Research-based homeschool methods

[Not_a_Number]

1 hour ago, Noelle said:

That’s an interesting theory and makes sense if you consider that at the age kids are learning to read, it’s still normal for them not to have acquired all of the sounds of English. Even at age 8, it’s within normal guidelines for /r/ and voiced /th/ to still be developing. If most kids are learning to read at ages 5-7, then there are several articulation sounds they may not have fully mastered yet. It makes sense that these would be more difficult to blend in reading.

Edited: Here’s a link to a chart showing the normal ranges of articulation development in English.

https://www.veipd.org/main/pdf/webinars/mar_2015_tot_handout2.pdf

I don't know any research on this, but I remember having to modify 100 EZ Lessons for my then-3 year old, because she could do everything, except that some sounds that were supposed to be stretched out she simply couldn't physically stretch out (I think th was one of those.) So then I had to adjust their markings to take that into account. 

[Not_a_Number]

46 minutes ago, Noelle said:

I’ve been thinking about getting some Sir Cumference books for next year. They look fun! I hadn’t heard of the Living Math website before, but I enjoyed looking through their resources. I’m always a sucker for a good booklist! 

My kids like the Sir Cumference series, and I've been reading it to my Zoom class kids, but I do think they contain a VERY limited amount of math. But again... exposure is good 🙂 . 

[Noelle]

3 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:

I don't know any research on this, but I remember having to modify 100 EZ Lessons for my then-3 year old, because she could do everything, except that some sounds that were supposed to be stretched out she simply couldn't physically stretch out (I think th was one of those.) So then I had to adjust their markings to take that into account. 

I should clarify that I’m just thinking this through, and, although it seems plausible to me, I don’t know of any supporting research. I would be interested to see a study on it. I also wondered if early blending could be made easier by starting with sounds that are learned earlier and can also be drawn out as opposed to sounds that develop later or are stops. So man, win, and hum MIGHT be easier than vat, cap, or rip. I did a quick search and found some SLP websites that encouraged using sounds that could be drawn out for early reading, but they didn’t site any research. 

My 5-year-old is almost ready to start blending sounds, and I’ve already had the thought that we should save words containing /v/, /r/, or /l/ until she has some basic understanding of blending because she can’t say those sounds consistently yet. 

Edited March 21, 2021 by Noelle

[ElizabethB]

Very interesting thoughts about what sounds are learned first, what sounds the student can say best. Probably better, couldn't hurt to start with those.

Also, the old Open Court, which was very successful, started with long vowels. The name and sound of most long vowels is the same with that. Me, no, etc. and long vowel syllables ALA Webster might be an even better start. Then, short vowel syllables easy to blend. 

Here is the old Open courts, you start with blue workbook then gold.

http://wigowsky.com/school/opencourt/opencourt.htm

The I See Sam reading program (all basic phonics taught through little books) also starts with easy to blend sounds. 

http://marriottmd.com/sam/

It was also successful and reduced illiteracy for low SES and minority students when they were later tested in high school and compared to students who didn't get the program (whole language/balanced literacy was otherwise commonly used at the time.)

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/closing-gap-reading-liz-brown/

[Janeway]

There is really no research at all about things that are specific to home schooling other than stuff like the lower rates of crime and higher SAT scores. Obviously, that does not get in to "methods." The best you will find on research on educational methods will apply to the group setting and then will only touch on statistics across the board. This would mean that basically, you can find what the average is across many children who have success with a specific program. And even these stats are tainted as the classrooms used to study are carefully selected to a certain population and the best of teachers with the best training and experts being involved is how things are run. The studies should best case scenario with resources for the classroom that most classrooms would never have. Then to add to it, it leaves out the entire home environment aspect from the equation and whatever the kids are doing outside of school. Regardless, the stats refer to when these methods are used on large groups. AND, because the "experts" cannot make up their minds, even the public schools change everything up repeatedly and we have a lot of "why Johnny can't read."

