structure

I have developed a habit of mentally noting the little ways that school at home differ from the classroom experience. A lot of good habits are created in a class in the way of organization and discipline to work. They slip away quietly in the unstructured time at home. Some details that we needed to keep and expand on:

1. Coming to "class" ready. This is an important detail that obviously needed to be strictly maintained. Use the restroom, get a drink, gather your supplies, come to the table ready to sit for morning lessons without getting up. Going to the pencil sharpener, OK. Wandering around the living room and sitting in the bathroom with a book for 15 minutes? Not OK. The discipline to sit in one place, despite other distractions, and do lessons in one big section is important in the classroom, and is now important at home.

2. Paper organization. I found myself automatically bringing all the books and papers to the lesson and keeping them sorted in folders. Not good. Now he is required to bring the necessary books to lesson and keep his own papers carefully organized in the appropriate folders. It is refreshing to be able to supervise his organization more closely. No more jumbles of bent, torn, folded papers coming home! No more back to school nights of peering into his desk, jammed to the brim with bent, torn, crumpled papers and folders. He is continually pleasantly surprised to find that things are where he left them, and that life is actually easier when you take one minute to put work in its' place - neatly. "Amazing," he says nearly everyday as he pulls out his history folder and, to his astonishment, his history work is sitting there all ready!

3. When he talks. When would he talk in his regular classroom? That's when he can talk at home. He needs to hear out a lesson, think through the work, formulate appropriate questions the way he would in class. Talking over me to "explain" what he already knows? No more. (OK, I wish he would stop this completely. Work in progress.)

4. Revisions. I would correct his work AS he wrote. This does not work for writing. I need to leave him to write the whole assignment. (Summary, narration, analysis - whatever) I take my red edit pen and make editing symbols, and he takes it to rewrite. I have begun reading his writing aloud after he finished rough drafts so he can hear how his thoughts sound on paper. I use a pencil to mark the sections he wants to fix or reword immediately. This has helped him do this on his own.

5. Bathroom. Drinks. Snacks. Daydreaming. These are important parts of a boy's life. Just not during math.