How & when to transition from "x min of work" to "x amount of work"?

[4KookieKids]

Right now, all of my kids' work is laid out by time: they work for a set period of time, and whatever gets done, gets done. The next day, we just start where we left off the day before. 

But my oldest is turning 12 this year, and I'm thinking that he needs to start to have more direction in his learning (beyond me just talking with him about what he wants to learn and how to schedule his school day). So I'm wondering how to make the transition from "Read for 1 hour a day and then give me a narration/paragraph/report at the end of the hour/week" or "Do 30 minutes of math each day" to "Read this book and write about this prompt / build a lego re-enactment / create [[insert project here]]; get it back to me in two weeks" or "Do chapter 3 in your math book over the next two weeks."

I'll probably X-post on the LC board, because my kids do have some challenges that affect their executive functioning skills, but I'd still like to hear how and when you switch from a timer/schedule type of homeschool day (where kids don't really have to think about managing their school work outside of "school time") to a homeschool day that involves kids working to complete an actual project or task, where the time commitment per subject may fluctuate or where they may have to invest a bit "extra" occasionally (my autistic kiddos very much have a hard time with variable schedules.)

I don't even know if my question is coming across clearly. I just would like to move (some of) my kiddos towards independence over the next year. Not achieve it, necessarily, but just move in that direction.

[Not_a_Number]

I'm not sure how people do this, so I'm mostly here to listen. I know that I'm having to move DD8 towards "finish X by Y" right now, mostly because she dawdles terribly without a goal in mind. But she doesn't have executive functioning issues and isn't doing well without explicit deadlines. She's also very independent-minded... 

Edited February 28, 2021 by Not_a_Number

[kirstenhill]

I think the transition to a certain amount of work per day (with assignments broken up on a daily basis) is largely based on what makes sense for each subject.  For my 6th grader it works well to say "complete one science lesson or assignment per day" or "do one grammar page per day" because the curriculum is already set up that way.  But AoPs Pre-Algebra sometimes has lessons that are very easy for DS12 and he can do 2 or more in one day, and sometimes he only gets half a lesson done.  I find time works better for that curriculum. I did give him a "progress chart" that showed about how much he would need to do on average per day to finish by the end of the year, so he could see for himself if he was spending enough time per day.  But as it turns out he is going quite fast through the curriculum and will finish in the next couple of weeks. 

I think the skill of having to finish reading a book by a certain date or know how to portion out a week or two worth of work is an advanced skill, and one that my two older kids with no EF challenges didn't really start doing until 7th-8th grade.  DS13 is really doing it for the first time this year in 8th grade because he is taking a class that meets once a week for English, and the teacher assigns a whole week's worth of work at a time (sometimes two weeks worth of work in the case of some longer books or assignments).  At the beginning of the year I taught DS13 how to sit down and look at the number of pages or chapters in a book, and decide how many per day to read to finish by the deadline (and he could decide for himself if he was only going to count school days or read on weekends as well).  Then for other kinds of assignments, at the beginning of the year I had DS show me the list of what the teacher assigned for this week, and then I helped him make a plan to break down what to do each day to get it done before the next class.  Now he can mostly handle it himself and I just check in with him once mid-week to see how it is going.  It's been a good experience for him because he can't just say "I've had a busy week, I can't get the reading done" - he has to make the time and say "no" to fun with siblings occasionally or he won't have the reading done in time for class and will do poorly on the in class quizzes or other assignments. But I am not sure I would have pushed for that before this year. 

I don't think anything over the time frame of two weeks is necessary in middle school or even early high school - My daughter is in public high school and with the exception of one or two major projects (that still had very regular "check in dates" where rough drafts or other progress reports were due), virtually all assignments have a time frame of less than two weeks out. 

[wendyroo]

I just shifted my 11 year old in the other direction.

He used to have a list of tasks for each day of the week. I made the list (with his input), and he was done for the day when he had finished the tasks. This worked well for a long time, but then 1) some of his subjects were no longer neatly subdivided into lessons I could assign, and 2) it became harder for me to predict how long certain tasks would take him...so some days he was done with school by 9am and other days not until 4pm.

Plus, looking toward high school, I know many credits are granted by time. DS is earning a Spanish 3 credit this year, and while there are certain topics he needs to cover, he also just needs to put in the hours engaged in Spanish learning, be it reading, writing, grammar exercises, conversation, etc.

So now we have moved to a hybrid time/tasks schedule. Each day he spends an hour each on five subjects. In each subject there are certain weekly tasks which must be done and others that are used to fill whatever time is left. So, over the week in Spanish he has assigned reading, writing, grammar, vocab and tutoring sessions. If he finishes those and he still has Spanish time left at the end of the week (which he should have some), then he can do Duolingo stories, play with our Spanish magnetic poetry set, read Garfield comics in Spanish, watch Inspector Gadget in Spanish and look up 5 new vocab words he hears, etc.

At the end of the week he has to finish any of the required tasks that are not complete.

I think it is the sort of schedule that could grow with him and serve him well for a long time to come. Obviously, by the time he gets to college he will have to figure out what subjects fit into each day, what tasks absolutely need to get done (class time, problem sets, test prep, etc), and what tasks would be beneficial if he has time (reviewing notes, supplemental reading, office hours, etc), but I think the structure of having times set aside for each subject, and lists of what needs to be done during those times, could really help with time management...which he needs all the help he can get with!!

[Junie]

For years, I have made a weekly assignment sheet for each of my kids and allowed them to determine how they break it up.

