Reply To: How to encourage practice?

Forum / Cosmic Education & The Great Lessons / Follow-Up Work Ideas / How to encourage practice? / Reply To: How to encourage practice?

    Emily
    July 28, 2026 at 3:35 pm #94647

    Work Journals were often phased in, by the end of the first week everyone had *some kind* of work journal but it can vary. Part of the first week of school bootstrapping is getting work journals and lessons spun up.

    I’ll try to explain.

    Phase 1: Focus on choosing work.

    This helps students remember lessons and choose what to do next, it doesn’t help them record yet (isolate the difficulty!). Students stick with this until I think they’re ready to begin recording work.

    • This was a folder with three prongs (example). In the prongs I held a single page of baseball playing binder card sleeves (example). These have 9 card-sized pockets.
    • The top left pocket of the card sleeve would be labelled “Practiced”
    • I precut a bunch of slips of paper to card size (2.5″ x 3.5″)
    • After a lesson, I would doodle a picture of the lesson and write the exact name of the lesson below. So, after Golden Bead addition, I would draw some beads with a plus symbol and write “Gold Bead Addition” below. This card would go in a pocket of the card sleeve.
    • Now, when a child is deciding what to do next, he can open his folder and see pictures of everything he ought to practice (all recent lessons!). After practice the card would be moved to the top left pocket labelled “practiced.”
    • The folder pockets themselves would hold pages of work. So if the follow-up work was to draw a picture, the page for that would be stored in this folder until Friday conference.
    • At the Friday conference, discard any cards that are no longer relevant. Friday is also when folks took home finished work.

     

    Phase 2: Ready to record

    This phase is flexible and is the transition to full work journal record keeping. They stay with this until the training wheels are ready to come off. Could be a few weeks or a few months.

    • You put some blank lined pages behind the card sleeve. Keep the card sleeve
    • Each day (with help if needed), the date is put on the top of a new page.
    • The child then writes what was chosen in order throughout the day. I will accept a very wide range of attempts here. Writing a single letter, a single word, drawing a picture. The important thing is that something is recorded and it’s in vaguely a list format.
    • At some point, have the child include start times. This will depend on their time keeping abilities.
    • At some point, begin including due dates (see below).
    • If you need to write for them, that’s fine.

     

    Phase 3: Regular Work Journal

    Now using a composition notebook or other bound book. You can use the “handwriting paper” or wide ruled. I like to have both in stock.

    At the Friday conference, I would have the child write out Monday through Friday for the next week, each day getting a new page. Then, just below we would record due dates and follow up work. Throughout the week, after each lesson, follow up work was put on the day we agreed upon. Some people don’t like using the Work Journal as a planner, but I find it indispensable. By pre-filing the dates for the upcoming week and adding follow-up work and due dates as they’re created, it ensures big projects don’t pile up, expectations are clear, practice is balanced, and no one has to rely on memory.

    The rest of the page was a record of what they actually did that day. Lessons are marked with a capital ”L” in a box [L] to make sure they stand out. Highlighters are sometimes used so that they can always easily find their “most recent lesson”

    Conferences are used to reset every week. We renegotiate any unfinished assignments. Conferences are what keep this whole ship sailing.

    Exemplar:

    Monday July 27, 2026

     

    DUE: One page of division problems with the Racks and Tubes [Sometimes the word DUE was highlighted for extra attention]

    *DUE: Drawing of geometric solids [This item was due at a previous time but unfinished. At the conference we gave it this new due date, and we marked it with a star]

    ❏ Practice: Poetry memorization [Practice had a checkbox, when done, it gets checked off]

     

    8:15 Penmanship

    [L] 8:30 Sun and earth lesson [Follow up work for this lesson would be directly written on the day it is due. I negotiate with each child what the work is and when it is due. Let’s say it’s a poster for next Monday. We’d turn to next Monday and write “Due: Sun and Earth Poster.” Once this is written they can leave the lesson. No one leaves a lesson without follow up work of some kind.]

    9:00 Racks and Tubes division.

    …

    I’d love to hear how others do this, because it seems every class is a bit different!