Scanning for Vocabulary

Scan the first two paragraphs of "Learning at Home" for the following vocabulary words and write them in the boxes. The words are in the order of their occurrence in the reading.

Learning at Home

When Patrick was growing up, his classroom environment was extremely diverse. As a young boy, it might have been his mother's living room, or the kitchen. As he got older, the outdoors and the local corner store became his classroom. Patrick, like thousands of children in the United States, was home-schooled, educated at home by a parent. Defining home schooling is a difficult task because it means different things to different people, but what all home-schoolers have in common is that they don't attend "traditional" schools. Instead, their learning takes place in and around the home, supported by a family network. In fact, home schooling is very much a family affair, tied to a family's sense of values, as well as its structure. It's hard to say exactly how many children are home-schooled today. Statistics change according their source. Statistics from schools are generally low, while those from home-schooling organizations are quite high. It is generally agreed, however, that the number of students is in the hundreds of thousands.

There are a variety of approaches to home schooling, from very free to extremely controlled and everything in between. Some parents opt for prepackaged curricula in order to provide a structured environment for home learners. Many organizations, schools, and Web sites offer such curricula. Other parents may choose the exact opposite of structured curricula, such as "unschooling," a home teaching philosophy championed by John Holt. Unschooling is a child-centered approach to learning in which the learning is built around a child's interests. Not only is a child in control of his or her own education, parents are encouraged not to intervene in the learning process for fear of damaging a child's natural desire to learn.


1		varied or different


2		educating children at home


3		numerical data


4		courses and educational material


5		an unstructured, child-centered method of home schooling


6		hurting

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