Homeschoolers using thebrain4/8/2023 ![]() Some of my best memories are from our homeschool days, and the bad days - yes, we had plenty of those, too - have faded. School is not a do-it-yourself thing for students. So do not feel guilty if your student needs help. It is not “cheating” to help a student to the extent necessary. Other students need to be directed to stay on task, and others need only minimal editing. Some students must be guided with almost every word for a while. Some students need more help than others. This is the same procedure my students should experience at home under the guidance of the Parent Editor. I would follow the same procedure each of the nine days, using the 9-Day To-Do Lists (assignment sheets) as I actually have them laid out in my curriculum. On Days 2-9, they would be writing paragraphs or working on other Key Word Outlines. ![]() No homework would be assigned on school days or weekends unless the student had work that was not finished in class. Anything left to be finished would be completed as “homework” that night, but ideally the student would finish it during class. Most of the day’s assignment would be finished during that class time. Even choosing helps to put down chemical pathways in the brain so the next time becomes easier. For the students staring blankly into space, I would ask questions and give them choices about what to write, and have them pick one of the choices. I would walk around the room, checking on everyone’s progress, keeping people on task, correcting those who needed correcting and helping those who were struggling. The next day, Day 1 of the 9-Day To-Do List (assignment sheet), they would begin their Key Word Outline for the first paragraph. This is what we do on class days in Writing to Learn. On Lesson Day, I would teach the lesson for the assignment that the students would be working on over the next two weeks. The difference would be that instead of the students doing the writing assignment at home over each two week period, they would be doing it in my classroom: one day for the lesson, nine days for the writing. I would do exactly what I do in my classes. (I wouldn’t be allowed to, of course, because I would have to do things according to the state school board’s standards, which would not produce the results that I get with my method.) On that note, here is what I would do if I was teaching my Writing to Learn courses in a brick-and-mortar, 5-day-a-week school. The best kind of instruction, and the most natural, utilizes the pedagogy of imitation, in which the teacher directs the student, by instruction and demonstration, in the correct use of the skills, followed by repeated practice by and correction of the student. Most students, however, even totally grown adults, need help and external motivation. I actually have one student that had written novels before she even started Level 1, so I know they exist, and I love that they exist. Now, to be sure, some kids love nothing better than reading, writing novels, doing advanced math, and teaching themselves Russian. So why do people, even homeschool parents themselves, assume that homeschool students ought to be self-learners, self-starters, lovers of academics? Homeschoolers are just ordinary people with all the different personalities and quirks and talents and shortcomings that ordinary people have. But mine apparently were…so brilliant, so weird, so something, that I shouldn’t have to break a sweat teaching them…because they were homeschooled. Of course, the answer is, “No!” It takes an entire team of people 40 hours a week to teach those students. Were those kids sitting all day long studying by themselves? ![]() People send their kids five days a week, for eight hours a day, to a special facility equipped with trained professional staff to teach them. Why didn’t I have more of this free time that I supposedly had coming to me?Īnd then that wonderful skill that we hear so much about, “critical thinking,” kicked in. I put a lot of time into working with my kids, especially on writing, and on math, my personal albatross. Well, no, I didn’t! At first I was a little embarrassed. I bet your house is clean and you fix delicious meals and work out regularly.” People would find out that I homeschooled, and then say something like, “Well, your kids are older, so that probably frees you up,” as if to say, “You must have plenty of free time on your hands. This is a question I started asking myself when my oldest kids were in middle school.
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