|
Research has
found that good students are strategic about their learning while poor
students are not. Strategic students plan their work, check their progress,and
employspecial tactics to master difficult material.
Don't count on
your child's school to teach the tricks of the
learning trade. But you can demonstrate how it's done:
Analyze This.
Help your child evaluate
the task before her whether it is a test, homework, or a report. You want
a child to ask herself: What will I be asked to do? The answer will help
her plan her attack. For a test with 30 multiplication problems in 10 minutes,
flash cards might be the best prep. For a test with word problems, help
her identify common word-problem patterns.
Know Thyself.
Encourage your child to bring her strengths
to bear, compensate for weaknesses, and allow extra time to learn material
she finds more difficult.
Big Job, Small Steps.
Set short-term goals. Good students make academic
leaps in a series of small steps. Teach your child to divide a big job into manageable chunks.
Bag
of Tricks.
If at first you don't succeed, try again, we tell our
children. We should also tell them to try something different. Encourage
your child to develop a repertoire of strategies.
Progress Makes Perfect.
Help your child monitor his progress. Low-performing
students sometimes miss this step. For example, many students assume wrongly
that if they have read something, they automatically understand it. To
help your child process what he reads, stop him, ask him to explain
what he just read, and if he can't, suggest he reread it more slowly.
Finally, be patient. Strategic learning can seem foreign to many children. Students
have to understand that learning isn't always easy--it takes effort and planning.
By
Elizabeth
Rusch
http://www.zooba.com
|
