How to Effectively Support your Child with Homework
Homework plays a vital role in the academic life of a child. As parents, supporting your child with homework can be a good way to discuss school-related issues and get closely involved in their education.
However, caution must be taken for you (parent) not to end up doing the homework for your child. Your role as a parent is clear, it is to purely support and supervise the child to do their homework. It is of paramount importance for children to be allowed to take up the homework exercises or projects on their own so as to be independent, retain knowledge, and learn to come up with solutions on their own.
Here are some of the roles you, as a parent, should play in your children’s homework:
1. Set the ground rules
Create physical and psychological structures for the child's homework performance by putting measures that will ensure time management and routine for the homework to be done. Discuss with your child and agree on clear goals on the expectations of the homework and ensure the family systems and routine provide ample time for homework.
2. Give participatory supervision
Provide general supervision to the progress which will include monitoring and checking of the process. Engage with your child continuously in order to find out any challenges they may be going through and look for solutions together.
3. Award for motivation
Act in response to the performance of the student through affirmations and reward. Recognise the efforts put into the homework, its completion and correctness. Offer emotional support to the child's performance and effort.
4. Offer assistance
Engage the student by offering tutorial assistance as well as direct, structured and convergent ways of tackling their homework (e.g memorise, coach, get the facts). You could also offer informal tactics to recall or solve problems such as mathematics.
5. Consider learning styles
Integrate your child’s learning style, presenting the content in manageable parts for easy understanding of the content. Supplement heavy-text content with images, sounds or visuals.
6. Diversify approaches
Employ interactive processes supporting the child’s understanding of homework. Integrate discussions that will lead to problem-solving strategies to enable the child to understand concepts and provide solutions.
7. Consider self reliance
Encourage the student to acquire self-regulation skills, work with minimal supervision for the homework while taking responsibilities in the process and outcomes of the homework. Also, assist the child with mental organisation of assignments and emotional responses to homework.
Acquisition of knowledge is very important for the children and consequently for the whole community; every adult involved in the upbringing of the child has a part to play in the academic growth of the children.
