Action Study is a way of learning about your child while teaching them

Action Study 

Sheryl and Trina -

Homeschool parent-teacher, Sheryl, was incredibly frustrated with her daughter’s resistance to the learning tasks she had planned for her.  It seemed every day was a fight and Sheryl was at her end. 

We spent some time considering the different actions that might be helpful in this situation. Sheryl decided to study CHOICE. She started with the religion curriculum because it had the same kind of tasks each week, a reading and a written response to a prompt about the reading.  She took a few minutes to…

1. Figure out the learning goal of the written response.
2. Write 2 other prompts that would accomplish the same learning goal but along a different path.

OBSERVATION - Trina read the assigned reading and then seemed pleasantly surprised that she was allowed to CHOOSE one of the 3 writing tasks. She got straight to work. Sheryl was SHOCKED. No resistance. No hesitation. Just a smile and a solid 30 minutes of writing work.

Sheryl was so pleased with the results she decided to study the affect of CHOICE on other subject areas. REDUCED RESISTANCE.

Studying actions turned out to be more fun than Sheryl anticipated. She got to witness the excitement of learning and enjoy being her daughter’s homeschool parent-teacher, which is what she had really wanted.  However, the next step was a little tougher.

Action Study leads to shifting your actions to those that are most impactful. Sheryl realized she was going to have to add some planning time to bring more CHOICE to Trina, a sacrifice she struggled with because of her other children and schedule. But in the long run, this extra time in planning yielded better and longer learning time with Trina. She decided to jump in.

Here’s another example…

Kelley and Haley -

Kelley, a new homeschool mom, was struggling with her daughter’s boredom and lack of engagement with the writing tasks in her curriculum.

Our conversation led Kelley to realize that Haley was already writing at levels higher than the grade-level curriculum she was supposed to be doing. Since they were in a hybrid situation, Kelley felt like she couldn’t jump ahead or skip assignments leaving Haley bored and not wanting to “do homeschool” anymore. 

While I encouraged her to talk with the hybrid teacher about the writing needs of Haley compared to the current curriculum expectations, I also encouraged her to study some different actions with writing at home.  Kelley decided to study USING PLAY.  Haley loved American Girl and loved to make props for her American Girl playtime. A recent gem, of her own creative spirit, was a little mini-book for her American Girl home library. Kelley decided to run with this and planned…

1. Create 2 mini-books of any topic or type
2. Include minimum 5 sentences that connect to each other and a bigger idea.
3. Use transition words to connect the sentences.

OBSERVATION - Haley was soooo excited to be creative, I don’t know if she even realized she was “doing homeschool.” She woke up early the next day (before mom) to finish her books. And each book had 8+ sentences some complex with commas and all wonderfully connected with transition words from the list provided by mom. Kelley was in AWE. No boredom. No resistance. Just finished books above and beyond the expectations.

In fact, the girl in the video is Haley and she gave this a 3 thumbs up!!

Studying actions helped Kelley find ways to make homeschool more exciting and appropriate for Haley. She got to witness the excitement of learning and be a part of creative genius in the making.  However, the next step was a little tougher.

Action Study leads to shifting your actions to those that are most impactful. Kelley realized that she needed to abandon parts of the curriculum that were NOT challenging to Haley and spend some time planning writing and language arts tasks involving Haley’s PLAY.  While Kelley was willing to try, she struggled with the confidence that she could do this regularly enough without a curriculum to tell her what to do. 

Kelley is not uncommon in her struggle. While Action Study reveals the actions that impact learning for our children, they also reveal possible areas of struggle for ourselves. But if we embrace a Lifelong Learning Mindset, we can learn how to do anything.  I encouraged Kelley to not throw out the curriculum, but try a different writing task from PLAY each week to give Haley a chance to grow in her writing. In time, Kelley’s confidence will grow and she can loosen her grip on the curriculum.

ACTION STEPS...

1. What actions have you found to have impact on your child's learning, both positive and negative? (i.e. word lists are very helpful, highlighting texts is not effective... at least for right now) 
2. Has this workshop give you any ideas of actions you would like to study with your child? Which one(s)?
3. Join us in the FREE Community and share your thoughts about the most impactful actions in your homeschool. 

AWAKEN LEARNING, 

JILL