[ieta_cassiopeia]

On 3/14/2021 at 12:28 AM, Not_a_Number said:

Honestly, this thread is reminding me that half of social science research is gobbledygook anyway. Lots of the experiments are done on college students. Lots of the experiments are extremely short-term. (Like, it's kind of interesting that people are less interested in doing fun puzzles they are paid to do as opposed to fun puzzles they AREN'T paid to do, but what happens in the long term when the intrinsic motivation wears off? Who knows.) 

 

I'm super-late to commenting on this, but I think the researchers were trying to control for intrinsic motivation as much as possible. To me, this suggests it may have been an inadvertent "water is wet" test. One would expect that more reward is more motivating than less reward, especially for people who have been primed to hope the activity is fun. There's a place for "water is wet" tests in science, but it demonstrates that all research must be parsed carefully.

[Moonhawk]

On 3/12/2021 at 8:34 PM, Noelle said:

...I’ve been wondering if there are people who use scholarly research to help them make decisions or form philosophies about homeschooling. ... Have you found studies that guide the way you teach individual subjects, or is there research that’s informed your personal homeschool philosophy? 

ETA: It doesn’t have to be research specifically about homeschooling. Just research about education that could also be applied to homeschooling.

(So I'm cherry-picking your words to suit my reading so I can give the answer I want, lol)

When we started to home school, the emphasis was on education: we wanted them to hit certain academic milestones by certain times, we wanted them to be continuously engaged and not bored, we wanted them to enjoy learning. Yes, I wanted them to be good people, but I definitely saw my goal as to learn them some books.

All of this is still true, BUT it's no longer the primary focus: now, it's making sure they have strong skillsets [practice, endurance, communicating, problem solving, etc], healthy mental states as possible, healthy coping mechanisms, growth mindsets, and so on. The book subjects are vehicles: important vehicles, necessary in their own right, definitely emphasized and held to a standard, but being used to carry larger lessons.

In general, we draw a lot of how to teach from resources about how to interact with others. So, how the brain works, on creativity, on creating positive environments and promoting a growth mindset, on how to be a better manager, on building habits, on setting goals, on negotiation, on memory, on breathing and stress relief, on opportunity and risk assessment, have been big influences/guides on the way we teach and what we want to teach. 

So in this vein: My Countdown of my home-school-philosophy-forming books, that I can think of at 1am in the morning (the page refreshed and the links now don't work? Maybe they'll work when I post. if not I'll try and come back later to re-link):

6. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Duckworth. 1 Sentence takeaway: I saw the discussion re intrinsic vs extrinsic motivations in the thread, this talks about the importance of intrinsic when possible. (Not saying that extrinsic doesn't have its place)

5. Behave, Sapolsky -- I'm still working through this slowly, DH had a lot of takeaways from this that we're working into approaches to learning, but I can't give a good takeaway until I finish.

4. The Psychology of Written Composition by Berieter and Scardamalia. 1-sentence takeaway: try to put kids into knowledge-making (or creating, can’t remember the exact thing), not knowledge-telling mode --> making sure that knowledge is not inert. Bonus topic that this was great for: they brought up short term memory problems (well, the shortage of short term memory). [This is probably closest to your original question for research-based book on education]

3. Edward de Bono (author) for basically different approaches to thinking, judgement, and creativity. "Teach Your Child How to Think" is great, but "The Six Thinking Hats" was the easiest to quickly apply. "Serious Creativity" was probably the most influential in terms of how we approach creativity in general and with the kids.

2. Range by David Epstein. 1-Sentence Takeaway: focus on exposing them to many different ideas because making connections across disciplines is a feature of many leaders in many fields. 

1. Black Swan by Taleb. I cringe to mention this one because it's reached that popularity that brings rolled eyes, but the 1-sentence takeaway for us: learning asymmetric risk type of thinking, maximizing the upside and eliminate the downside as much as possible. This has influenced how we expose them to different things and ways of thinking, so that they are better prepared for the future, and how much emphasis we put on different subjects.

[goldenecho]

I've thought of another book that guided practice, and it was based on research:  "Punished by Rewards."   It really did help but then again, it may have just been because I have a child  who is ADD (though I didn't know it when I started homeschooling) and if you've read anything about ADD kids, their lack of executive function can make working for any type of reward pretty futile.   But I have found that making the activity itself more intrinsically rewarding by making it more fun worked way better than trying to offer an extrinsic reward.  (Though the one day intrinsic "usefulness" of a skill is only just starting to be a motivator for my son at 12...that was useless at younger ages).  

