How to Help Kids Thrive While They're Learning At Home
The following article came from a recent webinar entitled “Making At-Home Learning Work During Coronavirus.”
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I know how busy you are. As I write this, my three-year-old is napping upstairs while my five-year-old is meeting with his nana on Zoom, attempting to learn phonics, while my suddenly full-time dad husband gets a much-needed break.
I have a decade of experience talking with families about homeschooling and our one-on-one private school, Pacific Preparatory, has been homeschooling students since 2002, so I feel well equipped to provide you with valuable information on how to optimize the home environment for remote learning. That being said, I’m also a fellow parent trying to navigate this unprecedented moment in history, and like you find myself constantly facing new challenges.
This is all to say: we’re in this together.
Homeschooling Isn’t Regular School
If you come away from this article understanding one new thing about homeschooling, I hope it’s this: homeschooling is not regular school. A lot of parents are trying hard right now to replicate the school experience at home and causing themselves and their kids a lot of stress as a result.
Most importantly: students generally spent around six hours at school, but not all of that time is spent in the classroom on academics. A lot of that time is spent on non-academic activities, and these non-academic activities are just as important as the academic ones. This chaotic time -- as stressful as it may be-- also presents an opportunity to understand the full breadth of what our kids are learning at school and find creative ways to teach those same skills at home.
What Kids Learn at School
When your kids are at school, they are learning academic skills, which can be summarized by the state standards website, but the other huge part of what they’re learning comes from non-academic activities. They’re taking electives, they’re socializing, they’re joining clubs, they’re doing sports. They’re learning executive functioning skills like time management, learning to have a growth mindset and build resilience, developing social-emotional skills, learning to use their bodies and develop physically, they’re developing self-discipline and confidence. This may come as a surprise to some, but academic skills actually make up a relatively small portion of their total learning experience.
This graphic on the benefits of social-emotional learning is courtesy of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. https://www.rwjf.org/
All of these non-academic skills can also be developed at home through other avenues of learning. Games, which can involve both academic and non-academic skill-building. Cooking, which involves executive functioning skills and measurement. Building projects, which involve math, executive functioning skills, physical skills and resilience. Even household tasks like emptying the dishwasher and setting the table can help students develop non-academic skills as well. This means giving your child a list of chores could actually count as “school” (great news for parents).
Also, keep in mind that academics can easily be folded into non-academic activities. The other day my husband spent two hours with our kids building steps in our yard and they wound up doing a bunch of math in order to figure out how many steps they could build given the amount of rebar they had. For an older student, a cooking project could potentially become a science lab. We had an online 9th-grade biology student who did almost all of her lab work in her kitchen and garden.
Non-academic activities shouldn’t necessarily be ad hoc in a daily routine. Defined timeframes for these activities are important for kids to stay focused. An hour of lego set building, an hour of tuba practice, an hour of language tutoring. Students might also appreciate the built-in structure that comes with non-activities involving peers, like writing groups that meet according to a set schedule, “study hall” Zoom meetings or online clubs with friends. If other people are involved, and students are going to be held accountable and will be more likely to participate.
How Much Time for Academics?
So we’ve established that students shouldn’t be spending 6 hours of each day on academics. But how much time should they be spending?
I’m going to share with you what we typically recommend but it’s important to also keep in mind that every student is different. Some students may focus better than others. Other students may have LDs that prevent them from focusing for long periods of time. Parents need to remain dynamic in their expectations and be open to adjusting if necessary.
In general, a kindergartener doesn’t need more than a half hour to an hour of academics daily. If a student can do 2 hours daily with a break in between, that’s great. But it’s not necessary to complete the academic requirements expected of a kindergarten student. Middle school students and high school students might spend anywhere from 2 to 4 hours daily on academics. Notice how that’s still nowhere near 6 hours daily. When it comes to adding in non-academics to the schedule, the expectation flips, with the younger students typically needing more non-academic time.
