Dear Parents and Caregivers,
Stop for a moment. Breathe.
Now, before you start diving into the depths of the hundreds of online education companies, courses and resources, please take a few minutes to read this from me (a primary teacher) to you.
It is a beautiful thing to see so many businesses offering free subscriptions to their meaningful, engaging and curriculum-aligned content. And I’d like to acknowledge all the fabulous teachers working hard to deliver their programmes to their students from home.
But amidst this change, it is important to recognise that parents – who may still have to work from home or go out as an essential worker – are now expected to manage a ‘school day’ from home. It takes teachers a long time to successfully balance behaviour management and curriculum delivery, and now parents are being thrown in the deep end. This is a HUGE lifestyle change for children and families, and it can be harrowing for parents to figure out where to start.
Parents, I’m here to tell you that everything will be OK.
It won’t be perfect. Things may not work the first time and you’ll make mistakes. But it will be OK. Teachers are learners, too.
But us teachers are still here to help! There are tried and true strategies that can support children to work independently from home, eventually without needing so much parent input. Although there will be some initial effort involved in the setup, the outcome will be worth it.
So let’s take a step back and look at the bigger picture. How can we implement and sustain a successful Home Based Learning [HBL] programme over the next several weeks?
1. Settle In and Reset
During such a stressful time, we are mostly likely not in a state of mind to start a HBL programme straight away. I have seen many posts about the need for parents to give themselves and their children time to settle into being at home together. This is so important.
Look at it like the start of a new school year; children are becoming familiar with each other, with their physical environment and are learning to trust the new situation they find themselves in. Teachers often take time at the start of the school year not to run rigorous academic programmes, but to build strong social connections within the new classroom community, practise communicating honestly and respectfully with each other and create a safe environment for everyone. You could do this by having a family meeting where everyone gets a chance to share how they’re feeling, what they want to do together, things they can do to relax and unwind, and help answer each other’s questions about the global or local situation you’re in. Teachers often undertake ‘team-building’ activities, too, and at home this could look like cooking and eating a meal together, going for a family walk around the block or having a movie night.
Let’s take the pressure off and allow ourselves time to press ‘reset’ on our lifestyles.
2. Holidays
In New Zealand, our school holidays have been brought forward to begin presently and run for two weeks. Children will need this mental and emotional break from their academic work not only in this pandemic but also because they have been attending school for nearly a whole term. We don’t want children to burn out, especially not while confined at home.
That being said, we are currently unable to leave our dwellings unless we are venturing out for essentials or exercise in our neighbourhoods. So it’s worthwhile to consider creating some structured activities for children to engage with at home that are fun, easy to plan and run, and could potentially last over a few days.
To help parents and educators, I have created a bingo-style grid with 64 tech-free activities children can do over the break, either independently or with you. They can come up with their own creative ideas, too. You can download my Home Based Holidays Activities Bingo for FREE here:
3. Routine
OK, so now that you and the children have had time to breathe and get used to your new lifestyle at home, you can look at setting up a routine. As a side note, I’m going to approach this as if your child’s school has not sent through any of their own recommended routines, as I am aware some parents may be experiencing radio silence from their education providers.
I believe that routine is the solid foundation of establishing expectations and managing behaviour. The routine in an HBL programme will most likely look different to a school day. Every household will be different because we are all having different experiences in this time of social distancing.
When you are setting up a routine at home, make sure that you talk to your child about being flexible if things change. For example, they may have access to a device in the morning but that may change if someone else in the household needs the device. Or perhaps their current working space needs to be moved. Be honest with them about how things may change, reassure them that you will keep working together so everyone is happy, and keep communicating about what’s working and not working. The key point here is that you are establishing the routines with your children. Teachers and students often co-create classroom routines that everyone can rely on during the day.
Timetables
In terms of the actual structure of your routine, this will greatly depend on your child’s school. Some may assign work with no routine expectations, just a due date for work to be completed. Other schools may be presenting video lessons at certain times of the day and expect your child to attend online.
Once you have a clear idea of what the school requires, then setting up a daily timetable for your child can help keep them accountable. A visual aid is helpful even for older children. If possible, use a whiteboard so you can change the activities each day or start a daily notebook (use paper folded together if you don’t have a spare book) that can be ruled up with the same structure each day, but different times and tasks can be added in.
Here is a FREE example that you can access on Google Docs:
A regular wake up and breakfast time is a great way to get the routine off to a good start for the day. In my experience at a Montessori primary school, the morning three hour work cycle gives children time to fully engage with meaningful work. Starting their work in the morning has also helped sustain the engagement across the day, rather than just beginning after lunch.
They can choose their own time to have a ‘Snack & Chat’, both elements of nutrition and socialisation are important before settling back into their work. Lunch should include time to eat and a good amount of time to play (ideally outside, although this is dependent on individual situations and the weather). After lunch is a silent activity without interruption, to help children refocus. The afternoon could be more work if the child is engaged and motivated in what they’re doing, but could look like structured play activities, more outdoor games or even a nap if it’s needed!
Try to keep a consistent timetable structure as much as you can.
