Project-based school work is also a good way to encourage homeschoolers to engage in interest-based, self-directed learning.
Setting project-based school work allows home educators to give home-ed pupils open-ended studies of learning. A project on bees/transport /a historical era can start at KS1 and continue until KS4 or until their interest wanes: A long-term unit study.
A project (in our homeschool) means a folder of information about a topic or subject that our home learners can add to and come back to dip into. It’s an ongoing collection of information, recorded in a variety of ways, treated as a personal resource bank, created by the student who’ll use it.
A project should include
- Background information
Anything we study has a history – projects must tell us something about the history of the topic or subject (like an intro paragraph when writing an essay).
- Facts / Figures
Depending on the topic, how and what facts and figures are presented will vary. The numbers might be included in a written paragraph, presented in list form, as an infographic as part of a presentation or shown in graph form. What matters is that the learners recognise that every topic can be depicted in some way via data.
- Art in some form
This is a way of getting students to express themselves in different mediums, but also as a way of taking pressure off pupils who struggle with writing lots of text. There are many ways to share information and it doesn’t all have to be in written form. Illustrations, diagrams, storyboards etc can all make lessons more fun and allow students to express their knowledge in a way they’re comfortable with.
- A Main Text
With project-based work, letting pupils choose whether to present work typed or handwritten gives learners more control. Typing can make writing easier for students who struggle with handwriting or processing information.
With our homeschoolers, my only stipulation is that there needs to be a minimum of a one-page text block explaining whatever the project topic is. This ensures they read a minimum of three ‘pages’ in order to be able to turn out one page in their own words (we plagarise check afterwards so copy-paste is a no-go from the start).
Setting a word/page count means homeschoolers get used to explaining ideas and facts in appropriate detail – at GCSE they will often be told how many pages an answer must fill so the sooner they start learning how to ‘fill a page,’ the easier that exam skill will be to learn.
If a subject is complex, it’s better to encourage students to spread the project text over two pages rather than attempting to stick to one where they’d have to overly summarise the information. At least until they get used to the concept of completing projects, it’s better for them to include too much information than not enough. Gradually they will learn to self-edit and it’s a skill set to be built upon in actual ‘writing lessons’.
- A summary of the project
This could be a verbal summarisation alongside a power-point presentation, a paper-based summary that can be included in the file or another piece of artwork that summarises the topic explored.
Project based, interest-led schoolwork is a fun way of validating any hobby, interest or curiosity a learner has about absolutely anything – even video games.
Project-based learning = great for sibling homeschoolers
Project-based school work is an easy way to facilitate teaching multiple homeschooled siblings. Space, for example, can be a project topic for a 4 year old (planets/the moon etc), a 12 year old and a 16 year old (expanding into astronomy/robotics/multitude of STEM topics). Theming group lessons around a topic encourages peer-to-peer learning between siblings, encourages younger learners to ‘catch up’ with older siblings and makes planning as a homeschooling parent easier.
If siblings are working at different grade levels, teaching each student individually can take more time that you realistically have. Using a single project topic allows you to teach to the middle of their abilities as a group and then either build on the project knowledge during 1-1 lessons or with additional activities for individual learner’s weekly folders.
Using projects as group activities to complete together is an effective way of teaching homeschooled siblings to work in a peer-peer learning environment. To complete a project, siblings need to work together, delegate project responsibilities between themselves – and ensure each meets their commitments so as not to let the other(s) down. Collaborative research project skills are useful to develop and encouraging them to do so in their home classroom equips them with one of the soft skills traditional schools would organically. Editing the individually assigned sections is a great way to practice giving encouraging/constructive feedback to others.
When our homelearners complete any project – be it a topic assigned by me as a ‘school project’, or a piece of interest-led learning – we encourage them to present our projects to us (and sometimes to friends/family).
Asking them to present their work – talking listeners through their written project folder or by turning it into an actual verbal + visual presentation – encourages them to ensure they’re proud of the piece of work they’re turning in. It also offers us the opportunity to ask questions about what they’ve learnt, encouraging the learners to know more about their subject than what the project contains, which in turn encourages them to go over-and-above the project’s research requirements.
Allowing homelearners to demonstrate their knowledge is an incredibly important part of home education; encouraging them to learn all they can about every topic they study is simply good practise.