At Home Routines for a Successful Student
We are almost to Christmas break, and of course the inevitable lack of structure that all the festivities and school closings bring. It is normal around this time of year, that students, teachers, and families alike begin to loosen the reigns on many of the rules and routines that were set up in an ambitious, beginning of the year, Fall mindset.
Maybe you started a few really good homework and study routines at the beginning of the year that are still holding strong, or maybe they’ve gone by the way side due to multiple sports and after school activities. The purpose of this blog is to look at a few different ways we can keep healthy student structures alive during the holiday season, as well as amazing ways to begin January first on the same type of note as we did in August.
Here at The Owl Education Group, and in any English classroom I’ve ever taught in, I am a big believer in the writing prompt. To write for an extended period of time about a given subject is a skill that will serve a writer and learner for their entire life. Not only is it good for the soul, but for the creation of ideas in any arena in the classroom and in life.
During holiday breaks, and on the weekends, give your student a writing prompt (put one on the bulletin board in the kitchen, or leave a note on the fridge), that they can work on during breakfast or before bed time! I suggest keeping a notebook just for this writing and you can then watch the improvement of the writing and the amount of writing over time.
To make this an enjoyable activity, keep the writing prompts light and imaginative. For example, If you woke up tomorrow and realized you were the only person left in town- where would you go first and what would you do? (shoot for a page in length); If you were a traveling musician riding around in a pink van with your best friend, your dog, and your guitar, what would be your message to the world through your songs? (shoot for a page in length).
You could do the prompt with them, and then you could read yours to each other as part of the fun! You’ll learn so much about each other and have some pretty cute laughs I would imagine.
This routine will keep your student (and yourself!) engaged in writing, thinking, and learning while they are at home- as well as keep them on their game in the mornings even before they go to school.
I know that every parent on earth has heard the famous phrase “all I have to do is read a chapter”, when asking their student about their homework for the night. This is a really difficult task to monitor as well as tough to help students make sure they are prepared for class the next day- since you have no idea what the book is about or how to make sure they’ve read thoroughly.
My favorite trick for this type of situation, is to have the student write a one sentence summary per page they read- or per five pages depending on the intensity or length of the reading assignment. This way, you can see what the assignment is, know how many sentence summaries you are requiring, and be able to monitor their comprehension and understanding.
This habit will not only help their comprehension, but it will serve as amazing notes when they have a test coming up about their book, or a paper to write.
Building this habit in students now builds their metacognition about their own reading skills and focussing abilities (if they are unable to write the sentence summary they will know they need to re-read), and will serve them well in high school and college when they will need to be taking more notes about the reading they are doing.
I once babysat for a family that had “quiet time” every evening from 5-6:30 before dinner. During this time, no one was to communicate with anybody else in the house, although they sat in the same general area. Every adult and child was engaged in a quiet activity for a full hour and a half (phone free) every single week night. This gave everybody a chance to gather their thoughts, make sure they were prepared for the next day with zero distractions, and build up the importance of calm and quiet time spent with family bettering themselves each day. Whether it was journaling, homework, reading, doodling, looking up recipes for dinners for the week, knitting a scarf, or catching up on emails, this hour and a half was designated to making sure everyone’s life was in order- in whatever way they saw fit. I’m sure building that routine was difficult at first, and that there had to be a lot of practice and modeling involved for it to be successful.
Doing this work will provide your students (and you) with a time and space to reflect, to review, to enhance their focus, and to just be.
If we set aside an hour and a half every day to make our dreams come true, we are actually building what we need to build to make them become reality instead of dreams.
In this crazy, loud world it is difficult to make time for the future when there’s so much happening in the present- this could be a great way to prepare.
There could even be a sharing component at the end of the hour where everyone tells how they spent their time and how it will help them be who they want to be in the future (even if that future is just not wanting to look bad in history class at 9 am tomorrow, or to help realize your future dream of being a professional chef, it all matters).
I wish you a fabulous holiday season and hope that these ideas can create something fruitful in your home. - Emilee Lindley, Literacy Specialist, The Owl Education Group