Study Points are a Strew feature for tracking the areas of learning your child has been engaging with. As you record home education activities, points can be added to different learning areas, helping you see patterns in what your child has been exploring over time.
They aren’t grades or test scores. Think of them as a simple visual way to understand where learning has been happening.
How do Study Points work?
Home education rarely fits neatly into individual subjects.
An afternoon baking might involve maths, reading, practical skills and science. Building something might involve design, measurement, problem-solving and creativity.
When these activities are recorded in Strew, Study Points let you associate them with relevant areas of learning. Over time, those points build up and give you another way to look back at what your child has been doing.
Study Points are one of several tools listed in Strew’s overview of home education app features.
What can Study Points tell you?
Their main value is in spotting patterns.
For example, you might notice that your child has accumulated lots of learning around nature and science. That could highlight a genuine passion worth exploring further.
Alternatively, you might realise that you’ve recorded very little activity relating to another area. Depending on your approach to home education, you might decide to introduce some new opportunities there.
Neither observation automatically means your child is “ahead” or “behind”. Study Points aren’t an assessment or qualification. They’re simply another piece of information you can use when thinking about your child’s learning.
Study Points can work with different home education styles
How you interpret the points depends on how you home educate.
With structured home schooling, you might use them alongside planned subjects to get a quick overview of what has been covered.
For families using unschooling, they can work almost in reverse. Rather than deciding which subjects a child should study and then assigning work, you can record what naturally happened and look back afterwards at the learning areas that emerged.
Families somewhere between those approaches can use Study Points however makes sense for them.
Don’t turn the points into the goal
Study Points can add a little gamification, particularly if your child enjoys seeing their points accumulate. But earning points doesn’t need to become the purpose of an activity.
A child becoming deeply absorbed in a project can be valuable regardless of how many points it generates.
The more useful question is: what does this pattern tell us?
Perhaps your child keeps returning to engineering, animals or storytelling. Maybe a new interest has suddenly appeared. Or perhaps looking back over several months shows a much broader mix of learning than you realised.
This is particularly helpful with approaches such as unit studies, where one topic can naturally cross several traditional school subjects.
Using Study Points in Strew
Study Points are built into Strew’s home education records. As you log everyday learning, you can build up a picture of the areas your child has been spending time exploring.
Use them as a prompt rather than a scorecard: notice interests, look for patterns and use what you discover to help decide what learning opportunities might be useful next.
Video transcript
What are Study Points, and how do we use them as home educators to enhance our children’s learning experience?
Study Points are a really innovative feature of the Strew app. What they allow you to do is quickly and effectively track your child’s activity across a range of different subject areas.
It gives them the opportunity to earn points while they learn, making it a little bit extra fun.
The great thing about Study Points is that they adapt to different types of home education, whether that be child-led learning, unschooling or a more structured approach.
Basically, they give you the opportunity to see which subject areas your child has been putting a lot of attention into.
This could do one of two things. It could direct you to focus on an area where your child maybe hasn’t spent as much time, or it could help identify a passion that your child has for a certain subject, something that you can really get hold of and put even more focus into.
Either way, it’s useful information.
Study Points are available in the Strew app, which you can get on iOS or the Google Play Store. It’s quick to download and only takes a few seconds to sign up.
Leave a Reply