By Joyce Melton Pagés, Ed.D.
Mother of two children, President of KidBibs

Academic success depends on many factors.  One key factor, especially as children get older, is related to how the child organizes his/her materials and tasks.  Teaching students organizational strategies helps him/her in the short term and the long term.  In the short term, students have the resources and routines to help them with their assignments.  In the long term, students start to develop their own skills and strategies for organizing things.  In addition, providing children with an organizational routine and framework helps children accept responsibility for their own learning.  Whenever possible, children should be involved in setting routines; this makes it easier for them to set their own routines when they are older.

Parents and teachers both help children develop organizational strategies.   When teachers and parents work together, children benefit a great deal.   Further, laying the groundwork for home reading, learning, and studying in the early grades helps the child in later grades.  This skill is important for success in school, college, and life.  This LearningTips article provides some strategies and routines for supporting student growth in reading, writing, and studying.  Homeschooling parents can benefit from Parent Tips #1, #2, #3, #5 and Teacher Tip #3. 

Parent Tips                                   Teacher Tips

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Parent Tips

1.  Put together a home learning kit for your child to use for homework, projects, and independent learning.  This home learning kit should include pencils, tablet/notebook paper (whatever the child uses at school), unlined paper, crayons or colored pencils, markers, ruler, scissors, and glue stick.  Students in third grade and higher will benefit from having a highlighter and stick-on notes in this home learning kit as well.  [Use of the stick-on notes and highlighter to promote study strategy development will be the subject of a LearningTips article soon after the new school year begins.]  Other items on the student's back-to-school shopping list may also be added; this might include a compass, protractor, watercolors, etc.  Creating the home learning kit during back-to-school sales can save time and money.

2.  Set-up a place for your child to do his/her homework.  A quiet place without interruptions will result in the strongest student success.  This place can be the child's desk in his/her own room.  For young children who need more assistance from a parent, this homework area might be the kitchen table.  The TV and radio should be turned off and younger siblings can play in another room for awhile; some younger siblings might enjoy doing their own "homework"--writing or drawing quietly--while their older sister or brother does homework.  If the child's homework area is at his/her desk, the homework kit should be there.  If, however, the child does his/her homework at the kitchen table or some other area used for a variety of purposes, the home learning kit should be kept in a portable container--perhaps a bucket or a plastic caddy with a handle.   Keeping the materials in this type of container makes them easily portable and reduces wasted time if all of the materials are kept together. 

3.  Provide the reference materials that your child needs to support learning.  A dictionary, thesaurus, atlas, and single-volume encyclopedia can be very helpful to children.  A spelling dictionary can be very useful to older children as well. These materials should be kept together in the child's study area or in the family library (where the child has ready access to them).  Some excellent reference materials for elementary school children are included in the KidBibs Virtual Bookstore at the beginning of this LearningTips article.

4.  Develop a routine that will enable you to know about your child's homework.  As children get older, it is important to hold them responsible for completing their homework.  But first the parent must be informed of teacher expectations and communicate to the child that schoolwork is important.  The parent should start by finding out if the child's teacher has a routine that s/he uses for informing the child and parents of homework.  If the teacher does not have a formal procedure, an assignment book might help the child organize his/her assignments.  The child should be instructed to write assignments in the assignment book and circle materials needed in his his/her explanation (for example, spelling list, math book).  That way, while packing his/her backpack, it is easy for him/her to locate the material needed to complete the homework.  When the child gets home, the parent can then use the assignment book to identify the child's homework assignments.  For children still needing to demonstrate that they can be responsible, the child might have the teacher check and initial the assignments recorded in the assignment book before bringing it home.  That way, the parent can be certain that all pertinent assignments have been recorded in the book.

5.  Maintain a family calendar.  This can be a traditional calendar with separate sheets for each month and spaces for recording activities, events, etc.  I prefer to be able to see the whole year at a glance--I purchase a laminated poster size calendar at an office supply store; I use a marker to record school activities, family activities, project due dates, appointments, meetings, etc.  I recommend that you put the calendar in a central location and encourage all family members to mark important dates on it.  

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Teacher Tips

1.  Inform students and parents of your homework routine. There are many different ways to involve parents in their child's academic development.  Clearly stated homework routines can support academic growth.  For example, my daughter's second grade teacher last year, informed parents that children would have math, reading, and spelling homework every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday.  She had students record the specific assignments on the following sheet.  Parents knew to look for this sheet in the child's homework folder on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays.   Each evening the parent was expected to discuss the homework with the child and initial the right column.

Homework Week of ___
Monday
Tuesday
Thursday

2.  Suggest materials to be put in a home learning (homework) kit.  Consider the homework assignments and projects that students will be expected to do at home during the school year; prepare a list of materials that children will need.  Send it home and suggest that parents use a bucket or caddy to store these materials so that children will be able to keep their materials together.

3. Organize your classroom library to support student learning. Some children will have access to materials at home to support learning, some will not.  Store all of your nonfiction books together in your classroom library.  Whether the child is writing a report, working on a science fair project, or simply asking questions to satisfy his/her own curiosity, it is easier for the child to locate information if all of the informational books are together [preferably near the dictionary, thesaurus, atlas, and encyclopedia(s)].  You may wish to organize the nonfiction section of  your classroom library into subcategories to expedite the location of information.  I recommend the following four categories for elementary children's nonfiction:

• animals, habitats

• plants, nature, food

• Earth science [solar system, Earth (rocks, volcanoes, earthquakes) environment, energy, water, weather (clouds, storms, hurricanes, tornadoes), etc.

• people, human body, health, communities, transportation, customs/holidays, history, famous people

Previously in my classroom and currently in our home, I have used brightly colored self-adhesive "dots" that can be purchased in office supply stores to mark books in the various sections.  A "dot" on the shelf (or container) and a "dot" on each book that belongs in that section helps the children and adults maintain a system which promotes the easy location of resources.   The colors used for the categories above reflect the colors in my children's library.

4.  Enable children to check-out materials from the classroom library. As a teacher, I tried a number of strategies for managing the classroom library.  It was hard to find a procedure that would allow children to enjoy the materials freely while keeping track of the materials.  The following strategy worked best in my classroom:

The following posterboard-size checkout system consists of pockets with children's names on them.  Library book pockets or cut index cards can be glued to the posterboard and laminated.  With a marker, the children's names are recorded on the laminated pockets.  (This enables the check-out chart to be used for several years.)  A bookmark-size card is made for each book; the title of the book is written on the card.  When the child checks out a book, s/he merely takes the card out of the book and puts it in the pocket reflecting his/her name.  When s/he checks in the book, s/he removes the card from his/her pocket, places the card in the book, and returns the book to the bookshelf.

  Insert a bookmark-size card in each book:

This check-out system had several advantages: 

1. It was easy to manage.  Children easily understood how to check-out and check-in books.

2. It took very little time for a child to check-out a book since s/he did not need to write their name on a card and file it; this increases the amount of time available for reading or instruction.  This procedure also required very little time to return the book to the library.

3. This system allows the teacher to quickly peruse the check-out chart and see what the various children are reading.  This enables the teacher to easily engage the children in conversations about the book(s) that they are reading.  This also enables the teacher to identify those students who have not visited the classroom library much; s/he may then wish to employ strategies to promote more independent reading.

The parent-teacher relationship is, indeed, an important one.  If parents and teachers work together, the child benefits tremendously.  Whether you are a teacher or a parent, I hope that this week's tips help you help the children in your life.   

©KidBibs International
http://www.kidbibs.com/
info@kidbibs.com

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