Making Homeschooling Fun, Interesting, and Educational

Are you ready to get a bit creative in these challenging circumstances? By now, most schools have figured out a way to get lessons out to your children, and to receive and grade their work. The question is, what can you do to replace the teacher/classroom experience? Try this. Instead of looking the answers up in the textbook, have the student use the internet. When they are finished finding the answers, try the following. Instead of asking your child for the answers to the questions, use the following list of questions.

• What was the most interesting/surprising thing you learned?
• There will typically be a few different answers.
• What was the most difficult answer to find?
• How did you eventually find it?
• Was there any question that you could not find an answer to?
• Ask the rest of the class (see chat room reference below) if they had the same problem and if they found the answer.
• If nobody found the answer, lead them to finding it.
• Did you find an answer that was different from what you thought you would find?
• Why did you have the wrong answer in your head before?
• What was the overall lesson you learned by answering and discussing the questions?
• What did you learn that you did not expect to learn?

At the conclusion of this exercise, go back and answer the assigned questions. You will discover that they not only learned the material, they mastered it.

At first, the students are surprised by this different approach to discussing their homework. However, they soon realize that they are going to be asked more about how they learned than what they learned, and their approach to future assignments changes accordingly. They still learn the content, but they also learn the process of learning. They will be prepared for the academic testing required for the traditional academic assessment testing regime, but they also are prepared to learn whatever they need to know when they are no longer in school.

Another value of this model is that it encourages team/peer learning. Each class should set up a chat room where the students can gather to teach and learn from each other. The research is clear that the best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else. In the chat rooms, students are continuously teaching and learning together. As a parent, you can do this for your child and his or her friends. https://support.google.com/hangouts/answer/3111943?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en-GB

Oh, and by the way, as a parent, this is much more fun. You will find yourself actively participating in the discussions. However, there is one cardinal rule, “Never answer a question.” Your role is to show them how to find the answer. If you are not sure how to find the answer, even better, you will figure it out together.