ARTICLE

How to Use this Program to Get the Best Results
by
Bridget Ardoin

Welcome to a new way of learning for most of your students! This is a research based program and therefore a little different from the traditional approach of "read the book and answer the questions at the end of the chapter". Here is a quick overview of how to use the program to get the best results!

We suggest that each week you give your student one set of questions. The student has one week to answer the questions. The number of questions varies weekly, depending on the topic covered. For example, the parent will tell the student on Monday to do the assignments for the week and to be prepared by Friday. (As in all home schools, we bend and fit all curricula to our home. Any day of the week that works for your school is fine to begin the program). In this example, Monday through Thursday, the student is researching, reading, sorting through information and writing the answers down to all the questions for the week.

The student can use the library, used textbooks or the internet as sources. The library is great because it is full of books that were written by authors excited about their subject which comes across in the writing. (It's nice having excited authors teaching your students!) Also, if the book is written in such a way that is confusing to the student, it can be replaced by another that explains things in such a way that the student can understand. Textbooks can sometimes be limited in the information they present, but they also can be one helpful source for information. The internet has a plethora of sites! After a few weeks, the student will tend to have a favorite site or two that he will go to first get the information needed. You will be amazed to see how much he learns.

On the day you select, Friday in this example, the parent can sit with the student and ask the student to begin telling what he discovered during the week. As the student is explaining each question on the assignment, the parent is reading in the Parent Manual what should have been discovered. (Note: the Parent Manual contains the minimum information your student should have discovered in his research. Ideally the student will remember and describe in detail a LOT more than the basics and be enthusiastic about what he has learned.)

After your review of the homework, the lab can then be done. Again, the information for the lab is located in the Parent's Manual. You can easily help your student see what he should be seeing in a dissection or an experiment because you have the details in your Manual.

There are also quizzes for each week and 2 "final exams" to be given twice a year. I usually recommend giving the quiz for the week before prior to discussing the information in this week's homework. So the process would go:

If you are in Week 3, give the quiz for week 2 first. Your next step is to review the homework for week 3. Then comes the lab which reinforces the material your student has learned this week..

Benefits of this program include:

• The student will learn and demonstrate time management skills; if the student waits until the night before it is due, it may be overwhelming, and chances are he will not be able to finish the work.
  
  
• The student will learn research skills. His skills will increase as the year progresses on how and where to find the information needed to answer each assignment.