Tips for Supporting Your Middle School Student With Homework (From the Guidance Office)
JFK Guidance Tips for Supporting Your Middle School Student With Homework
Supporting your student in finding a routine that works for them is a great way to foster independence and lifelong learning skills. Here are a few tips for parents/guardians in helping your child develop successful homework habits:
✪ Be positive about homework: Remind your student that homework is meant to be a meaningful experience that will practice and reinforce concepts they learned in class, and prepare them well for greater challenges. The attitude your child hears from you is likely to be contagious. This is a great opportunity to help your student understand how the skills they learn now will be related to things they’ll do in high school and adulthood.
✪ Set up a homework-friendly area at home: Help your child create a productive space that will minimize distractions. This usually means away from TV, loud music, telephone, texting, internet, and the temptations of social media. All students have different needs. Help your student identify the possible distractions for them, and reach a mutually agreed upon homework-friendly zone.
✪ Make things automatic: The single most important thing you can do is to help your student make good organizational skills automatic! Parents/guardians can help students get organized by focusing on how they do homework, rather than focusing on helping with content. By focusing on how they do their homework (what time, where, amount of distraction) you will let them keep control over it while giving them the tools to manage it effectively themselves.
✪ Dedicated time to school work: Similar to ways in which an athlete or a musician sets aside time each day for “practice”, we recommend students have a set amount of time each day dedicated to strengthening their study habits - even if they don’t have something due the next day! Thirty minutes to an hour is reasonable for this, Monday - Thursday. Rather than asking, “do you have homework tonight”, the conversation should be about, “what are you going to focus on tonight during your study time?” It is rare that a JFK student wouldn’t have class notes to review, an on-going project; an upcoming test or quiz. Students can also use this time to organize their binder or read.
✪ Build in choice: This can be an especially helpful strategy to use when students are resistant to homework. Choice can be related to the order in which your student will complete assignments, the schedule they’ll follow to do homework, and when they’ll take breaks.
✪ Reinforce daily use of the JFK Planner: All JFK students are given a daily planner for tracking assignments. Support us in the expectation that all assignments are written down daily. All teachers at JFK post assignments clearly in classrooms. As a first step in beginning homework each night, ask your student to show you their planner. If necessary, set up a reward system at home for having assignments listed daily. You and your student can also double-check the daily assignments by contacting a classmate or in many cases, looking at teacher blogs or websites. Help your student access these tools regularly. Team teachers and Guidance can be helpful in guiding you to this information.
✪ Help them find their own solutions: To support independence and a greater tolerance for the process of learning you can ask your student questions that lead them to their own solutions: Where do you think you should begin? What information do you need to do this assignment? Where are you going to look for it? What do you need to do next? Can you describe how you’re going to solve this problem? What did you try that didn’t work? Who can you contact from your Team who might be able to help you?
✪ Utilize the Aspen portal: Both you and your student can have direct access to their academically related information. We encourage students and parents/guardians to learn the system together. Contact your JFK guidance counselor if you or your student need help logging in. Parents/guardians who need to reset their password should contact Ms. Tauscher in the main office.
✪ Regular school attendance: Being in class regularly is one of the most important ways your student can develop positive work habits and keep up with assignments. Now that they’re in middle school, your student will have more responsibility for tracking down information about what they missed when absent. We suggest students approach each teacher, reminding them they were absent, and asking when it would be a good time for them to see them about what they may have missed. Students are also encouraged to plan on using teacher help sessions for this after school.