[This is the third of a five part series by Patricia. She is a veteran homeschooling mother and teacher and also happens to be MY mother. I’m pleased to have her share some common sense about keeping students on track. Although she writes for homeschoolers, what she says applies in most educational contexts. Go here and here for the first and second installments.]
In my first post, I introduced an idea I called sequential mastery. It means that students should master particular skills and content at each level of their education. Yesterday, I considered how we fail at sequential mastery and how we succeed at sequential mastery. Today’s post is about the minimum skills and content that students should master in elementary and early middle school.
During the crucial first six or seven years of education, we must focus on the basics in three areas: study and work habits, language, and math.
1) Study and Work Habits
Good habits are as important as any academics!
- Completion: finish the task at hand; practice meeting deadlines. Don’t agonize over selecting activities or assignments or crafts. Choose ONE and finish it. Plan appropriate length (read — short) assignments so that young students get in the habit of completing what they begin. Remember “A little bit often.” Gradually add longer deadlines and reinforce the importance of meeting them. Ask: “Did you finish the assignment according to all the requirements?”
- Mastery: learn with a goal of mastery, not just a checklist of work. Emphasize the goal not the process. Ask: “Did you get all your 2s table correct this time?” NOT: “Did you finish your math?” Ask: “Can you tell back your reading for me?” NOT: “Did you finish your reading?” This means that you, the parent, need to engage with the content along with your student, at least enough to understand what mastery of that content would mean.
- Excellence: rework until the standard is reached. The standard will vary from grade to grade and from student to student, but get in the habit of having students rework until they meet the standard. This might mean doing fewer assignments. This might mean doing shorter assignments that can be reworked until the standard is reached. Ask: “Is this your best work?” Model delight in beautiful, thorough finished work.
Students ARE learning study and work habits every day. The question is: are they good habits or poor habits?
We instill poor habits every time we allow students hurry to get through a long assignment rather than mastering the concepts, complete the assignment sloppily in order to finish, or not finish the assignment at all.
It would be far better to:
- Slow down – do fewer problems, read shorter sections, answer fewer questions. We’re building habits of focus, which are just as important as the checklist.
- Finish the assignment “on time” (whatever that means in each context). We’re building habits of completion, which are just as important as the thing we’re hurrying off to.
- Rework to a high standard. We’re building habits of excellence, which are just as important as the material itself.
Good study and work habits are your student’s most important tool in academic endeavors (and in life!). The habits our students form in elementary school are the habits they will take with them to junior high, high school, and college. Would you agree that these habits are more important then being able to recite all the presidents in order?
Teachers in classroom settings see this every day. They know that the most successful students are not necessarily the brightest ones but the ones who have good habits, who consistently complete their assignments to a high standard and focus on learning the material rather than just checking it off.
2) Language
In your language arts studies in elementary and early middle school focus on two things:
- Listening and reading fluency and comprehension. Reading fluency and comprehension begin with a strong foundation in phonics. After that, students should spend a significant portion of their elementary years reading at their level and listening to you read slightly above their level. Beyond these, I would like to propose the technique of narration as a simple way to help students develop listening and reading comprehension, attention to texts, and the foundations of writing skills. There are lots of great resources online for learning about narration.
- Writing mechanics: These are the components of excellent writing that students must master in elementary school:
- Parts of speech. This gives us vocabulary to use in discussing writing and literature.
- Basic punctuation rules. It’s ideal to integrate these into copy work and dictation instead of using worksheets.
- Basic structure of sentences. By this I mean simple and compound nouns, verbs, and sentences and the subject-verb-object pattern.
- Idea of paragraph unity. Students at this level should be able to identify or create a topic sentence supported by the rest of the sentences in a paragraph.
That’s it! Don’t stress about different forms of writing, writing journals, story writing, book reports, or research papers. Use any of these forms, but whatever writing you do should be aimed first at mastering these simple goals.
Junior high and high school classes, whether at home or outside, will take those basic skills to the next level–if they’re there! If those basic skills are not there, your student will be struggling to learn them WHILE learning the more demanding forms of reading and writing. Like all basic skills, these basic language skills are not difficult, but they require consistency and completion: a little bit often!
3) Math
In math, focus on three things:
- Math Facts
- Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division. You should look for speed and accuracy on all of these.
- Skip counting, which helps with fractions and counting money.
- Fractions
- Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division.
- Decimals
- Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division.
What about History and Science?
These topics are more “sexy” than basic skills and more fun for mom and students, but if you let these topics crowd out those basic skills, students will flounder even in these subjects as they leave elementary school.
- Mastering math facts and good study habits is much better preparation for high school science classes than a full schedule of science classes and activities in the elementary years (as great as those may be).
- Mastering reading comprehension and good study habits is much better preparation for high school literature and history than elementary textbooks or clubs (as great as those may be).
- Mastering parts of speech, punctuation, sentences, and paragraph unity is far better preparation for high school writing than a whole boxful of “writing journals” or writing “historical fiction” stories.
Use these subjects in elementary school as a means to practice basic skills in language (especially reading comprehension using oral and written narration) and math while introducing students to good literature and a broad range of history and science topics.
The goal in the early years is not mastery of a body of knowledge in history and science. The goal is mastery of basic skills, habits of learning, and a growing curiosity about the world we live in.
A few notes:
- This is not to say that these skills are ALL your students should learn in elementary school, but they certainly must master AT LEAST these basic skills in order to move forward successfully in middle school and high school.
- Consider some form of evaluation in late elementary school (probably 6th but maybe 7th grade) to determine if your student has indeed achieved sequential mastery in these areas. If not, you need to put everything else on the back burner until they do. If your student is not reading fluently and with comprehension at grade level, this is your top priority. If your student has not mastered all math facts (+, -, x, /), this is your top priority.
- You can do this! It’s not expensive and it’s not complicated. You don’t need a degree in education, expensive supplies, outside classes, or tons of activities. You do need to be able to focus your attention on your student in a daily routine of a little bit often with these specific goals in mind. Anything you have time to do beyond these basics is icing on the cake, but make sure there is a cake to ice!
Stay tuned for the late middle and high school basic skills and content in the next post.
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CC photo courtesy of linspiration01 on Flickr.