What Do Homework Wars Have to Do With the Learning Curve?

I know many of you are aware of the four stages of learning. We usually refer to these stages as the learning curve. I'm going to talk about those stages of learning and relate them to the reading process and then homework.

The LEARNING CURVE

1. Unconscious Incompetence: The first stage is when you don't know what you don't know. Remember back when you first started school. You were probably excited about being able to learn how to read. I know I was because my older siblings were already reading. But I didn't know what the alphabet was or that it even existed let alone that it had twenty-six letters.

2. Conscious Incompetence: The second stage is when you now know what you don't know. This is when you learn that there is an alphabet and that the letters stood for sounds, and that you could actually combine letters to make additional sounds. You know that you need to learn the sounds of the letters and the sounds of the combined letters. You also know that you need to figure out how these letters combine to form words.

3. Conscious Competence: The third stage is when you now know it, but you have to concentrate to use what you know. This is the stage of reading where you have finally put letters together to make words, but you have to concentrate to sound them out. You are actually working at reading each word.

4. Unconscious Competence: you know it, and you can do it without thinking about it. This is the stage of reading where fluency takes over. You are able to automatically retrieve the words and become a fluent reader. Reading becomes second nature. It is easy.

Every time we learn a new task, we go through these steps. As parents, we don't usually think about this relating to our jobs. When we start a new job or task we know there is what we refer to as a learning curve. We know that once we become more familiar with the new job or task it will become easier and easier. Eventually the task becomes second nature to us. That is what happened when we learned to read, or to ride a bike, or to make a meal. It is difficult at first but gradually we move from the unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence.

So, Why Am I Even Going On About This…and What Does It Have to Do With Homework Wars?

Think about it, what often happens is that we expect our kids to be able to get right to their homework assignments and complete them with ease. We also expect them to be able to read with ease, do writing assignments with ease, and do math assignments with ease. If we keep in mind this learning curve, the four stages of learning, we may end up being more patient and helpful to our kids and have a more pleasant homework time.

Keeping the learning curve (the 4 stages of learning) in mind, kids need to learn how to do homework, when to do their homework, and why they are doing it. When children understand there is a reason for doing something, that it is not just busy work, they are more apt to do it without complaint.

Aren't we the same? When we don't know how to do something, do we do it readily? If you are anything like me, you probably do the things that come easily first and put off the things you don't know how to do very well.

If we haven't consciously put an activity or chore into our schedule does it always get done on time? I can't begin to think about the countless times I have been stressed because I'm up on deadline for a project because other things took me longer than I had expected. And, I think of myself as being pretty good at time management.

When we don't understand why we need to do a task, especially one that is pointless in our opinion, do we do it quickly and well or do we procrastinate about doing it? Isn't this familiar to you? And, if we see the value of doing something, don't we give it a higher priority and pay a little more attention to it, and get it done in a timely fashion? I know I do!

I'll never forget the day one of my students, Michelle, was having a hard time with her writing assignment. As we started our lesson, I automatically said to Michelle, "You need to do it this way because…". Her mother overheard me and started laughing and said to Michelle, "I told you she'd explain why." Later, her mom told me how frustrated she had been and that she had been arguing with her about it. She finally said, "Let's take it into the Learning Center. You know Bonnie, she'll explain to you why you need to do it that way." When our children understand the why of things, they buy into doing them with greater ease.

One More Reason...

The other reason I'm going on about this is that we can actually help our child expedite their movement from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence by doing a few simple things with our kids on a regular basis.

For instance, we can help them move from working hard at reading to becoming fluent readers with a few minutes a day of reading specific reading drills that work on fluency, tracking, and the rapid retrieval system at the same time. This practice not only improves their reading skills, but also makes doing any reading/writing assignment easier. They will even be able to read the directions for the assignments with ease. And, helping your child with the reading drills provides a little bit of structured one-on-one time per day with your child.

So, when we remember the learning curve (the 4 stages of learning) we help to move our children into that fourth stage faster. The result is less homework wars, kids that learn better time management skills, kids that understand why they are doing their assignments, kids that are more fluent readers so they understand how to do the assignments by reading the directions, and kids that buy into the assignments and do them more readily. So, all in all, it's a win-win situation.