Al Capone Does My Homework By Gennifer Choldenko

Al Capone Does My Homework By Gennifer Choldenko If it is not fair to punish someone for something they didn’t do then why students get penalized for not doing homework? This fair question apparently haunts the heads of those students who are figuring out how to get out of doing homework these days. Instead of fighting with your children about their schoolwork, focus on surviving and thriving as a family unit. The greater risk to our children, and ourselves, is the stress we are adding to all our lives by believing that parents have to take on the full weight of education. The lesson to be learned from home-schoolers is that what kids need goes far beyond classroom instructional time. A typical homeschool schedule for elementary school kids only has about two to three hours a day. The balance of each day is filled with exploration, reading, household tasks, and learning to manage boredom. Hours of their day are spent not on memorizing facts and learning new concepts, but on social interaction, games, and daily classroom tasks. Tomorrow, telling about your yesterday’s headache, don’t forget to say to the teachers that you did not dare to skip school even due to poor health and lack of homework. “I just sat down to do my homework when out of the blue a giant hurricane appeared and bang! I sure might have done it with candles but my parents do not allow me to do it. One of those homework excuses might even convince the teacher that you can pass the homework the next time, but hold your horses if you plan to convince someone of something you should be convincing. You want someone who is serious about helping and won’t try to bother you while you are working. Your teenaged son or daughter will probably be very good at checking up on you and keeping you on task. One programmed to tell you what you need to do and how it will impact your day. Think, “start working on your paper now and you’ll be able to go to a movie.” If you ignore that one, then set another saying, “if you start your paper now, you can watch an hourlong drama,” and so on. This type of self-reward system can help you better manage your time and still fulfill your wants later on. Finishing the largest item on your to-do list will give you the productivity boost you need to do other assignments you may have pushed aside. Being accountable to someone is often the drive we need to kick us into gear. Use a similar tactic to ensure your schoolwork is done on time. Ask someone to check on your progress periodically to assure you’re staying on task. This someone can be your spouse, a friend or even your children. It may also mean that, like me, you are wearing noise-canceling headphones, sitting on the floor of the playroom, working on your laptop while the children run amok. These scenarios, and everything in between, should be considered perfect parenting. If your children feel supported and loved, and if everyone is going to bed mostly happy, make yourself a tinfoil star and put it on your computer right now. (Or, if you hate crafts, eat an Oreo.) You are winning. So if you are distracted by the slightest of sounds in a usually quiet atmosphere, music can drown out any spontaneous interruptions. It also has a powerful effect on your mood and recall. When you select the right song to play while studying, writing a paper or posting in the discussion board, the tune can trigger your memory. So far, we’ve been lucky to have teachers willing to work with me. That being said, it’d be unrealistic to assume a ‘partial-homework’ policy will be the norm forever. Maybe soften up the teacher with a bunch of hard to pronounce words from the subject’s unit? At least make some doodles in the textbook and abundantly cross off everything explaining you did it under another uncertainty attack. Someday, when my views on homework collide with the mainstream school system’s views on it, tough decisions will need to be made. I reached out to them the first week of school to politely tell them my daughter would only be doing as much homework as would feasibly fit into our lives. I asked them to contact me if she was struggling in any areas so that I could shift our focus onto those subjects and I asked them if they had any questions for me. What if you really have a headache and the project is up for tomorrow? In this case, it is probably better to brace yourself, take a pill and like in any confusing situation go to sleep. This may mean shifting your kids’ schedules so that their time with you is on the weekend, and weekdays are full of TVs and tablets. It may mean that you are happiest with an intricate schedule packed with all the resources schools, libraries, and publishers are providing. Writing apps like Hemingway and Grammarly can ease the process of writing papers by helping you write more clearly. Think of these apps as your own personal writing coach. As you write, the app identifies hard to read sentences, as well as awkward phrasing, and promotes better word choices.