As a homeschooling teacher you have probably put together enough lesson plans and scheduled activities to ensure that your homeschool students are in absolutely no danger of missing out on learning important stuff that they should know. Unfortunately ever so often the homeschool parent tends to focus so much on what needs to be taught that they don’t pay as much attention to how well the homeschool student is assimilating what is being taught.
You need to focus on how the children are learning the material you are teaching so that they can remember what they have been taught for years after they have finished the pop quiz this week on what they learnt. Understanding the context and retaining the learning is a more important goal and will only be met if the students are using appropriate learning techniques. Here are some tips that can help.
# Let them self test themselves on what they learnt. This allows them to clear concepts.
# Give them practice tests on material that they have not yet been taught. This allows them to be more curious in class.
# Distribute practice of the concept over a longer period of time. This way they have to keep coming back to the basic concept to solve the problems given.
# Interrogate them on why they thought a particular answer is correct. This allows them to debate about what they have understood and clarify any doubts.
# Reread the material after a break. This allows them to pick up things that they may have missed the first time over.
# Let them summarize their learnings. This allows them to clarify the ideas in their heads and express them in written.
# Set up Mnemonic Keywords for them to make it easier to recall. Understanding the concept is not enough, they need to be able to recall it at will if they are to use it in real life.
These are just a few suggestions that you can incorporate into your homeschool classroom while teaching to ensure that the students actually remember all that they have been taught well beyond the academic year. You can come up with more ideas that are better suited to your own classroom.
