Adventures in Home Learning: Episode 30

 

This morning I went through the papers that were graded by the teacher and returned for my daughter last Friday. Most were correct and good scores, but there were a few things that were incomplete or incorrect.

A few times in the last couple weeks she has told me “Well, the teacher didn’t say we need to do that worksheet.” Ah, but did she say you DIDN’T need to do the worksheet? If she didn’t specifically say you don’t need to do it, then you need to do it. I guess a few slipped by us.

I went over the returned work with her because there are some concepts that she needs to learn for the future, like latitude and longitude, or pronouns taking the place of nouns.

At the end of going over the worksheets, I handed her four that she didn’t complete. Only one had the teacher marked for her to finish, but I’ve asked her to finish the other three as well. I don’t know if the teacher wants to see them, but I want her to realize she needs to finish her work.

Three takeaways that I discussed with her were –

1. Always read the instructions carefully and ask questions if you aren’t sure what it means. 
2. Be as clear as possible in your written response. It may make sense to you, but would it make sense to someone else reading the response?
3. Always do a little more than you think is expected. 

I think that it’s not just the things that we learn in school that give us a frame of reference for interacting with and interpreting the world, it’s what we learn about doing schoolwork that can help us as well.