Do you sit with your child every evening to complete school assignments? Do you want to teach him independence? How to improve a child's academic performance? Then this article is for you.
Every good parent cares about their son or daughter's grades in school. All fathers and mothers are proud of their children if they bring good grades in their diaries and complete their homework independently. Unfortunately, this does not always happen. Often, a child perceives school as hard labor, and homework as a real punishment. You have to force him to try, keep track of every grade he has just given in his diary, monitor the completion of assignments, going through the school curriculum again with his child. What to do if a child has a bad memory and is having a hard time studying? Below are tips to help parents learn how to improve their school performance.
Why does my child have problems with academic performance?
There are several reasons for this:
- Misunderstanding of the material
- Each of us must have heard at least once that good teacher worth its weight in gold these days. It is the teacher and his method of presenting the material that largely determines the extent to which information is absorbed in the minds of children.
- The most common ailment of today's youth is the inability to concentrate their attention on one subject for a long time.
- If you notice that your child does not want to study because it is “unpopular” or “stupid,” then think about whether he has fallen into a trap of falsely imposed ideals.
Main reasons for poor performance
Firstly, the positions of students, teachers and parents in determining the causes of academic failure diverge, which reduces the effectiveness of their efforts.
Students explain their failure:
- the presence of poor memory, poor attention, inability to concentrate, i.e. individual characteristics;
- the complexity of the curriculum of individual school subjects;
- professional incompetence of teachers.
Teachers believe that:
- schoolchildren are irresponsible, lazy, inattentive, etc.;
- parents do not help their children in their studies;
- training programs are too complex.
Parents give the following reasons:
- inaccessibility of the program, its complexity;
- high demands placed on students by teachers;
- insufficient abilities of children, or rather, lack thereof.
HOW TO INCREASE YOUR PERFORMANCE?
There are several tips that can help improve your academic performance.
- Brain exercise
These exercises are performed in the morning, sitting or lying down, 5-10 minutes after waking up.
- Count down from 100 to 1.
- For each letter of the alphabet, name a word (a - watermelon, b - bacon, etc.) If you haven’t found it within 30 seconds the right word, skip the letter.
- Say 20 male names, numbering each of them (1 - Igor, 2 - Kostya...), then 20 female names. Remember to do it quickly!
- Let the child expand his horizons and concentrate on useful information.
- Memory loves positive emotions. If the topic of the lesson is interesting, then everything is remembered easily and quickly, right in the lesson. Indifference and apathy have a bad memory.
- It is recommended not to “memorize” concepts and terms, of which there are a lot in school, but to explain them in your own words and formulations. It is known that the “memorized” quickly flies out of the head.
- Memory is most acute in the morning from 8.00 to 12.00. Then it starts to decline until 17.00. And somewhere from 19.00 (if there was no severe overwork) it grows again. Therefore, it is useful to study in the evening and repeat in the morning.
- Quotes, extracts, theses, presentation of information in the form of diagrams, reading aloud contribute to better memorization of the material.
- The method of comparison and association is considered useful for memorization. New information is associated with some already familiar situation, object, or event.
- It is better to break large material into parts and learn in “pieces”. The beginning and the end are always better remembered.
How to help your child do well in school?
The following tips will help improve your child’s performance at school:
- In an effort to improve their children's grades, many mothers come to their aid by working with them on assignments they received at school. Thus, they share all responsibility for learning outcomes between them. Note that you can often hear the following phrases from them: “we did our homework all evening yesterday,” “we got a C,” “today we will learn the words for the dictation again.” But it’s the child who is studying at school, and not his parent, who went through this many years ago. Try to give your children more freedom and encourage them to complete tasks on their own.
- It has long been proven that by following a daily routine, work efficiency increases. Try to establish a daily routine for your young student and set a specific time for doing homework.
- Talk to your child about the reasons for poor performance. Try to help him, but do not take the solution of problems entirely upon yourself.
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The SMARTUM Academy for the Development of Intelligence teaches various techniques that help a child improve his grades. If you notice that your child has trouble remembering information, has difficulty concentrating, and is slow, then you should learn more about mental arithmetic. Mental arithmetic is a program that harmoniously develops both hemispheres of the brain through calculations on the abacus. Thanks to this technique, developed in Smartum, children not only learn to quickly count in their heads. They also become more attentive, their memory improves, they begin to absorb material faster, which increases their self-confidence.
The Memorika method will teach your child to manage all the processes of his memory, and the Liberica course will teach him to read quickly and instill a love of literature. With us, your child will understand that learning can be easy and fun!
Natalya Tereshchenko shares her experience on how to improve a child’s performance at school and teach how to manage grades
Photo source: fourchette-et-bikini.fr
We won’t take time away from sleep, because this is acceptable for “short distances” in the form of exams, but we definitely won’t win a “marathon race”, some simple cunning move is needed here.
