Homeschooling is nearing its 2020-21 end, thankfully.
Some materials we have used were good and some were merely the best we could locate. The good materials kept repeating materials, randomly, so our daughters had to recall what was previously taught. The worst materials were organized as stand-alone units without review questions or exercises.
When textbooks or pre-packaged curricula organize materials they often adopt a “by unit” approach to learning, assuming that basic scaffolding will sufficiently help students retain and extend knowledge.
A math book that moves from weeks of addition and subtraction to two or three weeks of geometry assumes, incorrectly, that the skills of borrowing and carrying won’t be lost. After a week of identifying shapes, our youngest forgot how to add or subtract two-digit numbers.
I should have known this was going to happen. Once I realized some books were too focused on units, I added the 180 Days of Math books to our daughters’ workbooks. The Shell Education math books feature problems across the standards for each grade, instead of units. The problems increase in complexity, but there’s always one geometry, one algebraic reasoning, one decimal or fraction, and so on.
Online education tends to be organized by “units” with little or no review of past materials until students have to take cumulative tests. This approach doesn’t support retention, but it is easier for the developers of online courses.
Good teachers know that units alone don’t work well. Students need constant review of past knowledge and skills. We use it or lose it, a basic truth of the human mind for most of us. Some people have great recall of what they learned six months ago. Those individuals are outliers.
The best teachers I had as a student used regular review exercises, something I’m trying to so as we homeschool our daughters. Daily warm-ups, weekly review “quizlets” (quizzes of five short questions), and other practices remind students that what was covered earlier remains important.
At least three times per week math includes a sampling of skills and knowledge from past units. The same holds for language arts. Even if our oldest is working on division problems, she’ll do some basic addition and subtraction. If our youngest is learning new parts of speech, she will still practice some basic mechanics, such as ending punctuation marks.
Why does online education fall into the unit trap, if we know that’s not the best approach? Again, this goes back to how online materials are developed and packaged. (I’ll explain later, there are ways to include regular reinforcing review exercises alongside units.)
Online course packages still resemble textbooks more than teachers. A teacher would mix and match some warm-up exercises and then lead into new materials. It’s a rare textbook that begins each chapter or daily unit with a review.
Homeschooling cannot rely on workbooks, online materials, or both. No, you have to pick and choose, mix-and-match, to keep children from losing skills.
We’re continuing with mini-lessons this summer. There won’t be as much work, but there will be a random assortment of practice activities.