Monday, August 30, 2010

From "Work is Hard" to "Working Hard!"

Okay so not everything runs as smoothly as planed. No I am not surprised by this... This includes homeschooling. So the first week went great (of course it did, it was the honeymoon period), but the second week... not so much. I had been noticing (while grading), that I had been making a lot of answers wrong (most of them from son number one). The test were great and he did well, but the workbook... Yeah that was a different story. Why is this? I think it's all to laziness (I'm sure my parents could tell you a similar story about me). Darien has enjoyed his afternoons of free time, and likes to get to them as soon as possible. This made him rush through the work, and get half of them wrong. My original plan with home schooling was to also grade them on their workbook as well as test and quizzes, and because of that I waited until the end of the day to go through and grade the work book (not such a good idea after all). This had me calling Darien over and explaining why he got so many wrong. So then I had to rethink my whole grading proses... I then came up with the whole "we will do the work over and over again until we get it right." (great idea) This will give him more practice, and it will also teach him to do it right the first time. No to mention this will also help with his understanding. If he gets a whole section wrong (despite telling me that he understood it) then I will know its something we need to work out together. Yes I should have done it this way to begin with. Lesson learned! My homeschooling proses is... with Language and Math I go over the work for the day, and read him the directions of each section, once he understands I let him do his work on his own. With History and Science, I read the chapter, then leave the comprehensions checks up to him. The work he was doing on his own, was what he was getting wrong. So this morning I announced a new homeschooling rule. We will do the work over and over again until we get it right, and if you get it all right the first time, then you will move up on the treasure chart (yay!). They loved that idea. So what is the treasure chart you ask? It's a chart that consist on 10 spaces for each kid (just the boys for now). You start at the bottom and work your way to the top, once at the top, you get to pick a treat from the treasure box (I know it does sound like fun). Things that move them up on the treasure chart include, working hard, helping out, and being kind. They can also be moved down if they are behaving badly. Today has a wonderful day. Darien only missed one question in math, and only one in history. Yes so far so good. Our first bump in the road of homeschooling, thank goodness it was only a small one.

4 comments:

  1. I want a treasure box prize! How many grade school math problems do I have to get right? :)

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  2. tell you what, next time I see you, I'll just give you a prize from my treasure box.

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  3. Here's an idea if you want to start getting him to check his work to get them all correct: Take a section of like 5 problems. Use candy like Skittles. Have them all check their answers, when they are sure that every single one is right, they start with 5 M&M's or 5 skittles. For each problem that's wrong, they have to give back a skittle/M&M.
    We did this a few times in elementary school, to teach the importance of checking our work, and only turning in things we were sure were right. Eventually, the teacher linked it to us learning we all start with 100, but each problem we let go wrong, we lose points.
    I wouldn't suggest doing this activity every day, but maybe once a week you do candy checking....

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