How Are People Actually Doing Home Education In Practice?
In this section we outline an excellent real-life example of how a family are doing home education in practice.
In this particular family setting, the Allens in Rochdale, the parents were keen to withdraw their eldest daughter, Summer, after she was experiencing bullying at school. Once they had set up a framework and designed a timetable for their daughter to be homeschooled, they felt that it would be beneficial overall for her two siblings, Tristan and April, to enter into the same timetable structure and also be educated at home.
Now, they would like to share it with everyone who is thinking about homeschooling their children.
What The Local Council Had To Say
The feedback on the from Rochdale Council was as follows: “It was a joy to see Summer, Tristan and April through the Kloodle platform performing their dance classes and music sessions. It’s a great way to see the progress made and review subjects over time. Lots of variety in age appropriate work completed. Keep up the fantastic work, you are all doing a great job.”
The Typical Week At Home
During a typical week in the educational journey, Summer, Tristan and April stick to a structured timetable (see below); the main focus in the mornings is on the educational backbones of English, Maths and Science; and then the afternoons are for a range of different chosen subjects, such as Spanish, History, Geography etc.
The three children have access to educational apps and websites to support their learning, namely: IXL, TT rockstars, YouTube, Twinkl, White Rose Maths, Music Gurus, Note Blaster, Duolingo, Kloodle, Set the Clock, Google Earth, BBC Bitesize and Teach My Monster To Read. Another big area of focus is learning through gaming and coding, where children can develop problem-solving skills by playing games such as Roadblock, Minecraft.
Although, in this case, the family adheres to timetables and lesson objectives, many home education scenarios do not use traditional curriculum methods, but focus on learning though daily discussions around ordinary everyday practical experiences, like handling change in shops.
With Lashings Of Extra-Curricular
Extra-curricular activities of choice are fitted in around the ‘school day’ and at weekends. So, for example, this is April’s ‘extra-curricular’ timetable:
The three children all access lots of opportunities to socialise in the evenings and weekends during the classes that they attend.
How Does Kloodle Fit In?
Homeschooling pupils, like Summer, Tristan and April, and their parents can use multiple resources available to them to set activities and challenges. This promotes rich experience and skills’ development and enrichment can be captured by being recorded on Kloodle during or after each lesson or activity. Learners can do this by uploading photos, videos, documents and blogs about the exercise to their Kloodle profile on their phone or PC, tagging in the skills they are honing as part of the task.
The siblings make their own posts but, generally, this can depend on ability and age and so parents can also post on children’s behalf. The Kloodle software is very user-friendly and assistive, helping all levels of learners with these activities.
Here are examples of Summer’s posts for Drama and English. Wow!
Reflections
Reflection is a very powerful component of the process as young people think more deeply about identifying skills and then how to develop them, so personal reflections can be added to Kloodle after activities, when students consider how their skills have evolved.
And here are some real-life excellent examples of how April and her brother, Tristan, have posted work, certificates and reflections on Kloodle about work on Maths, English or other subjects, extra-curricular activities like drama and music, and even skills relating to daily life, like making your own breakfast!
Regulatory Compliance With Shareable Feed
Under the Education Act, all children are should be provided with an ‘efficient, fulltime, suitable education – to age, ability and aptitude.’ Parents have to provide information annually to the local council to support this and showing that the home ed addresses issues such as progression expected and achieved. It should also demonstrate interaction with peers as suitbale education involves socialisation.
Parents can quickly and easily highlight the evidence they want to present to local authorities as a report and create a shareable feed, which otherwise would take tens of hours to collate. The feedback from Rochdale Council was as follows: “It was a joy to see Summer, Tristan and April through the Kloodle platform performing their dance classes and music sessions. It’s a great way to see the progress made and review subjects over time. Lots of variety in age appropriate work completed. Keep up the fantastic work you are all doing a great job.”
Rochdale Council offers input to homeschooling with supportive and friendly an elective Home Education team including two qualified teachers, a supporting families key worker and an home education officer.
The Kloodle Skills’ Wheel
Each individual learner has a skills’ wheel on their Kloodle profile, which illustrates the growth in skills’ development. The family has tailored their own skills’ framework of 15 different values. The one illustrated below is Tristan’s. By completing tasks, the students can identify how their aptitudes can grow their individual skills wheel. That feels good!
This process builds self-awareness and confidence as the most important aspect is that the skills are transferable. You can notice that Tristan is developing his ‘Teamwork’ even though he is being schooled at home! This is through all the extra-curricular activities he is doing with other children. The Kloodle journey doesn’t just end when the learners finish being homeschooled; ultimately, they can complete CV writing on Kloodle and keep their profiles for life!
Kloodle Helps With The Tailored Character And Skills’ Development
Historically, homeschooling was seen as a niche type of education with limited options. However, the Covid pandemic presented an opportunity for many families to try educating their children at home, integrated into their lifestyle. This has resulted in a huge growth in homeschooling, as parents are voluntarily taking their children out of mainstream ‘exam factory’ education to experience a more varied and tailored approach, which can develop close family relationships and build key life skills. Kloodle facilitates the additional depth, awareness and richness in learning, which allows customisation and real emotional understanding of character and skills through reflection, and avoids the ‘cookie cutter’ and superficial knowledge-based educational route.