How it was for me
I was always a good girl. Something always prevented me from becoming an excellent student, although I knew for sure that I could. When our class was disbanded, I found myself in the one where there were four schoolgirls who were “going for a medal.” It was from them that I discovered a way to manage grades. The result shocked me!
With generally the same effort spent on studying, the grades on the report card changed! And as a result of the new quarterly grades, annual grades have already improved dramatically. So I also managed to graduate from high school with a silver medal! If only I knew about this simple method earlier, then perhaps it would have been possible to reach gold. But silver was already wonderful in itself!
In those years, the medal gave the right to enter a university with only one entrance exam, if it was “excellent”. Agree, preparing for one subject is not the same as preparing for three.
Improving the quarter grade
Managing your grades starts with… recognizing them and writing them down! Yes, yes, at the end of the diary, each of our future medalists had a lined piece of drawing paper. On the left, in a column with a pen, items were written down in the same order as in the report card in the diary. And on the right are empty lines where they wrote in pencil all their grades, which appeared in the class journal after lessons, tests, independent tests, essays and dictations. The trick was to be sure to transfer all grades for each subject to your sheet of paper.
With some teachers it was simple: everything that is in the diary, everything is in the journal. Some had to be approached from time to time and asked:
Tell me, please, what grades do I have there?
No one usually refused, because the desire to be aware of one’s own progress is always commendable. And you could also quietly observe at recess from over the teacher’s shoulder what was next to your name as she filled out the magazine.
Photo source: lider045.ru/
Around the middle of the quarter, the big picture began to emerge
1. If the subject was, for example, 4, 5, 4, 5, 4, then it was clear that the grade there was controversial and unstable. And the teacher will ask me and ask me! Therefore, it was in my interests to devote a little more time to this subject at home or to actively raise my hand in class if they were called upon at will, and not according to the magazine. But in order for me to have something to say, I needed a little more time to prepare.
To be honest, I have never prepared oral subjects at home. I quickly scanned everything during recess and even during class if someone was called in before me. This was enough for me! But if we were talking about a quarter grade, then the principle “at home - only written assignments” could and should have been abandoned. Just 15 minutes, plus, as usual, in class during recess, and the answer is brilliant!
2. If my sheet for some subject contains 4, 4, 4, 4, then, alas, I have nothing to catch in this quarter. We need to make an effort on ourselves in the next one. But don’t relax completely! Continue to “learn everything,” but as if “without fanaticism,” you can “not put on a polish.” However, one or two excellent grades still won’t hurt, of course! Because for a teacher this is a “sign for the future”, a signal that “good” may very well one day turn into “excellent”.
Photo source: cronicadeiasi.ro
Yes Yes! A teacher is a living person, not a machine, remember this! He also needs time to get used to the idea that he will eventually have another excellent student in this subject. An excellent student cannot come out of nowhere, out of thin air! The transformation process is gradual.
Those. Ideally, in such a “deaf” subject, I need to have something like: 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 4, 5. If the last grade is excellent - ideal!
3. Another interesting rating configuration that must be mentioned. Imagine two objects, each, for example, occurring once a week. In one subject there are three grades, and in another, which occurs with the same frequency, only one.
What does this mean? About what to cook today homework I'll start with him! Because they will definitely call you in the very near future! As for the subject where there are three grades, I can still prepare without struggling. I will spend the saved time and energy on the lesson for which tomorrow they will probably call.
Improving the annual assessment
Well, quarter grades have been posted. What's next? And then, on the magic piece of paper opposite each subject, I write with a pen the grade for the first quarter, and I erase all the current grades, making room for new ones. That’s why, by the way, the piece of paper must be made of some kind of thick paper so that it can withstand repeated erasing. In the new quarter I use the same principles as before. But now I have an additional “hard” guideline: the first grade on the report card, which affects the annual grade.
If it’s 5, then you can relax a little so that your current academic performance paints something like this: 5, 4, 5, 5, 4, 5, 5. That is. 5 should dominate and especially towards the end. If 4, then it is advisable to dilute their “boring monotony” with excellent grades to such a state that one day there will be more than half of them! And judging by how full the lines are, I almost certainly now know when they will call me!
Photo source: hhsrampages.com
“If I knew the purchase, I would live in Sochi...”
The ultimate goal is to reach an excellent annual mark, you understand.
