5 Ways to Monitor Virtual School Progress

Monitoring progress is a big part of our jobs as a virtual school parent.  Here are 5 ways you can make sure your child is getting the right things done each day.

If you are new to learning at home you may wonder how to monitor daily progress. What exactly do we do? Do we sit behind our child all throughout the day just to make sure that the lessons are being done?

You could, but then how would you get anything done throughout the day?  

This also does not work well with middle or high school students who deeply value their independence.

So how do we make sure that our child is making progress- one lesson, per subject, per day? 

What are the Weekly Requirements?

Before we discuss methods of daily tracking, it is important to understand what the per week requirements are for your student.

In general, you will do one lesson a day in each subject.  However, in many early Language Arts curriculums, the various topics are broken up into little sub-subjects.  For example your student may have Phonics, Literature, Grammar, or Spelling.  Some of those might happen every day, while others might only be a few times a week.  I remember the kids grammar lessons (GUM) happened about 3 times a week.  

Some subjects only happen a few times a week.  In the k12 curriculum we used, Art was only 2 times a week in the early grades, and Science was  3 days a week.  If that is the case, then I would advise you to take a look at the weekly lesson scheduler and make sure the default subject schedule meets your needs.

For  many years my students had music lessons on Mondays.  In order to accommodate that, we needed the assigned school to be shorter on Mondays.  So, I made sure that we only did the 5 day a week subjects on that day.

Take some time to make sure you understand the weekly schedule before you work on daily lesson tracking.

Daily Lesson Progress

Here are 5 ways I have monitored progress in the Virtual School Environment.  My techniques have changed as the boys have grown.  Read through these and see if one of them might work for you.

1. Write  Lessons on Whiteboard

This is the easiest method and requires only a whiteboard, or chalkboard, in your learning room.  Each morning, or evening before you go to bed, take a moment to look ahead to the next school day.  What subjects are assigned for the day? 

If you are a learning coach in a virtual school environment  then you will likely have a parent account that you can log in to which will show the next days lessons. 

If you have received an assignment packet from the school, then check that to see what the next day looks like. 

Many homeschool curriculums offer pacing guides to help parents plan what one day of learning should look like.

Then, all you need to do is write the subjects on the board.  When your child completes a lesson for that subject they can check it off on the white board.  When the list is done, the school day is done.

2.  Custom Subject Magnets

Another method I used for several years was to make custom subject magnets for each school topic.  I had a bag of subjects for each child and then I’d arrange the day on the white board based on what was assigned.  

What I love about this method is that it really made it easy for me to put up the day’s lessons on the board.

I would color code the subjects to match with the k12 assigned colors for each subject.  In our curriculum, Language Arts was always Purple, Art was red, Math was Blue, and  History was Aqua.  I would print out each of the subjects in the correct color and then I would use packing tape around each of the labels to make them more durable.  This is how I got around the fact I didn’t have a laminator at home!

Then, I purchased magnetic tape and stuck a magnet to the back of the label.  Each child would have his own bag.  When it was time for me to plan the day, I went into the bags and laid out the schedule on the white board.

The kids would either check the lessons off, or place them back into the bag once they were done for the day with the lesson.

3.  Print out Daily Schedule

Maybe you don’t have a white board in your school room.  Thats ok!  I have some methods that will work for you without needing a white board.

The first one is to print out the daily schedule for your student.  If you are in a school where there is an OLS (online learning system) then there may be a build it way for you to see what is assigned on a given day and even print out the schedule.  

Another way would be to design a checklist or a table on your computer that can be customized for each day of the week.

I ended up building custom pages for each child for each day of the week. Then I printed out the pages each day so they could check it off. 

If you don’t want to bring out a new sheet every day, then you can put each day of the week into a sheet protector.  On Monday you would put out the Monday schedule.  Your child can then mark off completed lessons with a dry erase marker.  You can then erase the marks at the end of the day.

4.  Weekly Check off Sheet

For middle and high school students, a weekly check off sheet can be really useful.  This will make it easy to have just one sheet to look at to make sure all the lessons get done.

I like this method because it would allow my students to get 2 math lessons done in one day if they were feeling really productive.

This is also a great way to make sure the correct number of lessons in each subject get done each week.

5. Student Planner or Bullet Journal

Once my students entered high school it was important for me that they designed and executed their days with independence.  I taught them how to use a bullet journal to organize their various to dos.  They each got their own notebook in their favorite color. In it, they would write down their daily lessons, along with anything else they might have to do that day.  

I keep an eye on their progress by asking to look at their journal, or just by logging into the OLS see their progress myself.  

This method, because it is less visible to the parent, is more suited to a student who is mature enough to keep track of his or her lessons.  Before high school, I found that I needed to really be diligent about monitoring subject completion, especially in the less fun subjects.

I have put together a bunch of ideas for you in my subscribers resource library!  I have Daily lesson check off sheets, templates to make the subject magnets, and also weekly check off sheets.  Subscribe to the blog to get access to the resource library.

So there you have it, 5 ways to monitor daily progress for your students.

  I hope you have been inspired!  Let me know which method you plan on trying! Do you have any other ideas?  Feel free to share your ideas down in the comments!