assigned ahead of time)
Interview experts on the topic
Read directions out loud before beginning a project
Kinesthetic Learners
When possible, make models, do experiments, act out ideas
Study for short periods (10-15 minutes) with frequent breaks
Use a computer to type ideas
Work on memorization by doing an action with each item, such as an exercise
Play games such as Memory to match questions and answers
Try reading or watching while standing up or while using a fidget
Trace and copy words to learn spellings, vocabulary, and other facts
Play games modeled after television quiz shows to study, such as Jeopardy
Make sure you are getting in on all of the action and receiving all the tips! Sign up for the Homework Help group to grab up some goodies and get advice on helping your student tame homework monsters. CLICK HERE to join this free group!
Download the handout for the Homework Hassles Recording HERE.
Watch the Homework Hassles Recording HERE:
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Do you have a homework battle at your house? You’re not alone!
A recent survey by the National Center for Family Literacy found that over half of the families surveyed struggled with homework. A whopping 46% of the parents said they had trouble even understanding the assignment enough to provide some help!
No wonder getting the job done is a fight. But sometimes there are underlying problems. Here are three suggestions that may help at your house.
The Homework is Too Tough
Sometimes kids’ skills just aren’t where they are expected to be for their grade level. Symptoms of this problem (besides an all-out refusal to do homework) include:
low grades
reluctance to show you completed work to check
taking far too much time on homework on a daily basis
responses that are way off instead of just a little bit wrong
If you think the work is beyond your child right now, talk to the teacher. Explain that your student is struggling, and give some tangible proof that the struggle is real (as opposed to just a “behavior problem”). Ask the teacher to take a close look and get some extra help for the child if needed.
And do what you can to build up the weak skills at home. Take advantage of the free classes, worksheets and activities available on-line, and insist that the kid completes some. Or hire a tutor. One-on-one instruction works wonders. (Here’s how I can help: CLICK HERE for info on tutoring)
There is Trouble Starting Homework
Sometimes getting started is half (or even ALL) of the battle. Your student procrastinates, asks for help before even reading the directions, and wants you to affirm every single answer before he or she can continue.
These are signs that kids have poor confidence in their abilities. Lots of things can cause this, including rough experiences in the classroom or even too much help in the past from anxious parents.
Try setting a timer for a few short minutes. Challenge your child to get a small number of problems completed, then check the work. Praise work completed instead of work correct. And when you do your homework check-over, don’t nitpick. Don’t even correct! Let them stand or not on their own efforts. Does it *really* matter if the homework is perfect if they are not the ones doing it?
The Work is Hurried and Sloppy
Some kids sit down willingly for homework time, then hurry through. They do a haphazard job that is sure to yield a failing grade. They skip problems or answer only the first part of each question. Their writing is practically illegible. In other words, the work stinks!
These kids often perceive a reward for ‘getting the work done.’ They do not perceive the benefits of doing a good job on that work. Often, the culprit is the reasoning that the quicker the work is done, the quicker they can move on to some more pleasant activity.
The cure is to insist on appropriate quality in the finished product. And if the homework effort does not take up the entirety of the scheduled homework time, add in some extra practice activities of your own devising. Every student has weak areas that can be strengthened. And when the reward for hurrying through the work disappears, the quality will likely improve.
Check Out the Webinar!
“How to Eliminate Homework Hassles in 30 Minutes a Day” has even more hands-on, practical tips to battle the Homework Monster at your house. CLICK HERE for details.
This poor woman is up to her eyeballs in frustration. How often do you end up looking like this when you need to get your kids going on their homework? There ARE solutions. One important strategy is to build a “homework habit.”
Be Consistent with the Homework Habit
One reason that kids protest homework so mightily is that the tactic often works.
Counter this by standing your ground, each and every day, and insisting that time be spent on improving academic skills. Schoolwork, of course, has first priority, but if there is not enough schoolwork to fill the them, then grab some of your own back-pocket ideas and get the kids moving on them.
If you are consistent with your expectation that the kids WILL be working on academic pursuits for a certain amount of time each and every day, then the protests will quickly dwindle down to nothing. Just like they protested brushing their teeth mightily back when they were toddlers, but you stood your ground and now that they are older they do it automatically, the same strategy will work with homework.
Make It a Daily Homework Habit
How much time SHOULD kids be spending on their academic pursuits each day? This is a great place to use your own judgment but several notable professional groups (like the National PTA and the NEA) recommend approximately 10 minutes for each year of school. So first graders should spend ten minutes daily, third graders should be working for thirty minutes, and so on up to twelfth graders working approximately two hours.
The important part is that word, daily. It’s not “only if the teacher sends homework” or “only on school days,” or “not over vacation days.” DAILY means DAILY. Now, you can negotiate a day off here or there, especially as a reward for consistency or for a job well done on a project, but for the most part, if you enforce the DAILY habit, the kids will quit protesting.
And if you are having more headaches than you like when it comes to homework routines, be sure to sign up for the webinar coming up on Tuesday, July 26, 2016 at 7 PM Eastern Time: How to Eliminate Homework Hassles in 30 Minutes a Day. Click HERE to grab your spot for this free webinar!!
This poor woman is up to her eyeballs in frustration. How often do you end up looking like this when you need to get your kids going on their homework? There ARE solutions. One important strategy is to build a “homework habit.”