Welcome to "Tea with Julie," a weekly missive by me, Julie Bogart. My wish is to give you food for thought over a cup of tea to enhance your life as an educator, parent, and awesome adult. Glad you're here. Pinkies up!
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Cincinnati, April 6, 2024
Hi Friend,
The idea of testing is so embedded in our imaginations as the best measure of learning, it’s difficult to “give it up.” Yet homeschooling invites us to do just that!
Rather than examining your child like a patient in a doctor’s office looking for what’s wrong, try giving attention to the healthy growth your child has achieved in the last little while.
Kids LOVE to show what they know, to “show off” to impress their favorite adults (aka YOU!). Give them the chance to steal the show.
Invite your child to:
- give you detailed analysis of how to go up levels in Mario Kart,
- explain to you the intricacies of their doll’s wardrobe, or
- retell the details of that one battle in the Civil War that they have studied for months.
If you want to know what they know about language arts, ask them to explain a passage to you from a book they’re reading (let them pick the passage and ask them to tell you everything they notice about it).
If you want them to demonstrate skill in math, ask them to create the most challenging problem they have ever attempted to solve and then to solve it and show you how they did it.
Let’s move away from the style of education that says the teacher knows what you should know and it’s up to the student to guess what that is, in this amount of time, using this method.
Your best “testing” method isn’t testing at all. It’s a big, juicy conversation that rambles and integrates what your child:
- knows,
- has learned,
- and is still discovering.
Warmly,
P.S. Catch up on all the “Tea with Julie” emails here! Follow me on Instagram.
Julie Bogart
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