We got about 6 inches of snow last night, so I gave the boys the day off and they're having a blast building a fort, throwing snowballs, and sledding.
When the boys were younger, I mistakenly thought that time in my day would be freed up as they got older. "After all," I reasoned, "they won't need me for as much direct teaching."
Boy, was I wrong.
Sure, Luke & Ezekiel don't need as much direct teaching. They read, they write, they translate, they do their math. Direct teaching takes up maybe an hour, then they do their work. Much of our 1:1 time is spent in discussion about literature, history, and logic. However, I didn't take into account that someone would need to grade (or at least check) all of the work they did on their own. And while Jacob, Micah, and Nicholas need more direct teaching from me than the older two, they also have a fair amount of work that I need to check.
I've always got a stack of work to check. I should check this work immediately, but it's difficult when the hours are taken up with teaching, cleaning, cooking, laundering, and chauffeuring. All that time I dreamed of when the boys were younger is nonexistent. I'm forever behind.
Guess what I'm spending this snow day doing?
Do any of you have any great tips for staying caught up with grading/checking work?
3 comments:
Um. No. Since one of mine spent most of last year avoiding math, and I didn't know, I would not be the one to suggest ways to keep up with checking work. Ha.
You guys are so busy! Do you have one block of time per week to dedicate to grading? Or do you need to do it daily?
I've tried different things over the years. For a while 3:00 p.m. was the time of day I checked work- each day. It meant that I never had more than one day to check. Then our schedule changed and for a while Friday afternoon was "checking time" and the children were invested in reminding me to do it because they were not officially released into the weekend until their work was checked and passed muster.
right now I'm just grabbing a kid catch as catch can and checking their work. It's not a great way to do it.
Appreciate you bloogging this
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