In 2019, there were between 4 and 5 million homeschooled students in the United States. Those numbers went up by 50 million as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic, starting in the spring of 2020. However, you might have a completely different reason for taking a more hands-on approach to your child’s education, whether it’s for your child’s safety or a public school’s inability to meet your expectations.
Whatever your reason for withdrawing your child from institutional learning, you’ll undoubtedly come across difficulties in organizing their child’s education. Below, you can find five tips to create a conducive learning environment at home to keep their kids on track toward academic success.
1. Designate a learning space at home
Parent-teachers should designate at least one room for learning. There, your children can learn to keep their study materials in order and away from the general chaos of the rest of the home. While it’s ideal to have a separate room for study purposes, you can use whatever room you have at your disposal (kitchen, living room, well-lit basement) as an at-home classroom.
2. Stick to a learning schedule
Both parents and children can thrive from the flexibility of homeschooling. However, there’s a fine line between switching things up and going completely off track. By creating a clear learning schedule, your child can have a better chance of achieving the learning objectives of each meeting.
Both you and your child need to be on the same page regarding the schedule. Premium software such as HOMESCHOOLMINDER and HOMESCHOOL MANAGER can help home tutors create and share schedules. Alternatively, you can type up the schedule in Excel or Word and either convert it to a PDF file for digital sharing or print out a hardcopy for each student. The PDF format is the efficient and convenient format to use if you don’t want to risk the quality of your image or document, and should you need to apply some changes or split the PDF file you have you may use an online tool like this one here.
3. Plan out the academic year ahead of time
This is arguably the most overwhelming part of homeschooling for parents, but it’s also the most important. Parent-teachers should plan the entire school year before chopping big projects and quarter/trimester/semester-long subjects into bite-sized pieces. By breaking large projects into multiple milestones, both teachers and students are less prone to letting finer details slip their minds.
4. Create SMART learning objectives
Academic goals should be SMART—specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based.
· Specific. Make the objective as unambiguous as possible. Ideally, you’ll want to create learning objectives for each topic in every subject.
· Measurable. Parents must have a way of assessing the progress of achieving the goal. Use tools like homework, quizzes, and mid-term and final exams.
· Achievable. Ambitious is good, but shooting for the stars can put too much pressure on your child. The objective should be as ambitious but as realistic (based on your child’s academic abilities) as possible.
· Relevant. The materials taught should be relevant to the subject and the end goal.
· Time-based. This is the time-frame in which a specific goal must be met.
5. Connect with other homeschoolers
You’re definitely not the only family in your town that homeschools their children. Join a local homeschooling community where you can share ideas and learn from others’ experiences. Other parents might have valuable ideas that you haven’t thought of or vice versa. Thanks to the internet, finding a local homeschooling community shouldn’t be a challenge.
