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Reading, writing, and arithmetic are important. But your
child needs more than academic skills to succeed in school.
Skills in managing time, energy, and information are also
important in maintaining good grades. How do you know which
of these skills your child may need help with?
Have a conversation!
Talk to your child about her goals. Ask her about her favorite
and least favorite subjects in school. Was she happy with
her last test grade?
Listen to your child’s assessment of himself and see
how that fits with your observations. Does your child seem
overwhelmed by what needs to get done? He may be having trouble
organizing his time. Does your child seem unable to focus
on schoolwork for too long? She may need some help concentrating.
Does your child tell you that he just doesn’t care about
school? He may need some motivational help.
Having this conversation can help you and your child figure
out what skills you need to work on. Helping your child gain
greater competency in any of the following five topics will
help your child focus, and give him more energy and time with
which to hit the books!
Organize Material
Children are deluged with papers, assignments, textbooks,
and need to remember a lot of things everyday, including their
lunch! Helping your child organize what they need may help
them focus on their schoolwork more easily.
Help your child create a list of things she needs to bring
to school each day. Put a copy in her notebook and one copy
in a place you’ll both see in the morning, and work
with your child in practicing to remember the items on her
list.
Observe how your child organizes her assignments and class
material. Based on those observations of his style, help him
create an organizational system that works well for him, and
that he’ll use consistently.
Manage Time
Using time efficiently to get work done is one of the most
challenging and rewarding skills your child can develop. It
is difficult for children to block out time in manageable
chunks so that work gets done in a satisfying way.
Use calendars to help your child see their assignments visually.
Mark down each month’s assignments as soon as they get
distributed, and help your child work backwards and break
each assignment down into nightly tasks.
If your child seems to have an unrealistic sense of how long
homework takes to do, try charting how much time he spends
doing homework for a week. Then he’ll have a sense of
how many hours per night he’ll need to get his work
done.
Once you have a realistic sense of how much time you need,
set the times that homework will be done each night. Your
child may need help sticking to this schedule, so be ready
with your positive encouragement!
If the evenings don’t provide enough time for the work
to get done satisfactorily (children can be very busy with
extracurricular activities), work out what other parts of
the day (or weekend) will work. Remember that your goal is
not to eliminate all fun from your child’s life, but
to help them learn that consistent daily effort towards a
goal can bring rewards, and can also free up more time for
fun!
Prioritize Tasks
Children live in the present. It is sometimes difficult for
them to focus on tasks that are due tomorrow, let alone in
two weeks! Learning to figure out which tasks need to get
done first is an invaluable skill that children will benefit
from practicing.
Sit down with your child and help her write a list of all
the things she wants or has to get done, including social
and athletic activities as well as schoolwork.
Walk her through labeling her tasks, marking the most important
or urgent tasks. As she is doing this, discuss her list with
her, so that you get a sense of what she’s labeling
“most important” and why. If the “most important”
list is unbalanced one way or the other (all school, no play
– or all play, no school) then help her achieve a more
balanced approach to prioritizing.
Rewrite the list so that the most important tasks are at
the top. Then have your child use his time management skills
to plot out when he’ll start getting the tasks done.
Concentrate on the Task at Hand
The best time management and organizational skills are only
theoretical if your child has difficulty staying focused on
the work he needs to do. It’s important to create environments
that foster concentration.
If it’s possible to create physical space in which
your child can work without distractions, do so. If physical
privacy isn’t possible, then work on creating auditory
and visual privacy.
Turn off all visual and auditory communication and entertainment
devices: computers, televisions, cell phones, pagers, video
games, mp3 players, etc. If your child claims she works better
with music on, monitor to see if music assists her or distracts
from her studying.
Try and keep your child from living, breathing distractions
also, such as siblings and pets. Pestering your older sister
or walking the dog is so enticing when you’ve got homework
to do!
Stay Motivated
Some children’s interests intersect cleanly with what
they are learning in school. They have no trouble keeping
their interest peaked. Some children’s interests don’t
fall as neatly into place with academic content. And sometimes,
children lose their motivation because their personalities
don’t match well with one or all of their teachers in
a given year, or because they’re uncomfortable with
their peers. It’s important to help children stay motivated
in order to foster pride in academic accomplishment.
Find out what your child is interested in, both in school
and in their non-academic life. If your child seems uninterested
in school, explore with them what’s causing the disconnection.
Is it the material? The way the material is being presented?
What else is going on? Here are some tips to help you increase
your child’s motivation.
Connect lessons to individual experience: help your
child see connections between content he’s learning
and his daily life. If he’s multiplying fractions in
school, ask him to figure out the tip for a waiter next time
you eat out. Ask for help in the garden from a student who
is learning plant biology.
Connect academic material to other interests: If your
daughter loves to sing, bring her books about famous singers.
Or use books, videos or the internet to explore how vocal
cords create sound. Teach her to read music, so she learns
the connection between math and musical notes.
Connect school work to the outside world: Take advantage
of opportunities to make links between school assignments
and what’s happening in the world around us. If your
child is learning about the Civil Rights Movement, help him
interview people he knows whose lives were affected by that
period of history. Rent movies that highlight the historical
importance of events your children are learning in school.
Take your children to wildlife sanctuaries to experience animals.
Go to museums with interactive exhibits that teach children
about the power of wind or the tides. Do volunteer work in
your community with your child so they can make their own
discoveries about social issues.
Encourage your child to teach you about her interests, and
about any connections she makes between life in school and
life outside of school. Your interest in your child will help
spark your child’s interest in the world.
Help your child create systems that work for him. A healthy
sense of accomplishment will go a long way toward creating
motivation for future successes. Celebrate your child’s
successes, no matter how small. Each time your child feels
successful, she moves one step further along the path of academic
success!
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