If you suddenly find yourself homeschooling your children for the first time, you might be at a total loss. Where to even begin? Don’t teachers have years of schooling and experience for this stuff? How on earth are parents supposed to catch up?
The Illinois Board of Education heard your cries and decided to offer a few handy little charts to make your life easier.
This first chart explains, very clearly, exactly how many minutes a day children should be engaged in remote learning activities:
Photo Credit: Illinois Board of Education
As you can see, they don’t expect your children to be studying eight hours a day right now. And your child’s ability to give a task their full attention is even shorter — sometimes just a few minutes at a time.
So, what else should out-of-school students be doing with their time? The board had some suggestions for that, too. Everything from chores to dancing to building a fort is fair game right now.
Photo Credit: Illinois Board of Education
These useful charts were part of a 60-age document the board released based on the recommendations and advice of a “remote learning advisory group,” made up of teachers, principals, students and other experts in this field.
Photo Credit: Pexels
Since learning isn’t really just about memorizing facts and retaining new information, and since all students have different learning styles and abilities, the recommendations cover “social-emotional needs, content selection and delivery, family engagement, and other important concerns, as well as specific guidance for different grade bands, English Learners, and students with disabilities.”
Photo Credit: Pexels
Meanwhile, parents everywhere are trying to make the best of their new homeschooling situation, though it seems to be going better for some than others:
Others are taking this opportunity to give their kids early independence:
Jokes aside, go ahead and cut yourself some slack if you’re teaching your children for the first time and they don’t seem super engaged with their remote learning activities. And take a few of the Illinois Board of Education’s suggestions for other enrichment activities they can be doing that aren’t technically schoolwork but are still useful.
How would your parents have reacted to trying to homeschool you when you were a kid?
Let us know in the comments so we can have a good chuckle!
