Today, Christian Homeschoolers Taking a Stand poses this reader question:
“How do I keep my middle-schooler going and not fight me ALL THE TIME about doing school work?’
While Ben is not quite a middle schooler (5th grade), I do believe our new system of accountability would be helpful to families with students that age.
I spent several days working on writing down lesson plans, planning a quarter at a time using these Subject/Quarter Planner planning sheets. I really heart these planning sheets. I like that I can focus on one subject at a time, writing down each assignment for the entire quarter. Then on a daily basis, I give Ben one of these Homeschool Timer sheets which lists all of his assignments for the day. This daily sheet makes it clear to Ben what my expectations are. The sheets include what assignments he needs to complete for each subject, as well as an allotted time in which to complete them.They also have the added bonus of a little check box, so he can check things off as he finishes.
I feel strongly that Ben needs some structure to his homeschool day. He is easily distracted which causes him difficulty with staying on task. Using these timer sheets are very helpful for him, as is the actual timer I use. When his time is up, he moves on to the next assignment, resetting the timer. At the end of the school day, I set his timer for one hour of media time. Media time includes television, computer games, Wii, or Nintendo DS. If he has school work to complete because he didn’t finish in his allotted time, he must finish it first, eating time from his media time.
The goal, of course, is for Ben to complete his schoolwork in a timely manner and then to be rewarded with an hour of media time at the end of the day, which is very important to him. It may be that your student will require a different reward in order to be motivated to stay on task.
Ben has required a few reminders that the time he spends grumbling and complaining eats away at his time as well. There have been days when he’s had one full hour of media time, there have been days when he he’s had 10 minutes, or none at all. But putting the control in his hands is working out nicely because he has realized, at the end of the day, he has no one to blame, or thank, for the way his school day has gone. And I don’t feel the need to constantly badger him about finishing his work.