Sometimes I could add extrinsic motivators to a task in a way that they didn't seem extrinsic to it.   For example, telling my child they could have a snack if they did their work was futile.   Just having the snack while we did the work, whether I framed it as brain food or I just got the snack and made it part of listening to a story or doing the work.   So long as it wasn't framed as a reward, but as just "something we can do while we work" it helped immensely. 

Its like bringing donuts to a meeting.   No one would just come for the donuts if they didn't have to be there, but the donuts might give them something to look forward to and make the meeting more pleasant. 

But other parts of the book I threw out as not useful.   Punishment sometimes is just necessary.   Maybe some people with some kids can avoid that, and I agree with trying other things as well, but I was much less convinced about what he said with punishment.   It didn't match my experience.

A lot of people are talking about how research can tell what's good for most but not what's good for my child.   And while I think that's true, I also think that looking at research (general educational research...doesn't have to be on homeshoolers) can often help us find out what's good for a child...it can give us a starting place, or new ideas we hadn't thought of.   It just makes sense to try first what works best for most unless we can see some reason it wouldn't work for our child.   And we use research better when we think through whether a certain practices studied in a classroom would logically work the same way when applied in a one on one individualized environment.    Sometimes we can logically assume it wouldn't be much different, and other times we can reasonably assume it wouldn't work at all in the same way. 

[Not_a_Number]

1 minute ago, goldenecho said:

I've thought of another book that guided practice, and it was based on research:  "Punished by Rewards."   It really did help but then again, it may have just been because I have a child  who is ADD (though I didn't know it when I started homeschooling) and if you've read anything about ADD kids, their lack of executive function can make working for any type of reward pretty futile.   But I have found that making the activity itself more intrinsically rewarding by making it more fun worked way better than trying to offer an extrinsic reward.  (Though the one day intrinsic "usefulness" of a skill is only just starting to be a motivator for my son at 12...that was useless at younger ages).  

Sometimes I could add extrinsic motivators to a task in a way that they didn't seem extrinsic to it.   For example, telling my child they could have a snack if they did their work was futile.   Just having the snack while we did the work, whether I framed it as brain food or I just got the snack and made it part of listening to a story or doing the work.   So long as it wasn't framed as a reward, but as just "something we can do while we work" it helped immensely. 

Yeah, my kids won't work for rewards, either. Making the word intrinsically more interesting works better for us. 

However... 

1 minute ago, goldenecho said:

But other parts of the book I threw out as not useful.   Punishment sometimes is just necessary.   Maybe some people with some kids can avoid that, and I agree with trying other things as well, but I was much less convinced about what he said with punishment.   It didn't match my experience.

... I absolutely agree with this. I've needed punishments and penalties for my kids, who are strong-willed, opinionated, and not particularly compliant. I've had the best luck with frequent and small penalties -- financial penalties have been useful. Bigger and less frequent penalties require more planning from the kids, and that's harder. 

[Ducks]

Hi all, 

Longterm lurker, first time poster, as a guest.

I thought I would post in this thread because I am completely fascinated with educational research, so have made it a hobby since my nine year old was a toddler.  And I thought I would pay back all I have learned from these forums, over many years, as an afterschooling parent now teaching my son Latin and Shakespeare and Grammar.  Thank you.

Also from Australia and am eclectic in my reading so I follow a lot of UK and Aussie teachers and research as well as US.

Relevant books/resources I love:

1.  Why Students Don’t Like School, by Daniel Willingham - he is a University of Virginia cognitive psychologist who writes about the research into how people learn.  He and this book is quoted by dozens and dozens of teachers  I follow as the single most important book that helped them start to engage in brain science.  “Memory is the residue of thought” is one famous quote from him, but he is brilliant and passionate and lovely.  A new edition is coming out soon!!!!

2.  Why Knowledge Matters by ED Hirsch, or The Knowledge Gap, by Natalie Wexler - Wexler’s is more chatty and anecdotal, but links to research about how important background knowledge is.

