How to Track Your Home-Educated Child’s Progress: 5 Tips

Homeschooling your child gives you the freedom to decide on your child’s syllabus and timetable. Moreover, you can keep up with your child’s learning pace for added effectiveness. However, it’s very important for you to track and measure your home-educated child’s progress from time to time to ensure your efforts aren’t wasted.   

Whether you want to evaluate your child’s performance through NAPLAN past papers or through practicals, tracking your child’s progress will help you in tailoring your teaching approach accordingly. Hence, this article will uncover 5 tips on how to track your home-educated child’s progress. Read below to learn!

1. State Clear Goals

Without goals, you won’t have any way to measure your child’s progress, as you won’t be able to steer your child in the right direction to help them achieve their learning goals.

It’s imperative that you create SMART goals. Your child won’t be motivated to work towards them if they are not measurable, realistic, and attainable. Also, you won’t be able to track their progress.

For instance, the  goal “My child will learn to read.” will be pretty hard to measure,

On the other hand, you can easily track the performance of your child with this goal,

“My child will learn to read at the 1st-grade level within 6 months.”

2. Make Sure to Record Your Child’s Progress

Whether you’re asking your child to read, write, do scientific practicals, or solve mathematical problems, you must create a portfolio and punch them into binders.

Of course, no one else is going to look at these samples or portfolios but you. That’s why it’s essential to keep a record of them.

This way, you can compare your child’s performance in a specific subject from time to time and see where there was no improvement, so you can work harder on those areas.

Also, Check – Know All About the NEET UG 2022 Exam

3. Use Grades and Verbal Feedback

If you don’t use this standard way to monitor your home-educated child’s progress, how will you be able to truly inspire your child to do better at under-performing topics?

Grading your child’s tests, assessments, or papers according to the same school/college standard will let you compare their performance year-on-year or even quarterly.

You should also provide them with verbal feedback, so they can do better. If they didn’t do well in a test, you can discuss this with them in a positive manner and tailor your teaching methodology accordingly.

4. Conduct Tests or Exams

Online past papers or standardized tests are a great way to measure your child’s progress. You can even compare the progress of your child with other homeschooled children. However, make sure you don’t actually “compare” your child with others.

Conducting tests will also allow you to assess what core areas your child is lacking in, so you can work on them suitably.

5. Track Your Home-Educated Child’s Success

In addition to the other effective tips we’ve mentioned above, another great way to track your child’s success is to video record their hands-on projects, experiments, and even field trips and save them on your PC.

You and your child can watch them together occasionally to see their strengths and weaknesses. You will also be able to see what they have learned and how well they have progressed over the years.