Pandemic School Tips

We want to end each school year well. Finishing Strong is always a good theme. Whether your child is in elementary school, high school, or college it’s important to complete everything with a positive outlook. How has the pandemic affected your child’s schoolwork?

Pandemic Struggles

Talking to my friends and relatives with grade-school children, I know that there have been many challenges and adjustments. Because of the pandemic, children have come home and spent their school hours in front of computer screens. Teachers have had to quickly convert their classrooms to a zoom presentation.

Children are resilient and can learn in a variety of ways, but some children will do better than others. And, children with any type of learning challenge have an even harder task. Parents have become overnight “homeschoolers” whether they wanted to or not. Those of us who homeschooled regularly didn’t see much of a change. But, everyone missed going out and having social interaction with friends.

College and grad-school students have been at a greater disadvantage. Many classes that were now online, changed the learning format. My child suddenly didn’t have any lectures. Because of the pandemic’s social limitations, there were no office hours or study groups. Some professors left the students to fend for themselves. Google became the only teacher and there was little interaction when the students had questions.

Finishing up the school year will be hard this year. There are many concepts and topics that may not be covered or reviewed enough. What is a parent to do? Those parents with grade-school children can certainly make a difference. Before the school year is over, make contact with your child’s teacher. Ask them questions that will enable you to fill in any learning gaps over the summer.

Tips For Finishing Strong

The fall school year may still be undecided as to the format. But, during the summer it’s important to make sure that your child will be prepared for the fall classes. Here are some questions to ask your child’s teacher:

• What do they recommend for summer learning?
• What books or activities would they like you to use for reviewing?
• Does the school provide any summer reading programs?
• Is there a summer reading list?
• What courses, topics, concepts did my child fail to master?

Some of these answers may already be known to you. As a parent, you probably already know about certain levels of understanding. Maybe your child struggled with reading comprehension or math computation. These are things that can be improved on over the summer.

Resources

Many websites, computer programs, and workbooks can be used to help your child work on their weak areas. You don’t need to have hours of school a day in the summer to make progress. But, having a plan to cover concepts that weren’t fully grasped is a good idea.

Read Naturally gives a wonderful explanation of reading comprehension and the various ways it can be understood. They offer methods for parents to use to help their child comprehend what they are reading. The more that children work through the process of reading comprehension the better they will be at this. K12 has great printable worksheets for you to use, depending on the grade-level of your child.

Harvard has a wonderful page that discusses Summer Math Loss. They offer practical and natural ways to incorporate math into everyday summer life. Khan Academy offers tons of learning instruction. Here, you can locate specific subjects, topics, and grade levels to concentrate on the concepts that need to be learned or reviewed.

If you have questions that your child’s teacher doesn’t address, I would be happy to help you. I homeschooled for over 20 years and have a M.Ed. I don’t know everything, of course, but am more than happy to try and answer any questions. Make sure to finish strong!

@2020, copyright Lisa Ehrman

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Lisa Ehrman

Lisa has been blogging since 2013, and loves sharing resources and ideas for living a simple life. To get free printables, bonus words, and more - sign up for the newsletter.

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