5 Tips to Help Your Child Succeed with Remote Learning

1. Don't Teach - Help Them Understand

It’s probably been a while since you’ve taken the classes or reviewed the material that your child will be learning remotely. It is important to let the teachers educate the students via the online classes, and let it be your job to help guide them and help them understand. To do this, assess your child’s learning by what grade they are in.  According to Teach Thought, if you are the parent of students going through elementary and middle school, you might want to take a more hands-on approach throughout their remote learning experience. Take time out of your day to sit with your child and help them with their reading and writing or math homework so that they are not left learning it alone. If your child is in high school, you’ll want to take a hands-off approach and only assist them if they need help. The bottom line is to help guide your kids based on their level of learning rather than trying to teach the material yourself!

2. Using School Resources

When helping your child learn from home, it might be hard to assist their learning when you don’t know what is being taught in the classroom. Instead of relying on Google for the answers, contact your child’s teachers and even the local school’s office administrators. Ask them what textbooks and class material they will be learning in advance so you can grab a copy of your own and get a head start on reading your child’s material to help with any questions they might have. Don’t be afraid to reach out to your state’s education resources for support.

3. Encourage a Growth Mindset

Rather than asking your children what they are learning, encourage a growth mindset and let them tell you what and how they are learning. Rather than asking questions like “what did you learn” ask them if anything interesting or confusing happened while in class. This will get them to engage in their material after hours and help them continue the discussion they had in the classroom, with you. This way it isn’t about what to learn or how to learn but rather how to think about what they’re learning. For more ways to help encourage a growth mindset at home, check out these 44 alternative questions to ask instead of “what’d you learn in school”.

4. Help Them Find Their Own Motivation

One of the biggest challenges you might find while your child is distance learning, is how to keep them motivated while at home. Rather than setting schedules for them, help them find their own motivation to learn. Let them be in charge of setting their own schedule for when they want to sit down and do their homework or take a break and go outside. Make sure you can be there to help them when it comes time for schoolwork, so they aren’t left trying to figure it out on their own.

5. Gamify the Learning

Rather than trying to teach your kids exactly the way their teachers do try to gamify their learning at home! Offer points, levels, challenges and even visible markers of progress that your kids can earn as they learn information at home. According to “How Gamification Uncovers the Nuance in The Learning Process,” gamifying how your child learns at home will help encourage a desired behavior to learn based off systems that recognize and reward behavior. Children are more likely to learn when there is recognition of their unique nature. Likewise to how a teacher might have a “star student” reward system, encourage this behavior at home!