Your child has been given an assignment and appears overwhelmed!
When you look at the assignment don't be put off by all the words.
The words on the task sheet are the result of a balancing act. Teachers are trying to balance between not giving out enough information as guidance and giving too much. For some students the words on the task sheet are too many; for others they're not enough. Teachers try to give students guidance and stimulus on the task sheet so that they can work independently.
Most assignment task sheets consist of two major parts
- the task explanation
- the assessment criteria
Task Explanation
Go through with your child and highlight the following
- FIRST find out what the task is. (Is it to write an essay, a report, or a research assignment?)
- NEXT find out what the topic is.
- THEN check the conditions – length, class time to work on, research time, rough draft due, final copy due.
Assessment Criteria
This will often involve the areas of content, thinking skills, communication and research.
2. Using Criteria Sheets to Help Students
The criteria sheet of an assignment contains the major factors to consider when determining how good the assignment is.
The purposes are
- as a teacher report to students on how the completed assignment meets important criteria. (These criteria will often be content, thinking skills, communication, research)
- as a guide/checklist to remind students about the requirements of a good assignment. Often the criteria will be in the form of questions.
Parents can use the criteria sheet as a checklist so that students may be motivated to check their work. For example:
Content Have you included detailed information on castles in the Middle Ages?
Thinking Skills Have you organised your information successfully?
Communication Have you used a variety of sentence structures to make your writing interesting?
Research Have you noted down the sources of your information
3. Being Reasonable About Literacy Demands
When helping with assignments, don't expect your child to get everything right at the one time.
Tackle one thing at a time.
If you're helping to come up with ideas, or to recall information, or to organise information, don't expect your child to have perfect spelling. Concentrate on the particular goal and say that you will help with the spelling at a later time.
Similarly, if you're encouraging new ideas, don't expect the ideas to be in the best order. Tell them: “We'll just jot down some ideas and worry about the order later.”
4. Checking for Understanding of Texts
When you are helping your child read a text, check for understanding often. Sometimes students are reading, but not necessarily understanding or taking in what they read. When asking children to read aloud, stop at the end of one or two paragraphs and ask a question that causes them to recall or think about their reading.
For example: From what you've just read, tell me two examples of India's diversity? What does diversity mean?
Wait for your child to skim read or re-read the paragraph/s if necessary.
Remind your child about these helpful strategies ( asking questions, skim reading ) so that they can use them independently.
When reading over students' rough drafts of assignments, helpers can be tempted to correct the students' work for them. Instead, encourage them to try to find their own mistakes.
To encourage students to think about their own work try saying:
There's a punctuation mistake in this line. Can you find it? (Put an asterisk beside the line)
OR
If you read out this sentence, you could probably tell me what you think is wrong with it.
Encourage children to find and correct their own spelling.
Try saying:
In this paragraph there are three spelling mistakes. Can you find them and circle them?
You've indicated that you think these spelling might be wrong. Have another go at them now.
You've guessed the spelling of those two words successfully. Well done! This one here is incorrect in this part ( circle the part - stirct (strict) ) Sound out the word again. Can you write down other words starting with the sound ‘str'? (This is an opportunity to consolidate some recognition of the letter pattern)
Sometimes it helps to ask them to spell an easier word containing the same letter pattern or sound . (e.g. Spell ‘ nose'; now spell ‘decompose'.)
7. Editing Checklist
Students are sometimes unwilling/find it difficult to assume responsibility for improving the quality of their work by editing or proofreading.
Ask them to use this student checklist (suitable for Grades 6 – 10)
I have
- Read my work out loud to myself and to another
- Added or deleted words
- Used a dictionary or thesaurus for spelling and vocabulary
- Altered sentence beginnings
- Varied the length of sentences
- Checked punctuation (capitals, full stops, apostrophes, commas)
- Made changes to improve my work
8. Helping Children to Edit Their Work - The Importance of Praise
We can underestimate the power of praise. Even with a poor piece of work, a parent may be able to choose something about which to make a positive comment and to motivate the child to continue to work on the task.
Use phrases such as:
- an effective phrase
- an interesting point
- that word stands out
- that was quite a difficult word and you spelt it absolutely correctly
Then move on.
- Perhaps you could make some of the words more vivid in this paragraph.
- I liked …………. Perhaps you could………….
- This is a great beginning! Let's work on this section now.
- We could try to make this part more interesting by using effective phrases like you did before.
Encourage your child to improve expression by:
- varying the length of sentences (consider joining sentences with conjunctions (such as ‘because' and ‘since') and relative pronouns (such as ‘who' or ‘which')
- varying the sentence beginnings
- using more effective and different vocabulary
9. Getting Back Assignments
When students have their marked assignments returned to them, go through the assignment criteria sheet and comments carefully with your child. Take the opportunity to praise your child for those things that were well done in the assignment.
Some students can get quite discouraged when they have put a lot of work into an assignment and have not gained the mark they expected. Criteria sheets are designed to demonstrate to students and parents the standard of the work in a number of criteria.
It may well be that the child has not performed very well in one or more of the criteria, (e.g. language expression) and that this has affected the overall mark.
It is important to
- point out how well your child has done in some of the other criteria
- encourage your child to work on improving in the problem area
- emphasise the teacher's positive comments
- ask your child to reflect on the time given to the task early in the preparation period and whether he/she would change that next time.
- encourage your child to ask about particular ways to improve if unsure
10. Celebrating Progress
Literacy development seems a slow process and when progress is made, it can be more difficult to appreciate the progress in literacy than in numeracy.
If your child has been reading regularly, and working on writing and language skills, then over a period of eight to ten months, a noticeable improvement will probably be present.
It is important to celebrate the small advances , so keep some samples from the previous year to demonstrate the progress to your child. There may still be spelling mistakes but point out to the child how the words misspelt are different, and how the vocabulary and sentence structure are more varied. Also suggest how the fluency and level of difficulty in reading have changed.