Schedules & Routines
Before I get into some sample schedules, I want to talk for a minute about why schedules and routines are so important. I personally have been quite overwhelmed by all of the suggested COVID-19 schedules going around right now. As a parent juggling a thousand things, it can sometimes feel untenable to try and implement a schedule. But part of the purpose of the schedule is to reduce the parental burden.
Firstly, if kids start forming habits around routines, transitions should become less of a hardship. Some kids have a really hard time getting started with school at home, but if there’s a routine (i.e., get dressed, eat breakfast, take the dog out for a walk, sit at the desk and write out the day’s assignments on the whiteboard, etc.) the getting started piece becomes kinesthetic. In addition, if kids know what to expect, the day becomes less overwhelming.
A basic daily sequence for a schedule should include a morning routine, a transition that ideally includes some kind of movement, some focused academic time, another transition, more movement, and non-academic time. The transitions are especially important to consider. Essentially a transition signals movement from one activity to the next. Implementing a transition involving movement or exercise before focused academic time can be really helpful to satisfy sensory needs. Our recommendation is to consider a timer or an app to mark each transition time between activities.
This sample schedule for a student learning remotely includes a mix of of activities to incorporate social-emotional learning.
I know I just said you shouldn’t try to replicate school at home, but consider the school bell between classes. The bell goes off, which signals class is starting. Students physically get up and walk to their class. They might also have a snack or talk with friends. Your transitions at home will look different, but they can still be marked by a sound, a physical movement, food, or check-ins with tutors, friends and family.
Accountability
For middle and high school students especially, we should briefly address the issue of accountability when it comes to completing and turning in academic work. A lot of parents are feeling more pressure right now around holding their kids accountable for completing their online school work, but don’t know how to best help with this. This task is especially tough for parents of kids who have LDs, and ultimately those parents may find that getting some professional help is necessary for support.
I want to provide you here with four very big picture accountability checkpoints to consider. If we’re going to set up a student with one of our academic coaches to check in with them every morning, these are the questions our coach is going to have the student answer:
First: what tasks do I need to complete today?
Second: how and when will I complete them?
Third: how will I confirm they’re done?
Fourth: how will I submit the completed work?
This fourth step can actually be really tough for some students. Sometimes students will do assignments to completion but never turn in the work. The issue is sometimes mechanical and they literally don’t know how to turn it in. Sometimes students need help overcoming more emotional barriers to making sure the work gets turned in.
If you’re the one who is helping your student get started on academics in the morning, these four questions are a good place to start when it comes to holding them accountable for completing academic work.
Most students benefit from someone helping hold them accountable for the work they’re completing, or at least providing them with the tools to help them start doing this for themselves.
Sustainability
It’s important to keep in mind sustainability when creating your family’s schedules. The schedule isn’t just about keeping the kids focused and happy -- it’s about keeping the entire family-focused and happy. Get creative to figure out ways parents can get breaks, even if that means adding more screen time if that’s an option for you. We used to have one movie night per week and now we have three.
Also, consider outsourcing. If you’re working from home and can’t provide the accountability piece to make sure your kids are keeping their school assignments organized, maybe schedule a morning check-in meeting with a tutor, mentor or family member. For LD kids, if it’s an option, it may make the most sense for this check-in person to be an ed therapist or someone with a more professional background.
Then you have this same person check-in for a Zoom meeting at noon to hold your kids accountable: did they get all of their school work done? If so, show it. If not, why not? This one small change could take a huge load off of your plate.
Every family is different so every schedule will be different. For my family, any academics for our five-year-old needs to happen while the three-year-old is napping, which means it happens in the afternoons. For other families, the mornings might be more optimal. If I’m going to consult with your family directly on this topic, here are some of the questions I might ask when considering scheduling:
What are your work obligations? Your partner’s work obligations? Is there any flexibility? What’s flexible, what isn’t?
How many hours do you and your partner need to yourselves every week to keep the schedule sustainable? What will you be doing in those hours? How will you make sure you commit to those breaks?
How independent are your kids? How long can they focus independently vs. needing direct supervision? Can they work for an hour if you front load the scaffolding for them? Would they be willing to work with an online helper?
How many hours is each child expected to do academics every day?
