Helping Your Student Become an Independent Learner

One of the best (only one) results of homeschooling is an independent learner. A student that takes the bull by the horns and becomes a very active participant in their own learning.

Independent learners are curious, self motivated, and accountable. They are usually organized about their learning, possess strong skills in reading and comprehension and can manage their time well. They will still have teacher guidance but are able to move forward in their learning with out a teacher or parent directing every step.

An Independent Learner is a great thing in any school.

Our Own Path to an Independent Learner

In my own disjointed way I’ve tried to guide our daughter to be a more independent learner through the years. Even though I like to say I had no idea what I was doing we started to see our pay off in a big way this past summer. Our independent learner came out of her shell!

A month before we set to start our 2017/18 school year, as we were kind of preparing, our daughter started to be very definite about how she wanted to do things and when. I really just thought it was excitement about all the nice clean new paper and sharp pencils that she was going to get her hands on but here we are getting ready to end this school year and she has proven me wrong.  This independence and drive has laster the whole year.

First of all she wanted to be the one to design what her homeschool day would look like. She usually fills out our Class Schedule but this time she wanted to use the Lesson Planner we get with our BJU Press Curriculum and keep track of her lessons and days (I still grade, give oral quizzes, feedback, and sit in on the lessons because they are so good.

To help her with this I created a Homeschool Planner that works for our boxed curriculum (you can see it and a sample here, and another version here) to keep track of what she is doing each day.

Next this year she decided she wanted to do her homework as homework. In the past she has done it directly after each subject but this year she wanted to focus on all of her classes (video or mommy) and then do her homework in the evenings. So far so good.

Then she decided she wanted to try learn a few things not in our curriculum line up. Sign Language and Russian. We found a Sign Language class in Schoolhouse Teachers and Mango Languages and DuoLingo for the Russian.

Finally when there is a topic she wants to know more about she goes for it. Mostly it has to do with her pets but she has also exhibited this with learning more about her sports gymnastics and swimming. Books, websites, videos (carefully curated sources). She’s a motivated, independent learner! Que band music!

We’re still working on this though and I’ve been reading more about to hep her and encourage her.

Want to know more about how to help your student become a motivated independent learner?

I’ve rounded up some good posts on Independent Learning for you…

Stop the Homeschool Chaos: Practical Strategies for Independent Learning: Luke & Trisha Wilkerson talk about the process of developing your chid into an independent learner.

Want Independent Homeschoolers? Teach them these two things: Amy makes sure that you know that homeschooling doesn’t guarantee your children will be independent learners. Don’t forget these two important things (that we could all be mindful of).

Top Tips for Independent Learning: From Bright Knowledge.