College Planning: Teaching Your Home-school Student How To Edit Lecture Notes For Maximum Effectiveness
By Mimi Rothschild When you home-school your child, you are able to prepare him for college and life in a much more focused way than public schools are able to do. Home-school provides an environment of flexibility and personalized learning that can be extremely beneficial. Teaching your home-school student how to get the most out of lectures is one way that you can help prepare him for college and beyond. Home-school students, even in the early years, have a chance to attend more lectures. At the same time, you have the ability to change his home-school curriculum on certain days to include taking him to hear speakers who may be talking about something that interests him. There are ways, once he is fairly good at reading and writing, to teach your home-school student how to take and edit effective lecture notes so that he gets the most from what he hears.
In the home-school environment, you can take the time to go over methods with your child for taking effective lecture notes before attending the lectures. The very first thing to teach your home-school student, of course, is to take notes. Encourage him to take as many notes as he feels necessary so that he will remember the key facts of the lecture. In the beginning, your home-school student may try to write too much, but you can show him how writing down key phrases will help him remember the ideas that he found interesting. Teach him that writing down key phrases followed by a review will help him remember and fill in the other key facts that he thinks are important. Encourage him to underline or place an asterisk in his notes to highlight what he thinks are the most important facts. Before the lecture, help your home-school student design a note-taking sheet that will allow him to put "side facts" in the margins, such as dates and names.
As your child progresses in home-school into the middle school and high school years, what he has learned about taking and editing lecture notes will help him tremendously with his ability to retain what he learns in the future. The advantage this will provide to your home-school student when he starts attending college will be immediately apparent both to him and his professors.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mimi Rothschild is a homeschooling mother, writer, children's rights advocate, and Founder and C.E.O. of home education company Learning by Grace, Inc. She and her husband of 28 years reside with their 8 children right outside Philadelphia, PA.
Rothschild launched Learning By Grace, Inc. because she believed that our nation's public school system has failed parents and students. Learning By Grace, Inc. offers online education through a multimedia-rich curriculum to PreK-12 children across the country and throughout the world.
An accomplished author, Rothschild has written books regarding education published by McGraw Hill and others. Her Homeschooling News Café Blog consists of the most current and relevant education news.Electronic reproduction of this article is permitted if content is published unchanged, appropriate credit is given, and the article title links to corresponding article webpage.
