Welcome to The Educating Parent Beverley Paine's archive of articles about homeschooling and unschooling written over a period of 30 plus years

HomeAbout Blog Articles Curriculum Resource Directory Shop Kids Pages Facebook

Download our FREE The Educating Parent Resource Directories today! Plus... more FREE resources!

Free download a quick guide to getting started with homeschooling and unschooling by Beverley Paine The Educating Parent in this excellent Resource Directory

 

Free directory of Australian homeschooling and unschooling support groups organised by national, state and territories

 
Plan, record and report all in the one document! Always Learning Books planners available in each year level to suit your homeschooling needs, includes curriculum checklists
Australia's original homeschooling manual from veteran home educator Beverley Paine, how to write your own learning plan and curriculum to meet your child's needs
Let Beverley and friends help you design and write your own curriculum to suit your child's individual learning needs, learn how to prepare lessons, unit studies and more, record and evaluate your children's learning in this series of 3 parent workbooks developed on Beverley's popular homeschool manual Getting Started with Home School Practical Considerations
Introduction to
Home Education
  National and State
Support Groups
  Yearly Planner, Diary & Report Beverley's Original Home Ed Manual Series of How To
Parent Workbooks

Support Groups: National SA VIC NSW QLD TAS ACT NT
Registration Guides: VIC NSW QLD SA WA TAS ACT NT

Looking for support, reassurance and information?
Join Beverley's The Educating Parents Homeschooling and Unschooling Facebook online group.

 

Specific Areas To Consider In The Evaluation Process

© Beverley Paine

Evaluating your learning program and the various activities you provide for children means considering, in some detail, the following aspects:

  • relationships,
  • attitudes,
  • the actual learning process,
  • resources,
  • the frequency of specific evaluation techniques such as assessments and tests,
  • and how feedback from the evaluation process will be acted upon.

Evaluation that doesn't form part of a continuous process of planning, action and reflection, can become meaningless and a waste of time.

If you are recording and evaluating to satisfy educational authorities only, then you and your children will soon become cynical about the entire learning process, and cease to enjoy it. You may quickly learn to resent recording your children's progress and may even stop recording altogether. Although this may seem satisfying in the short term I have seen many instances where families lose track of what they children have learned. Sometimes this leads to repeating 'lessons', which is boring for the children and quickly turns them off learning atogether. It also has the effect of eroding confidence that home education is successful.

Relationships include communication, respect, trust, values, attitudes, discipline and responsibility. These areas come up frequently in daily home life, although if ignored can become overwhelming issues of conflict affecting the smooth operation of home schooling. This can cause much unnecessary stress, frustration and possible 'burn out'. Relationships take conscious effort to work well, and relationships within families should never be taken for granted, especially in home schools.

Work out before commencing any learning activities who will be taking responsibility for what aspects of each activity, and what role each person is to play. There is no need for the parent to always be the person directing the learning, or organising the materials or timing of activities. Children enjoy taking responsibility if encouraged.

Evaluate each of the above aspects of relationships and seek ways to continuously improve how individual members of the family relate to each other, and also to the wider community in general.

The learning process includes all aspects of learning happening for your children; their sensorial learning, active and experiential learning, learning through discovery and exploration of new things and concepts, and learning with mentors, tutors, including working as 'apprentices'. These reflect the intellectual, social, emotional, spiritual and physical growth of your children.

When evaluating learning processes you need to reflect on whether you have set realistic goals based on the individual needs of each child, if you are flexible enough, if you are allowing the children to work at a reasonable pace based on their overall development or allowing them to set their own pace, and if the activities are meaningful to each individual child. It is useful to consider if the learning processes are creative ones, leading onto other learning opportunities.

When looking at resources you need to consider their appropriateness, effectiveness, safety, if there are enough for everyone's needs, if they are of good quality, and if there is sufficient variety to meet individual needs. Don't forget to assess the general environment, and people accessed in the learning process. These are resources too. There is more information on evaluating resources in Evaluating Materials for Home Education.

One of the most useful things you can do is to regularly evaluate your own performance as a learning guide for your children. This is often overlooked by home schooling parents, but demonstrates and builds professional educational skills. The following is an excerpt from a parent's week-by-week evaluation note book:

Specific Areas To Consider In The Evaluation Process

© Beverley Paine

Evaluating your learning program and the various activities you provide for children means considering, in some detail, the following aspects:

  • relationships,
  • attitudes,
  • the actual learning process,
  • resources,
  • the frequency of specific evaluation techniques such as assessments and tests,
  • and how feedback from the evaluation process will be acted upon.

Evaluation that doesn't form part of a continuous process of planning, action and reflection, can become meaningless and a waste of time.

