Is Your Homeschool Program Rigorous Enough?

Part 1: What is Academic Rigor?

Do you worry you’re not asking enough of your homeschooled students? Are your students bored or disengaged? Perhaps you worry that you’re not adequately preparing them for college or workplace expectations. The problem could be a lack of rigor in your homeschool program. You can increase the difficulty level of your homeschool classes by incorporating learning activities that challenge and engage your students and that train them in essential life skills.

Many parents mistakenly think academic rigor simply means a more difficult textbook, an advanced math or science course or, worst of all, extra work. Instead, think of it simply as moving a student to a place of challenge and hard work where they may make mistakes (an idea I’ll explore in Part 2).

In simplest terms, rigor is a mental push towards higher-level, critical and creative thinking. I would add that it is also a push towards excellence in effort and should incorporate activities that require and grow executive functioning skills.

Educator Michael McDowell summarizes it as “the balance of surface, deep, and transfer learning. That is, rigor is about ensuring that students learn ideas, combine ideas to form bigger ideas, and apply those ideas.” In his article “Make Rigor Relatable to Students,” McDowell offers 3 ways to explain this concept to your students so that they understand how the learning process works and can become active agents in their own learning.

Both academic and elective courses can be rigorous if they require students to:

• use higher-order thinking skills.

• engage in discussions in which they must support their ideas with evidence.

• collaborate with others during learning.

• conduct research that requires inquiry, investigation, and/or experimentation.

• synthesize learning from a variety of sources to generate a new understanding or to create an original product.*

A rigorous course values depth more than breadth, not simply retaining or understanding subject-specific information, but applying knowledge to create meaning or a product.

A rigorous course asks students to analyze and evaluate ideas, events, texts, outcomes, etc. by using teacher-selected or student-developed criteria, and not simply to make personal connections or give unsupported opinions.

A rigorous course contains age-appropriate concepts that a student understands well enough to engage with deeply and fully, not simply complex ideas that are difficult to understand.

Can courses be rigorous in other ways?

Yes! By adding activities and assignments that require executive function skills, you can make a course rigorous in personal development. Students gain these skills when coursework requires them to:

• plan and set goals they later evaluate and reflect upon.

• manage their time over a long-term project with several steps.

• perform multiple tasks in a single space of time.

• demonstrate flexibility and perseverance when asked to make last-minute changes.

• think about and reflect upon their own learning processes (metacognition).

Simply put, rigorous coursework requires deeper, richer, more thoughtful, and more meaningful input from your students. In that place of challenge and hard work where they may make mistakes, students gain competence and confidence.

In Part 2, I’ll discuss why rigor matters for every student, not just college-bound students.

For further reading:

*Rigorous Biology Course Description | NCEE.org

What is Academic Rigor?! | HuffPost Latest News

Looking for ways to boost your students’ academic skills during the summer months? Visit my From the Teacher’s Desk page at ElevateAcademicSolutions.com where you’ll find a series of articles written to help students struggling to catch up from Covid-related learning loss.