Seven Tips for Encouraging your Child and Teen Towards Independent Learning with a Yearly Planner

One of the goals of a homeschooling parent, no matter what style of homeschooling they are using, is to teach their child independent learning techniques.  Sometimes this comes easily for both the parent and the child, and sometimes it can be a bit of a struggle to get the balance right.  I have found that using a planner is a great way to start, so let me give you some tips to help you get started.  (I will refer to your child as ‘he’ for the sake of simplicity and ease of understanding, but you will know that  I am referring to girls as well as boys.) 

Preteens

With a pre-teen, your child is looking for independence in little ways. 

1. First, make sure that you and your child both have a diary or planner which is suitable for homeschoolers. You will be using this to record what you will be doing and what you have done.  It will be a valuable record to look back on. And, no matter what style of homeschooling you are using, it will help keep you both focused on the things that are important to you.
    
2. Start by having a weekly planning meeting.  This is a half an hour for you to be together when you have a set time to talk about the week which finished and the week about to start. 
    
3. Ask your child to come to the meeting with his books and planning page.  If you are using a Homeschool Diary for yourself or the Homeschool Student Organiser  you will have pages ready for you to look at and fill in which will help you.  There are also detailed instructions in the User Guide in the Diary and Organiser which will help you to fill in these pages.
    
4. On your very first meeting make a meeting outline plan. This will entail setting a simple agenda that you can follow each week.  So you might choose to spend five or ten minutes reviewing last week’s work, then discuss together what you want to do this week.  Then spend the third part of your meeting in writing in your planners what you hope to cover in the coming week.
    
5. Now let’s describe how a meeting will go:
    
   1. At your meeting review last week.  Take a moment to see what was good and successful.  Read your child’s comment on his week.  (see an example of a completed student organiser on page 8 here). And then add your own encouraging comment.
       
   2. Talk about what you would like to do this coming week.  With a pre-teen you will be leading this discussion, and explaining what you hope to see covered.  It’s also quite likely that you will be telling your child when you want particular pieces of work to be done and you might even have a daily goal (as opposed to a weekly goal) to start with.
       
   3. Both you and your child will record together what you hope your child will cover during the coming week.
       
   4. Make your goals small and realistic.  Give lots of support to your child in goal setting and in making decisions.
       
   5. End your meeting on a positive note.  Try to keep upbeat throughout the meeting if you can.  This is a time for teaching your child responsibility, rather than a time for pointing out errors or complaining about your child’s performance.
       
6. During the week you need to make sure that you set aside time for your child to actually complete any work that he will be doing unsupervised.  If he has set times in the week and a quiet place for completing his independent work,  you are more likely to have a successful outcome.
    
7. Try not to interfere during the week with the parts that your child is learning to do himself – it’s best not to nag, and to leave him to fail if that is going to happen.  Remember that it’s better for him to fail every week for a term now, than to drop out of uni because he doesn’t have any study skills or self control skills.

Teens

With a teen, you will be allowing and expecting more freedom in choices.  So let’s just go through the procedure again, but this time, imagine we are working with a 15-year-old, rather than an eleven-year-old. Things are quite different with a young adult who is more able and keen to make independent plans and set goals.

1. First, make sure that you and your child both have a diary or planner that suits you. You will be using this to record what you will be doing and what you have done.  It will be a valuable record to look back on. And, no matter what style of homeschooling you are using, it will help keep you both focused on the things that are important to you.
    
2. Before you settle down to the year’s academics, you might like to give your young adult the time and opportunity to set himself some goals for the year.  He might like to use the planning pages from the Homeschool Student Organiser  to inspire and guide him in his goal-setting times.
    
3. He will need to spend some time working on a timetable, which he can then show to you and revise several times until you have something that works for the young adult and for the rest of the family.
    
4. When you are putting the goals and timetable in place, make sure you set aside time, either on Friday afternoon or Monday morning for a weekly planning meeting.  This is a half an hour for you to be together when you have a set time to talk about the week which finished and the week about to start. 
    
5. Ask your young adult to come to the meeting with his books and planning page.  If you are using a Homeschool Diary for yourself or the Homeschool Student Organiser  you will have pages ready for you to look at and fill in which will help you.  There are also detailed instructions in the User Guide in the Diary and Organiser which will help you to fill in these pages.
    
6. On your very first meeting make a meeting outline plan. This will entail setting a simple agenda that you can follow each week.  So you might choose to spend five or ten minutes reviewing last week, then discuss together what you want to do this week, and then spend the third part of your meeting in writing in your planners what you hope to cover in the coming week.
    
7. Now for how a meeting will go:
      
   1. At your meeting review last week.  Take a moment to see what was good and successful.  Read your child’s comment on his week.  (see an example of a completed student organiser planning page on page 8 here). And then add your own encouraging comment.
       
   2. Talk about what you would like to see covered this coming week.  With a young adult, who is probably setting his own goals, he is more than likely to be telling you how things are going and what he hopes to cover this week, so you will make notes in your own diary, on his plans.  As you can see, your young adult will be accepting most of the responsibility for his learning and academics, and you are stepping more and more into the role of coach and encourager.
       
   3. Both you and your child will record together what you hope your teen will cover during the coming week.
       
   4. Encourage your young adult to make realistic goals.  Chances are that if he is new to this it will take him quite some time to get the balance of work right and he will either be over-ambitious in what he can achieve or he will give himself too much time off.  You need to be a gentle guide at this point.
       
   5. End your meeting on a positive note.  Try to keep upbeat throughout the meeting if you can.  This is a time for teaching your child responsibility, rather than a time for pointing out errors or complaining about your child’s performance.

When you start using these techniques you might not do too well at first.  That’s okay, just count it as a time of learning how to plan and develop independent learning skills.  You will soon see changes and improvements as your child gets more confident in learning.  Post a question or a comment below if you like.

Stephanie

P.S. You can order your Homeschool Diary for yourself and your Homeschool Student Organiser for your child by clicking here

Related Articles:

Seven Steps to a Well-Planned Homeschool Year

Making Homeschooling Easy

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