If you are recording and evaluating to satisfy educational authorities only, then you and your children will soon become cynical about the entire learning process, and cease to enjoy it. You may quickly learn to resent recording your children's progress and may even stop recording altogether. Although this may seem satisfying in the short term I have seen many instances where families lose track of what they children have learned. Sometimes this leads to repeating 'lessons', which is boring for the children and quickly turns them off learning atogether. It also has the effect of eroding confidence that home education is successful.

Relationships include communication, respect, trust, values, attitudes, discipline and responsibility. These areas come up frequently in daily home life, although if ignored can become overwhelming issues of conflict affecting the smooth operation of home schooling. This can cause much unnecessary stress, frustration and possible 'burn out'. Relationships take conscious effort to work well, and relationships within families should never be taken for granted, especially in home schools.

Work out before commencing any learning activities who will be taking responsibility for what aspects of each activity, and what role each person is to play. There is no need for the parent to always be the person directing the learning, or organising the materials or timing of activities. Children enjoy taking responsibility if encouraged.

Evaluate each of the above aspects of relationships and seek ways to continuously improve how individual members of the family relate to each other, and also to the wider community in general.

The learning process includes all aspects of learning happening for your children; their sensorial learning, active and experiential learning, learning through discovery and exploration of new things and concepts, and learning with mentors, tutors, including working as 'apprentices'. These reflect the intellectual, social, emotional, spiritual and physical growth of your children.

When evaluating learning processes you need to reflect on whether you have set realistic goals based on the individual needs of each child, if you are flexible enough, if you are allowing the children to work at a reasonable pace based on their overall development or allowing them to set their own pace, and if the activities are meaningful to each individual child. It is useful to consider if the learning processes are creative ones, leading onto other learning opportunities.

When looking at resources you need to consider their appropriateness, effectiveness, safety, if there are enough for everyone's needs, if they are of good quality, and if there is sufficient variety to meet individual needs. Don't forget to assess the general environment, and people accessed in the learning process. These are resources too. There is more information on evaluating resources in Evaluating Materials for Home Education.

One of the most useful things you can do is to regularly evaluate your own performance as a learning guide for your children. This is often overlooked by home schooling parents, but demonstrates and builds professional educational skills. The following is an excerpt from a parent's week-by-week evaluation note book:

Week Ending: 28 / 7 / 91

Summary of Activities

Social activity has included swimming with friends, and excursions to school library and Annexe (alternative community school class). Helped Dad at work (landscape yard) one day. Kids got to help drive the tractor,do some weeding and potting up of plants. Investigated functions of cash register. Concentrated on gardening and landscaping at home with the kids involved in a lot of the projects, etc. Lots of effort has gone into our personal development program based on co-operative behaviours and understanding of responsibilities. The children have been very co-operative and I've not concentrated on structured academic activities at all during the week. Lots of outside activity due to perfect weather. Visits to beach in afternoons.

Evaluation of Processes

I am becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the day to day aspects of this program. I have consequently contacted other home educators and read additional books to gain insights into the source of my discontent. I feel now I need to adjust the physical environment. It is necessary to change the focus of our program away from the material or hard copy of the children's learning (I am concentrating too much on what we record rather than what we learn!) I am failing to fill out journal pages as I have been too busy myself to think about it. I need to develop an easy format to use.

 

Was this article helpful? Was it worth $1.00 to you? Your gift of $1 or more helps to keep this site operating offering encouragement and reassurance to families wanting better outcomes for their children.

Thank you for your gift contribution!

Beverley Paine with her children, and their home educated children, relaxing at home.

Together with the support of my family, my aim is to help parents educate their children in stress-free, nurturing environments. In addition to building and maintaing this website, I continue to create and manage local and national home educating networks, help to organise conferences and camps, as well as write for, edit and produce newsletters, resource directories and magazines. I am an active supporter of national, state, regional and local home education groups.

"You've been an inspiration to me, I love the way
you really listen to people."
Vanessa

"Whenever I read your writing I always come away
with increased confidence in my ability to provide and
share a wonderful learning journey with my family!"
Davina

"Your guidance, understanding, support and words of
wisdom changed our lives. We now offer support and
organise many homeschooling events for others."
Lesley

"Thank you once again for your prompt and friendly service.
I am convinced that your books are going to add
quality and peace of mind to my journey of teaching my kids
at home! Just from studying your website, until almost
2am in the morning, I 've been encouraged!"
Louisa

"Thank you for all your many,many reassuring words
over many, many years. You probably don't know exactly how valuable you are to the Australian Home Education community. I've been reading your stuff for maybe 8 years or more now. And I'm very grateful."
Gythaa


CLICK HERE if you want to learn
how to write your own education plans
to suit your unique children's individual learning needs?

