Welcome to Learning about Learning: The Challenge of Homework Please sign in and fill out a nametag with your name, the names of your children, and the ages of your children.

The Triangle Challenge With your partner, make an equilateral triangle with three of the sticks Add three more sticks and make four equilateral triangles The solution should only have four equilateral triangles – there can be no other shapes You must use the entire length of each stick

A Framework for Learning

Some Preliminary Questions What are the Learning about Learning Workshops? What is my role in the workshop? What is your role in the workshop? What is the Parking Lot?

What are Learning about Learning Workshops? Developed by All Kinds of Minds, a nonprofit organization co-founded by Dr. Mel Levine and Charles Schwab Facilitated by educators who have attended the Schools Attuned Program, a program that prepares educators to meet the learning needs of all students in their classroom Additional topics include paying attention, learning and self-esteem, getting organized for learning, and building learning alliances with your children and their teachers

What is my role in the workshop? Facilitator = encourage and guide conversation among you Facilitator  provide expertise on neurodevelopmental variation

What is your role in the workshop? Listen Discuss Collaborate

What is the Parking Lot? A temporary place for unanswered questions

Workshop Goals Appreciate that there are all kinds of minds Become aware of the eight building blocks of learning Understand that the challenge of homework is affected by one’s neurodevelopmental strengths and weaknesses Learn strategies to help children take on and master the challenge of homework

There Are All Kinds of Minds People who struggle with homework do so because of the way their minds work, not because of flaws in their personalities.

Students who struggle with A Message of Optimism Students who struggle with homework have every hope to succeed in school and in life. READ SLIDE The goal of Schools Attuned – and this workshop – is to give families the message that there are ALL kinds of minds – that we ALL have strengths and weaknesses. And when children become adults, they can choose a path in life where they can use their strengths. But for right now, if there weaknesses that are getting in the way of school success, there are strategies all of us – teachers, parents and caregivers, and children -- can adopt to strengthen these weaknesses, or get around them, so that no child has to suffer needlessly. So, for the rest of this workshop, we are going to focus on the two critical school demands of time and materials management, and come up with some ways to help students who struggle in these areas become stronger.