A Different Approach to Helping with Homework
October 8, 2009
Letter from Head of School Mike Riera and
Director of Learning Services Toby Mickelson
Over the years you have heard lots of advice on how to help your children with homework: make sure they have a clean and clear space in which to work; be present; let them do their own work; be patient; be more patient. In the end you have discovered, more or less, what works and what does not. Today we want to point out a slightly different take on helping with homework, one that has to do with recognizing the underlying learning that is at play.
When it comes to learning it’s not nearly as straightforward as many think. Let’s start with a simple question: What needs to be in place for learning to occur? What do you come up with?
For certain, you need attention, and ideally a little motivation as well. But is that enough? Not really. You also need some sort of instructor—an actual teacher, a book or video, or an event that causes real reflection. But even with attention, motivation, and a teacher, there is no guarantee that learning will occur. As an example, think about your experiences trying to learn something that you never quite mastered: a foreign language, a musical instrument, or calculus. You gave it your attention, you were motivated, and you had a teacher, yet it never worked out as you had hoped. What was missing?
In an earlier Friday Folder we announced that one of the foci this year is learning and teaching, in that order. To this end, the RDS faculty and staff spent a morning before the school year began examining learning and one of its foremost barriers: information overload. It happens more often and more quickly than most of us realize. Think about the last time you tried to help your child with homework. Remember that funny look on their face or perhaps their arguing with you or your advice? That was probably information overload. Lots of times in our efforts to help our children we give them way too much information, which leads to what we call acting out or misbehaving
Two of the primary tenets of learning - learning purpose and organization - are disturbed when there is information overload. Learning purpose refers to what is being taught, and this must be spelled out clearly and concisely to students: “Today we will learn how to add two, single-digit numbers.” “We are learning to recognize words with a silent e.” “Today we are going to effectively learn how to recognize and avoid split infinitives.” (With due respects to William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White.) The second tenet of learning, organization, means that students must organize the information in such a way that it is available to them when needed and on an ongoing basis. That is, if they take in the information without organizing it, they haven’t really learned the material, which is akin to our attending a lecture that we found brilliant and several hours later only being able to remember one or two salient points.
Many non-professional educators slip up by having an unclear or too ambitious learning purpose, and most falter when it comes to helping their children or students organize the material just taught. Some activities that assist in the organization of new materials include: writing or saying it in your own words, a few minutes of silent reflection, time for questions and engaging discussion, teaching the information to another student.
In seventh and eighth grade math, Jim Rendle helps students to organize information by having them self-assess their mastery over a concept by demonstrating success in three areas: 1. Solid assessment score; 2. Ability to describe the process of what they have learned; 3. Ability to find and describe a mistake in someone else’s work. To succeed in these three areas, students have to take in the information and organize it on a deep level.
Okay, by now many of you are glad that you aren’t teachers. We write about this today to point towards another way that you can be helpful to your child in their homework. That is, much of what students do as homework is reinforcing and organizing learning that took place during the school day. To best assist your children, here are a few tips:
- Look at the homework and try to give words to the learning purpose. Engage your child in this. “Is this about x?” Let them correct you, and ideally each correction helps the learning purpose get more specific. Persist until you find a phrase that you both agree on.
- Help them to organize the material: “Tell me in your own words when to use el or la in Spanish.” “Draw a picture of the game you were playing in P.E.” “Teach me how to multiply fractions.”
Be patient with yourself if you take this on. And if you do, you will notice that helping out with homework may become more peaceful and friendly over time. You will be less judgmental about your child’s actual success and speed in completing their homework. As you are more curious about the learning purpose of the assignment, your child will naturally become more engaged, both with the work and with you. You will also have a much better sense of what they are learning in school, which in turn is a foot in the door to other tangential conversations.
Finally, in the spirit of organizing information, please go talk about this letter to somebody, or better yet, teach it to someone who has not read it!
Have a great weekend.
Mike and Toby