Space to learn
Another aspect of routine involves the physical space. Set up a dedicated space where they can do their schoolwork, preferably access to a flat surface like a desk, table or bench. Children also need to move, so – if you have the area – perhaps set up a secondary space for certain types of work. For example, the dining table could be where they use a laptop, and their room could be where they work on their crafts. Maybe after lunch time, they are reading or drawing in the lounge. If it’s too overwhelming or difficult to create these different spaces, then at least having one area where the child can set themselves up every day will help keep the routine.
Materials
Children will most likely need access to basic stationary. Paper and pencil are key, and you could also try to include coloured pencils/pens, scissors, glue sticks, a ruler, and so on. It could be kept in a container or pencil case which stays in their dedicated workspace. Other materials could include a dictionary, thesaurus, a clock and any craft materials. You could also keep their daily snack food in a lunch box there so they can pick it up and sit outside or in the kitchen for snack without spending most of the time looking for something to eat.
4. Choices & Responsibilities
Now that you have a routine established, let’s look at the content of HBL.
Freedom to choose
Wherever possible, offer choices to your child. Not just in learning, but in almost all aspects of their day (providing this doesn’t compromise good sleep schedules and bedtime routines, nutrition or general health and safety).
A cornerstone of the Montessori method is to give freedom to the child so they can choose what they wish to learn. Public schools may refer to a similar method, coined ‘student agency’ or ‘self-directed learning’. In order to ‘teach’ independence, we must give the children the freedom to make conscious, responsible choices. It’s important to note that each child needs their own balance of these two elements to make it work.
Hopefully, your child’s school has given choices of what they can learn each day. If not, you can add your own learning choices to what the school expects to be done. At first, you can help your child plan what they are going to work towards that day and they can record it in their timetable. Eventually the child will take this responsibility on themselves and make their own choices based on what they want to learn and what their teachers assign to them.
Responsibilities, not rewards
Treats, extra play, screen time are all examples of extrinsic rewards. My classroom has none of these. It is difficult to implement this kind of system when your children may be used to receiving ‘points’ based on good behaviour or excellent work. Responsibilities can remove the need for extrinsic rewards, although it’s not always easy.
Freedom to choose activities develops an intrinsic motivation to learn. You don’t want learning and schoolwork to seem like something unenjoyable that must have a reward attached to it. With this freedom also comes a sense of accountability. The child owns the choices they make and therefore they are the one responsible for following through. As a parent, it’s important to use language to remove yourself from the equation and give responsibility to your child. For example, instead of “I want you to do your writing now” you could ask “What did you choose to do at this time? Writing? OK, where would you like to sit and write?”
You can extend this principle to household chores and other daily tasks not related to schooling. Give your child the choice of what they would like to do, and they become accountable for doing it. Talk these things through in a family meeting so that your child can see that everyone has their own responsibilities.
Of course, in reality HBL will be just a small portion of your child’s schooling and if nothing else works, then use those extrinsic rewards to help get things moving in the mean time. My advice would be to use rewards as sparingly as you can to avoid your child becoming nonchalant toward them, rendering your reward system useless. If you need to motivate them to get through something particularly difficult, first try to use a when-then technique “When you finish (this activity that you are struggling to work through), then we can do (something that you love doing and wish you could do all day) for fifteen minutes.”
Online vs. Tech free
Include a good balance of learning choices between these mediums. I suggest no more than half of the three hour work cycle should be spent online (but this may not work for the programme your child’s school delivers). I have personally found that the afternoon tends to be when children need to be more tactile or kinesthetic, which means it’s a good time to get out the playdough, frisbee or crafts!
When you do set your child up with a device, it may be prudent to remind them of how to stay safe online. This could be setting younger children up with certain educational websites or apps that you have vetted beforehand. If their work involves research, instead of going via the unpredictable Google route, try Kiddle, a child-friendly search engine.
In the coming weeks, I will be creating more resources that give learning choices – both online and offline – for children to choose from if their schools have not already provided this for them.
5. Conferences
Check in with your child on a regular basis. This may seem like a redundant point to make as I’m sure many of you are checking in with your children but I’m still going to put it here.
Children sometimes don’t offer their feelings or opinions as freely as adults, they might give short responses to questions, or may outwardly seem to be working fine but inwardly something’s on their mind. Teachers often conference with children to see how things are going, and the responses we get still surprise us.
Ask questions, show you’re listening and try not to prescribe or advise anything until they’re done, then tell them you love them and you’re always here to talk if they need you. If they’re being difficult, use humour before becoming stern.
Some example questions could be:
- How are you doing? (simple and sometimes needs a follow up: “Tell me more about that”)
- Are you looking forward to something today?
- Have you set yourself a goal today?
- Do you have anything that you want to more of? Anything you want to learn more about?
- Is anything bugging you right now?
- Do you have any ideas that you want help to write or draw?
- Do you have any questions on your mind? Can I help answer them?
I hope this article is helpful and you are feeling a little more at ease during such a turbulent, uncertain and taxing time. Aroha nui <3
Comments