What about non-academics? Make a shortlist of non-academic activities for each child.
When is everyone taking breaks and what are they doing during those breaks?
It’s important to get buy-in on your plan from your kids so when you’re making these schedules, try and do it together if possible. Talk about whether they would find it helpful to check in with a non-parent human via Zoom every morning, or whether they would like to schedule a weekly online meeting with a music teacher in the afternoons. Have them research their own non-academic activities and make a short list of what would excite them.
Students should have every tool they need at their fingertips for virtual synchronous meetings with teachers or tutors.
Physical Set-Up
A physical space is a signal. A bedroom signals to a child that it’s time to sleep. A classroom signals to a child that it’s time to learn. To support that focused academic time, it’s important to have something similar in your home. Usually this means a quiet space of some kind, if that’s available to you, with all of the necessary resources at arm’s length.
You also want to optimize your technology to support online learning needs
This could be an entire blog post in itself, but I’ll just talk about one piece here that we have discovered is especially important. For students working with a remote teacher or tutor it’s really important they be able to share work so that the teacher can assess what they are doing and provide feedback. The number one obstacle when it comes to online learning is that it’s much easier for students to disengage and simply watch what’s happening on the screen without actually absorbing anything.
I’m going to go on a slight tangent here but basically the way the brain translates information into long term memory stores isn’t through reading or watching videos or other passive encoding activities. In order for us to really learn, we need to practice retrieving the information without looking at the books. We need to be assessed and practice retrieving the information. How do you facilitate this when the learning is online? It’s harder, but not impossible.
Technology becomes more important to facilitate retrieval practice because student who is doing a math problem ideally can show a teacher or tutor how they are working through that problem and the teacher or tutor can see where they might be struggling and provide real time feedback. When you’re working on a screen in a Zoom meeting, this can be a challenging process.
In our research, we have tried a few options:
Use an ipad touchscreen and a shared digital whiteboard
Use a trackpad, which is similar but takes some getting used to
Or set up a secondary webcam (“doc cam”) to literally be pointed at the student’s work so the teacher can see what they’re doing
It’s important to experiment with these options and see what works best. For younger students, a trackpad and iPad can be more difficult, so we would recommend trying the doc cam option.
Physical resources are just as important to have on hand for online learning as digital resources. Especially for younger kids, you can make kits that include manipulatives like counters and clocks, whiteboards, pens and paper. For older students, it may become more important to have resources like digital cameras for documenting work. Even more important for the older kids is making sure you implement clear rules and boundaries around the Internet and phone time
Self-Care
At the risk of totally contradicting all of the information I’ve just shared here, I want to acknowledge the sense of overwhelm that every parent is feeling right now. I get emailed a list of digital resources for my children almost daily, which is so great and I have also started ignoring all of it because it’s just too much.
One thing to keep in mind though is that routines can take time to set in. You might make a schedule that you think is perfect and then the first week it completely falls apart. Be patient, and don’t hesitate to ask for help. When it comes to considering various resources, pick two. Try them out. If they don’t work out, try two more. Simplify as much as possible, because kids won’t thrive if you’re not thriving.
Self-care requires serious dedication these days. You have to force those self-care hours into the schedule, which sometimes requires squabbling with your partner, negotiating with your kids, or being more flexible around screentime rules. I dislike giving “take care of yourself” advice because it’s so easy to say and so hard to implement, but the truth is that it’s not going to happen if you don’t force it to happen.
Action Items:
I’m a fan of action so thought we would end here with a simple list of action items based on what we just talked about:
The first is to create your schedule, ideally with help from your kids
Have a family meeting to discuss it
Talk about who will be your helpers, if helpers are needed
Then order all of the supplies and resources you may need to make it work (remember orders might be delayed right now).
Prep your different learning spaces
Figure out how you’ll be facilitating those transitions
Check your technology to make sure it’s going to optimize your child’s learning online
And of course, take a break, reward yourself, and do something you love.
If you want to learn more about how Pacific Preparatory can help you and your family while sheltering at home, please contact us.