Encouraging Progress within Home Education
As committed parents we want our children to succeed. Our role as parents is to encourage them to progress as well as they can so that they achieve well and attain the highest standards they are capable of reaching.
Motivation
Motivation is crucial to children’s learning, determining how much they enjoy learning and how effectively they learn. Motivation can be intrinsic coming from within each child but motivation can also be influenced extrinsically by the actions of the parent or other people such as tutors.
Rewards
Challenges that are met by your children should be acknowledged and celebrated. It is vital that children’s successes are praised and encouraged and that enjoyment of learning should be rewarded in itself.
Matching work to Children’s ability
Perhaps the most effective way of promoting and supporting good progress is for the parents to ensure that the work provided in lessons and beyond is carefully matched to the child’s abilities. In other words, it is not too easy, that it is challenging yet not over demanding.
Measuring Progress
Progress needs to be measured regularly. It should just be seen as a component of the teaching cycle.
What is meant by measuring progress?
With regards to home education it is the process by which the results from effective planning and knowing what our children should be taught and recognising how they have responded, what they have learned and what the next step will be for them individually.
Measuring progress is not a one-way process. It can be most effective when your children are involved in making a judgement about how they are doing and what they need to improve.
Try to encourage progress by:
- Inspiring our children to love the subject and do well.
- Setting clear expectations
- Recognising achievements by regular rewards
Remember that as home educators we are not trying to replicate school at home. We do not need to test constantly as they do in school to measure progress. But it is important to recognise the progress made by our children.
The assessment process is integral to teaching and learning but it should not drive the curriculum. It is worth remembering that much of our assessment of our children is formative and diagnostic and comes from weekly observation and discussion with our children.
One of the main questions asked by local authorities in England when getting in touch with home educators for a yearly report is what progress has the child made? If you make measuring progress a part of your planning it will be easier to answer this question when writing your report.
In Conclusion
Good teaching occurs when our children are well motivated. When our children are sufficiently challenged and rewarded and when the individual ability is successfully catered for. When the progress is measured sufficiently to enable each child to improve and to achieve as well as he or she is able.