I will give them a list of subjects across the top of the page, and then underneath I list the work that I want them to accomplish.  Most of my kids have done really well this system.

[Miss Tick]

Some of this is natural, we have some curricula that are clearly divided into lessons. Some subjects we still do mostly by time, Spanish and German are a mish-mash  of different things and going by time and energy level makes sense. For math this year we are going a step beyond.  We looked at what is left in the book and what would need to be done each week to finish with the school year. This means that some weeks she has evening work out weekend work (less than an hour). I think it secretly makes her feel more mature. I tried hard to casually present it as a challenge based on something i learned with her older brother taking almost 2 years to do the book.

[Coco_Clark]

It was a middle grades transition for me.

1-4 was/is very, side by side with mom, we work for x minutes per subject and get as far as we get.  I have 2 kids in this stage.  

5-8 is a slow transition to subjects becoming more independant (many still taught by mom, but others outsourced and all work done independently).  I have a 5th grader that works with me one-on-one for an hour, then finishes up his work by himself from a checklist, with a daily check in at the end of the day.  Then a 7th grader that sits with me one-on-one on Mondays with her weeks work written out, to delegate it to certain days together.  She then follows that plan with a daily check in.  And finally another 7th grader that receives his weekly work list, tells me his plan on Monday, and then gets checked on Friday.  Sometimes his Fridays are *rough* because he did not follow his plan.  But not too bad.

I don't have a 9th grader yet but the goal is to be able to receive a weeks worth of assignments, a mix of both homeschooling and outsourced, and complete it in an organized manner without my help or constant check ins.  We will see if that happens 🤣

Edited March 1, 2021 by Coco_Clark

[caffeineandbooks]

When you are first transitioning them from "work for x minutes" to "complete X amount", consider assigning less than usual so that they have good experiences of working diligently and getting to stop sooner.  Then draw their attention to it: Oh look, that only took you Y minutes instead of X, so now you have Z minutes to ________."  I found that doing that for a week or so was enough for them to be used to having to complete the assignment, and although there are plenty of days when they dawdle and then grumble that it's taking so long, they don't all-out rebel or ask to go back to the time system.  You might need to be creative - strike out some of the math problems (or wait until it's an "easy" unit anyway), break a lesson over two days, etc.

[Ausmumof3]

It depends a heap on the kid and the curriculum.  Sometimes my kids do a slapdash job if I set specific tasks or projects because they want to do free time.  Sometimes my kids dawdle horribly if I set a timeframe to be filled.  Sometimes I need them to stick to a time based schedule so I can fit in the time I need with each kid and still get places we need to go.  Sometime so need to do task based because we have places to go and can’t do school on a normal schedule so we want to squish it around life stuff.  Some curriculums have very consistent pacing so it works easily to do one lesson a day (Saxon, first language lessons) Others (I’m looking at you singapore) will have several very laborious long division problems one day and a worksheet of matching time to clock faces that takes about 30 seconds the next. 

what has worked for me the last few weeks with dealing with inconsistent curriculum has been setting two minimums.  A minimum number of pages done and a minimum amount of time spent.  I’ve explained it to the kids as “we need to do xyz pages to complete in the year.  Some lessons are too hard to do xyz pages.  On those days we do the minimum number of pages.  But that means that on the days you have easy work and can finish in less time you should spend at least abc amount of time and do extra pages to catch up for the difficult sections”.  That seems to have made sense to them.

 

 

Edited March 1, 2021 by Ausmumof3

[Clemsondana]

Starting with handwriting in K, my kids have the general idea of 'one lesson each day'.  For parts of elementary school handwriting, Singapore math, and spelling were the primary 'daily output' subjects and those are usually set up with manageable daily lessons.  Obviously if we hit a well we'd take 2 days, and if something was super fast (labellilng shapes in math) we might double up. With things that were mostly reading, we'd do maybe a chapter or 2 a day, or a short book each day, or a longer book over 2 days so they were used to there being some sort of goal or structure that I or they would determine.  I've talked about my notecard method before - we'd figure out how many days the weekly spelling lesson should take, I'd write that number of cards that said 'spelling' and the kids sorted those into pockets for the different days of the week. Each day they worked through their pocket for that day, so it might have math, Bible, spelling, read for literature, and history and they'd have some idea of how much to do for each.  They could move cards around if they wanted to do double spelling on Monday and double Bible on Tuesday, although they usually didn't.  They also knew that once certain books were done, we were done for the semester so they could use that as incentive to push themselves a bit and enjoy a much lighter load the last few weeks if they wanted.

In middle we start having longer-term goals that are more ambigous.  We work through a whole history book in a year.  It has 4 modules, so we finish 2 by Christmas break.  They usually do X amount of a chapter each day.  I check in once/twice a week to see how it's going, whether we should add a supplement, and whether we are at a good point to write a paper (I focus on learning to write essays and reports in middle school, and history is our primary content). For something like history notetaking, I do sometimes let them go 2 weeks with a goal in mind, knowing that they'll write at the end of that.  In something like math, I check their work daily so they are definitely not just working through chapters for a few weeks.  Even with my high schooler, who works very independently, they usually check in weekly about scheduling and I check math daily, and chemistry is checked daily when they are working problems (as opposed to reading the textbook or watching videos).    

[AnneGG]

When I use independent work, I use the work box system. If it’s an ongoing project, due dates go on the front of the box. 

Edited March 3, 2021 by AnneGG