Finding the best way to teach is often a misnomer. There is no one size fits all method that works for all subjects. Just as the teaching methodology needs to change per subject, it also need to be adjusted in the homeschool classroom based on the reaction that the homeschool student has to the subject. There are three of the teaching methodologies that tend to work best in a Homeschool scenario.
Enquiry Based Learning
As the name suggests, in this method the curious homeschool student asks questions and as they are answered he learns. This method enhances intellectual engagement for the child and allows the homeschool student to forge a deeper understanding of issues. The child also has to fall back on what he knows to make sense of what he doesn’t know. It allows greater control over the learning process to the child. As each step is taken when he is ready to take it. Plus he gets to share his hard won knowledge with peers in his own words.
Adaptive Learning
Here the teacher is not really sitting with the homeschool student but rather directing him to learn using the computer. When you let them learn an online course in their own time, its adaptive learning. Again there is a lot of freedom for the homeschool teacher and student alike. A major advantage is the well defined structure of the courses that allow the homeschool student to plan out what he wants to learn. It is also easy for the teacher to summarize all that has been taught in such a course and best of all, its relatively low cost to implement given the numerous free resources available online.
Interest Based Learning
It is the homeschool student’s primary interests, abilities and strengths that drive this teaching method. The idea is to allow them a say in the decision making of what will be taught in class. It really helps the cognitive development of the homeschool student as he is able to follow his heart, as it were, and learn what truly interests him.
At times it is difficult to use just one of these methods and hope to succeed in imparting a quality education to your homeschool student. Using a combination of all of these teaching methodologies is what often works best.
