Helpful Homework Questions

Greetings Berks Christian School Community!
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Helping our students with their work at home is a big challenge for all parents.  At Berks, we want to challenge our students to work hard, bringing glory to God through their effort - and that means some homework for everyone.  While I am not a big fan of busy work (work for work’s sake) we do know that carefully guided practice (especially in reading and writing) are a key ingredient to your student’s academic success.  I ran across this little helpful thought this week:

“Did you do your homework?”
or “Do you have any homework?”

Parents need to ask more questions than this one, teachers advise. How much should you help with homework? Monitor homework but remember it’s your child’s homework, not yours. You can help by asking questions that help guide your child to his own solutions. Some examples:

• What information do you need to do this assignment?
• Where are you going to look for it?
• Where do you think you should begin?
• What do you need to do next?
• Can you describe how you’re going to solve this problem?
• How did you solve this problem?
• What did you try that didn’t work?
• Why does this answer seem right to you?
• Tell me more about this part?

These are great questions for guiding without doing their work for them.  
Remember, it’s ok (and even beneficial) for your student to fail.  
But it’s not OK for them not to try.

What are your thoughts on homework?  Leave a comment below.  See you all at Homecoming on October 8!

Grace and Peace, Mr. Warner

• Bonus, if you don’t subscribe to Tim Elmore’s blog - as a parent of a student, you should.
• Also bonus, if you haven’t subscribed to the Axis email: the Culture Translator, as a parent of a student, you should.

​Both are short reads and amazingly insightful.