3.  The Learning Scientists website- goes through the importance of Retrieval Practice (the Testing Effect renamed), Spaced Practice, Interleaving, Concrete Examples, Elaboration and Dual Coding.  This is based on a lot of work by Robert and Elizabeth Bjork, among others, who really have experimented deeply in the area of how we remember what we remember, and how to make it stick.

4.  Honourable mentions to Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction - a little booklet about this paper was a UK Amazon best seller briefly, but the original paper is available for free on the Internet.  Links to lots of relevant research.

Cognitive Load Theory - “the single most important idea teachers should know about” according to Dylan William’s tweet from a few years ago, which reverberated around the UK educators I follow.  Greg Ashman writes a lot about it, if you want to visit his blog.

Then this seminal paper is so fabulous.  Really, it is fabulous.  

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1207/s15326985ep4102_1?needAccess=true&utm_medium=email&utm_source=other&utm_campaign=opencourse.GdeNrll1EeSROyIACtiVvg.announcements~opencourse.GdeNrll1EeSROyIACtiVvg.QMY7AC14QLCC5F41KfL_6g

 

[Not_a_Number]

10 hours ago, Ducks said:

Cognitive Load Theory - “the single most important idea teachers should know about” according to Dylan William’s tweet from a few years ago, which reverberated around the UK educators I follow.  Greg Ashman writes a lot about it, if you want to visit his blog.

Then this seminal paper is so fabulous.  Really, it is fabulous.  

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1207/s15326985ep4102_1?needAccess=true&utm_medium=email&utm_source=other&utm_campaign=opencourse.GdeNrll1EeSROyIACtiVvg.announcements~opencourse.GdeNrll1EeSROyIACtiVvg.QMY7AC14QLCC5F41KfL_6g

 

So, I'm a very experienced math instructor with a math Ph.D, and I've been watching this debate with some fascination. I've discovered that I'm on nobody's side in it, which is a curious feeling. 

On the one hand, I think that some of the things that people describe as "discovery-based learning" are half-baked and totally ineffective. They require kids to make order out of chaos, and most kids aren't up to cognitive demands of this task, or are simply not interested. So that's obviously not the right answer. 

But somehow, when people start arguing for "fully-guided instruction," it's really not clear what that's supposed to mean. I have the feeling that people have a hankering for "traditional" instruction, in which the procedures are taught explicitly, and I can tell you that in my personal experience, this kind of instruction is not effective, either. It doesn't produce useful mental models. It often creates kids who can't see the forest for the trees and can only do a narrow range of problems. 

To me, the answer is partially-guided learning that is, however, heavily conceptually scaffolded. I tend to say that I don't teach math to my kids, and I really don't (I can explain more about that, if you're interested.) My kids do figure all the procedures out themselves. However, I do present fully-developed conceptual models that allow them to solve problems without groping blindly for a solution. To quote one of the papers I found, they say that: 

"Solving a problem requires searching for a solution, which must occur using our limited working memory. If the learner has no relevant concepts or procedures in long-term memory, the only thing to do blindly search for possible solution steps that bridge the gaps between the problems and the solution." 

Personally, I reject that dichotomy. It is possible to teach math (and other subjects) without explicit instruction in problem-solving and still have students who are empowered in solving problems and do not feel like they are without tools. And I tend to think that those are the best methods of teaching. 

Edited March 26, 2021 by Not_a_Number

[Noelle]

On 3/25/2021 at 3:16 PM, goldenecho said:

A lot of people are talking about how research can tell what's good for most but not what's good for my child.   And while I think that's true, I also think that looking at research (general educational research...doesn't have to be on homeshoolers) can often help us find out what's good for a child...it can give us a starting place, or new ideas we hadn't thought of.   It just makes sense to try first what works best for most unless we can see some reason it wouldn't work for our child.   And we use research better when we think through whether a certain practices studied in a classroom would logically work the same way when applied in a one on one individualized environment.    Sometimes we can logically assume it wouldn't be much different, and other times we can reasonably assume it wouldn't work at all in the same 

Edited November 29, 2021 by Noelle