Key Tips for Establishing a Homework Checklist

I'm Dr. Sherry Kelly. Thank you for joining me today. I am a clinical neuropsychologist, a licensed psychologist, and also a former educator. So one of my favorite things to do is to talk to students and parents about learning to learn. It's one of the most fascinating aspects of neuroscience, and it's something that's actually very easy to understand for parents and students alike.

And I think once students understand some basic concepts of how the brain likes to learn, they can implement those concepts to make learning a lot more fun and a lot easier. So we're going to step right into it. I'm going to tell you a little bit about the magic of learning today. Learning is in many ways, similar to how a computer takes in information. Your brain in some ways works like a computer. It downloads, organizes, and saves information.

The challenge is that, as students, you're often given a lot of information that is not organized. For parents, this is also frustrating because oftentimes your student has homework and they don't understand why it was even given. Sometimes the teacher isn't well organized or the homework itself demands that your student organizes it or organizes material, and that's something that they haven't been taught to do.

So we're going to talk today about how to organize material. This is really important as it relates to homework, because how you initially process information, then organize it and download it in that computer in your brain, it will dictate how you retrieve it later on, how you remember it later on, how you retrieve that information for tests or labs, or later down the road when you have to use this information again.

So keep in mind this key point that the initial processing of information is integral to learning and memory. If you don't effectively organize what you are supposed to learn, then your learning and recall of the information will be limited. Develop active learning strategies that will set the stage for critical thinking skills.

First, by organizing the information and using that information down the road will actually enhance your learning habits throughout the lifespan. So today, I'm going to give you some tips on how to organize information for homework, and then how to approach homework may be in a brand new way.

I ask students to always establish a homework routine. For younger kids, this means parents have to help them. I recommend that younger students in elementary school actually do their homework in a family setting or at the dinner table or at the kitchen table, at the breakfast bar. We don't want kids to feel isolated when they're doing homework.

And we want students to feel like learning is nurturing. So if you do your homework in the kitchen or the dining room table, it's a natural connection with love and you're enjoying it. We also want kids to feel like their parents or their guardians are invested in their learning experience and all the hard work that they do at school.

So turn off your cell phones, turn off the TV, try not to multitask while you're helping your child start the homework. A lot of times, homework resistance or avoidance has to do with not wanting to be isolated. So this is one way of making homework seem like family responsibility, that it's something that we do together and it's a lifelong habit. The other thing is to establish a pre-homework checklist.

And this is for students of all ages. I'm going to go through my key tips for establishing a homework checklist. It's like a preflight checklist that pilots use every time they get into that airplane before they take off. This is your pre homework checklist. So the number one question, why did the teacher give me this assignment? What is the purpose of this assignment?

Now, parents, you may have heard this in various permutations from your student, but that's a great question. Why did the teacher give me this assignment? You have to understand what the purpose is. Oftentimes, it's reinforcing what was taught during the school day. Oftentimes, it's to introduce new material.

This is something that can happen in math, for example, where they want to pre-teach or want you to pre learn. Oftentimes, it has to do with what you do in the lab. So first is to understand what this homework assignment has to do with what they're being taught in school.

What specific skills or concepts am I to learn from this homework? Is it a skill or is it a concept and what specific skills or are there processes of skills? Is it to learn how to timeline, for example. Is it to learn how to set up equations correctly? Is it to learn facts? Is it to memorize facts? Is it to memorize information in total? Is it to compare and contrast information?

So understanding the specific skills or concepts that you are supposed to gain from this homework and to prove from this homework. Did you identify or see any buzzwords in the assignment or the test? And I want to talk to you a little bit about buzzwords. Buzzwords are words that are embedded in the question of the homework or in the assignment that teachers like to give.

So these might be compared and contrast situations or draw a conclusion or revise a question. Explain the significance of, that's often in homework for older students. Identify and explain a pattern, oftentimes that is embedded in homework. Take and defend a position of a character in a novel or a historical figure, that's often a popular topic for homework.

Studying the relationship between different concepts or studying the relationship between two classes. For high school students, this is now becoming popular, where English and history curricula are connected or synthesized. Oftentimes you'll have an English class, might be reading The Crucible by Arthur Miller. And then for example, at the same time, the history teacher is teaching about 1950s American history McCarthyism.

So there's a reason why you're doing both at the same time, and parents should understand, well, the method to that madness. Understand that some buzzwords might want you to test models or test theories. And this often happens in science homework, or that's often something that you see in project-based homework.