Parental Support With Remote Learning
How Parents Can Support Their Children With Home Learning.
“Home learning is one area where parents can play a very active and encouraging part in their child’s education. On a very basic level, it can help kick-start conversations between parents and children, especially in families where busy work and extracurricular commitments may prevent regular mealtimes together.”
While research has shown that regular family mealtimes is an excellent way to boost academic performance, this isn’t always possible for families to achieve. Therefore alternative times have to be manufactured to promote conversation and for parents to demonstrate interest in their child’s schooling. Home learning can also help parents identify areas of strength and those for improvement, potentially more successfully than the classroom teachers.
Home learning is also a lesson in independence and time management, and pupils need support to manage these commitments – developing a schedule and helping them balance their home learning with extracurricular activities and family commitments is important.
• While making this space in their bedroom is sometimes the easiest option, this automatically makes home learning a solitary activity.
• If there is an option for a space in a communal area of the house this helps promote discussions and it is easier to get involved without it feeling like an intrusion.
• Wherever the space, give the learner some ownership over it and make it an inviting space to spend time in. New stationery, a comfy chair and good lighting will also help.
Make it positive
• Make parental input a positive thing.
• Ask them about what they are doing and be interested, even if you don’t understand it.
• If your child has a question about their work, help them, but try not to tell them the answer. Use questioning to help them get as close to the answer as they can. Doing these practices in will mean that home learning a bigger part of their learning outside of school, your child is comfortable discussing it with you and values your input.
Let them make mistakes
• It’s OK for answers to be wrong.
• Telling your child the right answer and getting them to just write it down means that the teacher is none the wiser about which bits they are struggling with and which they excel at.
• Help but not too much and leave the mistakes as they are for a teacher to see. Any errors are very revealing and this helps teachers adjust their teaching to address these issues.
• The chances are, if your child doesn’t understand it, others in the class probably don’t either, and home learning is a great way of highlighting this to the teacher.
Be realistic
• Give them time to complete work set.
• It is ok if they don’t stick to the normal time constraints of a normal school day. Allow them some flexibility for other commitments if they need it.
• Allowing them some space in the family schedule means they will be able to start allocating their own time and gives them plenty of time to complete the work set. This will allow more time for discussion, greater conversation between family members and the learner, and an altogether calmer approach.
Insist work is finished
• Do not excuse incomplete work, if the requirements are for an appropriate amount.
• If your child is struggling, support them in finding support, either online or from friends.
Links to support independent home learning – if you would like to extend what is being asked of them
Subject Specific Learning Platforms and Resources
English –Our Lady’s YouTube page, Instagram
olhs_english
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHxPd0SHpNEH6Wrh8--oT6g/playlists
History – Our Lady’s YouTube page
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHxPd0SHpNEH6Wrh8--oT6g/playlists
Geography – Instagram
olhs.geog
Olhc_tech