Or you are looking for quality curriculum and teaching tips...

Welcome to the World of Home Education
and Learning without School!

We began educating our children in 1985, when our eldest was five. In truth, we had helped them learn what they need to learn since they were born. I am a passionate advocate of allowing children to learn unhindered by unnecessary stress and competition, meeting developmental needs in ways that suit their individual learning styles and preferences. Ours was a homeschooling, unschooling and natural learning family! There are hundreds of articles on this site to help you build confidence as a home educating family. We hope that your home educating adventure is as satisfying as ours was! Beverley Paine

3 ESSENTIAL STEP BY STEP GUIDES

Getting Started with
Home Educating Series of

PARENT WORKBOOKS

#1 Create Your
Own Curriculum

#2 DIY Lesson Plans
& Unit Studies

#3 Recording and Evaluation Made Simple

$10.00 each (includes postage)

let experienced home educators Beverley, Tamara and April walk you through HOW to create a learning plan that builds on solid foundations that works for YOUR family AND ticks all the boxes for home educaton registration with part 1 of this getting started with home educating serioes of parent workbooks, Create Your Own Curriculum!
Let experienced home educators Beverley, Tamara and April walk you through HOW to create a learning plan that builds on solid foundations that works for YOUR family AND ticks all the boxes for home educaton registration!

To see the full range of Beverley Paine's books on homeschooling, unschooling and natural learning visit Always Learning Books

Tap into Beverley's experience
through her books

"Your books, your blogs helped me beyond words... they helped me to find comfort in knowing it is ok to choose exactly what is best for my family." Nisha

"Your books and information are mind blowing and already I am feeling good about this new experience." Diane

"Your guidance, understanding, support & words of wisdom changed our lives." Leslie

"I feel specially inspired by Beverley's words and, the more I read her comments, the more inspired I feel, since my need for support, respect for different parenting styles, and information are fully met." Marijo
purchase Beverley's practical and common sense books on homeschooling and unschooling
Connect with Beverley and ask questions
through her online The Educating Parents Homeschooling and Unschooling Facebook support group
.

The information on this website is of a general nature only and is not intended as personal or professional advice. This site merges and incorporates 'Homeschool Australia' and 'Unschool Australia'.

The Educating Parent acknowledges the Traditional Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Owners, the Custodians of Australia, and pay our respects to Elders past and present and extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people viewing this website.

Advertise on this site.

say goodbye to home education registration stress with this ultimate rego bundle from Fearless Homeschool

complete comprehensive step by step program that teaches you how to craft your ultimate homeschool

make homeschooling a lot easier, zero to homeschool's excellent course is here to help

Australia's best home education consultant, let Tamara Kidd guide and help you prepare your home education registration application or review

Twinkl downloadable Home education resources helping you teach confidently at home

Online science lessons for primary school aged home educating children

30% discount for purchases from ReadyEd Publications when you use the code 'homeschool' at  the checkout

reset your mindset for homeschooling success with deschooling essentials a quick course to help build your confidence as an educating parent

200 pages of templates, planning pages, tables, prompts and record sheets to organise your whole year!

subscription video art lessons by Australian artist

Australia's premier online annual conferences, lifetime access to video and audio recordings, freebies, notes and associated resource guides.

EVERY SUMMIT IS UNIQUE!

$29 each 2023 2022 2021
$25 each 2020 2019 2017

"Biggest and best Aussie homeschool event of the year!"

Home education is a legal alternative
to school education in Australia.
State and Territory governments are responsible
for regulating home education and have different
requirements, however home educating families
are able to develop curriculum and learning programs
to suit the individual needs of their children.

animated Australian flag

Without revenue from advertising
by educational suppliers and Google Ads
we could not continue to provide information
to home educators. Please support us by letting
our advertisers know that you found them on
The Educating Parent. Thanks!

Support Centre
Contact Us | Join a Support Group | Beverley's Books | Resource Directory | Blog | Donate

About The Educating Parent
Beverley Paine | April Jermey and Always Learning Books | Advertise with us

Sitemap

What is Home Education Why Home Educate Getting Started & Registering Different Ways to Home Educate
Life as a Home Educator Resources & Support Teens and Beyond Curriculum and Teaching Tips
Unschooling & Natural Learning Travelling & Home Educating Record Keeping Children's Pages

animated smiling face Thank you for visiting!

Beverley Paine, The Educating Parent
The opinions and articles included on this website are not necessarily those of Beverley and Robin Paine,
nor do they endorse or recommend products listed in contributed articles, pages, or advertisements.
This website uses browsing cookies and conducts other means to collect user information in order to display contextual ads.
Text and images on this site © All Rights Reserved 1999-2023.