There are many conciseness techniques that will help your student write tighter, more readable prose. It can be especially difficult for flowery writers to be concise as they often think everything needs described in great detail. Grammar lessons in sentence structure is one easy way to teach more buttoned-up writing. This next tip explains this further…
General Tips
1. Decisions about what to include in list
2. Decisions about what type of chart or printable
3. Explain to child that this is his daily accountability
4. Reinforce that school is his occupation
5. Daytime is for learning and working; evenings are for family and fun
6. Expectation Explanation: nothing else until list is done
7. Keep charts updated and ready
8. Enlist husband’s help
9. Be sure it really is an independent list
10. Inspect what you expect.
Donna Reish, author at Character Ink Press and Raising Kids With Character, brings you answers to your Independent Work Lists questions, or Daily Duties, as Donna likes to call them. In this episode, Donna talks in general about charts for kids’ daily independent work, including what kinds of charts, what order to put tasks, how to teach children to use them, and more. Then she delves into two age groups of chart users: elementary and junior high/high school. In those parts, Donna talks about how much help/oversight/structure a younger child might need in order to get his independent list done each day and then she branches out into helping our older kids become more independent and stronger in time management. Donna briefly introduces her ebook/download, “Daily Duties: Independent Check Sheets for Students,” which can be found at the Character Ink store.
We would love to come to your area with our Homeschooling With Character parenting seminar. This seminar is flexible to meet the needs of homeschool groups everywhere. Here are some details for you:
Editing papers is one of many students’ most hated tasks. However, if our kids are guided in how to do this from the early grades, it will not feel so overwhelming to them. This post has suggestions for teaching the high schooler (and junior high student) editing tricks that they can use right away…
In a recent Cook’s Illustrated book, I read a “rule of thumb” that I have long upheld for cooks in general but especially for teaching kids to work in the kitchen.
Their thinking (and mine) is that these two “conversion skills” will lead to unlimited other conversions and understanding in the kitchen. (Yes, I did love it when I read this since I have taught my kids this for twenty years!)
