By Meghan Borland
As parents, teachers and kids embark on their remote learning journeys for back to school, we’re all struggling to wrap our heads around how to manage our time.
One great teaching strategy you can implement: Help your child become a self-directed learner. This strategy focuses on teaching children to manage, choose and evaluate their own work.
It’s a perfect fit for many families today, where parents are trying to work from home while help their child learn. We will be using these strategies in our Distance Learning Day Camp at Traditional Okinawan Karate.
How exactly do you teach this skill? There two easy steps to implement:
First, a self-directed learner would determine, write out and understand his/her learning goals for a subject. Take 10 minutes to put it to paper: What is the teacher assigning him to learn? How well does he know that subject and what can he do to improve?
Then, the student needs craft out time at the end of each work session to self-reflect. For example, a child may write out or answering questions such as: Did I reach my goal? How well do I understand the subject matter? On a 1 to 4 rating, how well do I know this topic?
Although developing these skills in your child takes time and attention, it has the ultimate pay-off: They manage their own learning.
Don’t want to teach them yourself during remote learning? Send them to camp!
Our team has decades of experience and is excited to support your family. Check out our Distanced Learning Camp.
Meghan Borland is a third-degree black belt and senior instructor at Traditional Okinawan Karate of Pleasant Valley. She has written about best practices in public school education since 2000, including as an education researcher and author in the Middletown School District. Her works have been published nationally, including Atlantic.com, Slate.com and Newsday.