Covid-19: 4 Helpful Tips for Parents to Tutor Their Children at Home

I've come up with 4 ways that Parents can tutor their children at home.

1. Get into/keep that routine

The key thing is to make sure that you try to keep a routine going at home, just like they would have at school. Unfortunately, this is not an extended holiday, this is 5 months (at least) of children not learning, not interacting and not progressing as a result. A routine can really help to mitigate the potentially negative impacts that this unexpected break could have on a child's education.

Their routine should include structured time reading, writing and learning. For KS2 and KS3 I would recommend starting the day as normal, at 9am, and finishing at 3pm. Give your children normal break times, but try to extend lunch time and cook together.

During the longer lunch break try to incorporate new things, like letting them weigh things out or cut things up and number them out...routine is good, but integrate some fun changes. Chunking is important here, George Miller said that for all people 7+/-2 chunks was the minimum and maximum we can encode at one time. So, yes stick to a routine but make sure you don't overload if children have had enough, then break the day down into more manageable chunks.  

2. Make your child the teacher!

I've been teaching for 15 years, at both primary and secondary level and the way that I always found worked the best for learning was child-led teaching. Letting your kids do the teaching is a great way for you to keep them interested in their studies, as it stops the learning process from becoming repetitive and boring! One of the best ways to do this is to find the National Curriculum Online: National curriculum in England: science programmes of study - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) and go to a specific topic that your children need to study.

For example: we'll choose __Animal, including Humans__ - "identify that animals, including humans, need the right types and amount of nutrition, and that they cannot make their own food; they get nutrition from what they eat."

Ok, so now we have the specific topic that children need to study, given them resources and the internet and get them to go away for an hour and write notes and draw pictures related to what is being asked.

Then get them to come back and present to you, but remember they are the teacher, they are running the show. This will not only give them a great sense of achievement, but will have also helped them retain the information they’ve studied without having to revise or study in a ‘traditional’ manner!

3. Integrate daily life skills

This is a good one, as it 'can' be interesting for parents as well. Here you want to try to integrate things that are relevant in everyday life.

Buy some extra supplies like glue, stickers and paper. Like the example in 2. you can get children to draw or paint to explain what the correct food nutrition types are for animals.

It's a fun way to learn and doesn't require too much effort, just a few art supplies. More importantly, retention of information using this technique increases accurate memory recall, according to [Micheal Cohen.]

4. Incorporate new ways to learn

Try to read a book - everyday. Including puzzles, board games, maps and recipe books into learning are great ways for children to learn and improve their everyday skills. This is much the same as the [Montissori technique: Montessori education - Wikipedia. You're trying to include everyday practical skills and tasks. Again this is a child-lead tip, let them lead. Say 'these are the 3 options what would you like to do.'. Read, paint, count, find capital cities, etc. The Montissori way encourages individual learning, it may be that some days children only study the world map, and others they only read, that is great, they are the boss. Leave them to it!

So for parents all over the country, cheers and good luck!

Online Group Courses for KS2 and KS3

Tutor House is running the following courses for children that are now at home due to schools shutting down. As this is likely to be for 4-6 months, we have have extended our online learning platform. We offer flexible group and one-one tutoring all online. Children login at dedicate times in the day depending on what they are studying and they are given homework and tasks to complete. The courses are run by highly experienced teachers.

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