As a homeschooling mom, I’m concerned about teaching my kids good study habits. If I’m honest, I’ve slacked a bit in this area thus far. None of the curricula I’ve used seems to touch on it much. But after I read this piece, maybe I’ve not done so badly?
Read the article before continuing: Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits
Interesting, isn’t it? My fellow homeschoolers will attest that we’ve got the “study in different rooms” advice down pat. Minus the bathroom, I think my kids have done schoolwork in every room of this house. I long for an outdoor study space as well, where we can sit outside on nice days and work in the fresh air. I just remembered that the boys have actually done work in their treehouse before.
One thing I’m going to change up after reading this piece: I’m going to do a bit more testing. Homeschoolers tend to avoid these, under the theory that we KNOW how our students are doing. When you work one-on-one with a kid, you don’t really need a test to show you what they know. It’s pretty obvious whether they’ve learned the material or not.
But I never thought about the test being a form of cementing the knowledge in their little minds, which is what we teach them for anyway, isn’t it? We homeschool with the hope that they retain what they’ve learned; not just regurgitate it and forget about it.
I’d also love to see more studies about the different types of learning (visual, tactile, etc.) This story seems to refute what most educators I know have held sacred for a while, and that is that different people learn best in different ways. Who knew that there wasn’t much science to support that theory?
As always, I welcome your thoughts!
Interesting post. I'm new-ish to this blog, but have like what I've read!