In what cases is this possible, if not all quarters have the highest score? 1. If “learning ability” is clearly visible, i.e. “it was and became”: 4, 4, 5, 5. Everything started out average, but then it is clear from the assessments that “the student has come to his senses.” Annual - 5
2. If academic performance is average, but the last grade is “excellent”: 4, 5, 4, 5. Annual - 5. Please note, if the order of grades is different, then “learning ability,” on the contrary, still leaves much to be desired: 5, 4 , 5, 4. Although the average score is the same! And even if for the third quarter, the longest and hardest, there are 5, but the overall picture still comes out as 4.
3. Interesting case, when 4, 4, 4, 5. You can grab 5 in a year! If... More on this later in detail.
4. Configuration: 5, 5, 4, 5 - this is also, most likely, an annual 5. Although, as you can see, for the third quarter it is 4.
In a word, just keep in mind that you can be an excellent student in your annual grades, but always an excellent student in your quarters.
The described system worked in high schools during Soviet Union, hence the 5-point system.
Photo source: lipmag.com/
The main thing is to understand the principle itself
And it should also be noted that in modern world There are specific rules for grading. They are, in general, much softer than those that I had to feel for by trial when I was in school. All teachers know about these standards, but sometimes they are ignored.
Therefore, if you begin to manage your grades according to the principles described here, they will definitely not get any worse. According to the above scheme, you can increase your academic performance by approximately 1 point per year (using a 5-point system): from a good student to an excellent student, or from a C student to an excellent student. The result will be noticeable only at the end of the year. And it will be a pleasant surprise for everyone, both parents and teachers.
The changes in academic performance are insignificant! It's all about the order in which you get your grades. And the fact is that now the student almost certainly knows whether he will be asked tomorrow or not. But how to use this knowledge is up to him to decide.
Natalia Tereshchenko
Do your children monitor their school grades?
“If you take it away abruptly, the child may start sucking his thumb.” We figure out when and how to wean children off pacifiers
Every day we receive so much information that the brain does not always have time to process it. Adults, although with difficulty, cope, for example, learn to manage attention and time. But for schoolchildren this load is many times greater.
Already in the first grade, a child has 3-4 lessons a day, at least 9 compulsory subjects and extracurricular activities, such as foreign language. Every year there are more and more lessons, and life is not limited to school: it would be good to play sports, music, read books, draw. But a first-grader gets tired even during an elective class.
Workloads, of course, affect academic performance. But a child may fall behind in some subjects not only due to overload, but also due to a lack of interest in the subject or learning in general, problems in the classroom, or simple laziness.
The good news is that these problems are being addressed. The main thing is to correctly determine what is preventing the child from learning and succeeding.
What prevents a student from studying well?
Now almost all children go to clubs and sections in addition to the school curriculum: a foreign language, tutors in all subjects, sports sections, creative studios. Parents often think that the more developmental activities, the better. But in fact, for development, a child needs more rest, sleep a lot, walk and communicate with friends.
Solution
Try to reduce your child's workload to basic lessons at school and 1-2 additional classes per week. When the child becomes comfortable at this pace and performance indicators return to normal, it will be possible to add a new lesson. Gradually the child will get used to higher loads.
Reason 2. No interest in the subject, laziness
Perhaps the child is falling behind in a subject simply because he does not find anything exciting in it. For example, he likes mathematics and other exact sciences, but literature with its lists for the summer is uninteresting and takes up too much time.
Solution
Try in non-standard ways to instill in your child an interest in a subject that he does not have a passion for. For example, when studying a topic, draw an analogy with the student’s favorite characters from cartoons, comics and films. It is much more interesting to study biology using the example of Spider-Man or solve algebra examples and physics problems to become as cool an engineer as Iron Man. Or turn regular homework on your least favorite subject into a quest with a prize at the end.
Reason 3. Problems at school
Perhaps the child does not get along with classmates or there is a conflict with the teacher. It is difficult for him to answer at the board and express himself differently in his studies, because this is followed by a negative reaction from the offenders. All this can affect his academic performance.
Solution
Try to help your child develop the right tactics for interacting with society, teach him to defend his point of view and not pay attention to attacks in his direction. You can explain to him that his school years will end, but his knowledge will remain, so it is important to learn how to set priorities correctly.
Reason 4. Inability to concentrate, concentrate
Many children are constantly distracted from lessons and have difficulty completing paragraphs of textbooks because they keep returning to the beginning without remembering anything the first time. The inability to concentrate greatly affects a child’s academic performance, because the speed and quality of completing tasks depends on it.
Solution
In order for a child to succeed in all subjects, you need to teach him to study - that is, help him master the principles of productive work with information. This way he will be able to quickly assimilate new data and not get hung up on something uninteresting, but mandatory. And his performance at school will increase again.
15 tips on how to improve a student's academic performance
There are many ways to improve efficiency. We have compiled a list of tips and recommendations that can be combined and modernized based on the child’s characteristics.
1. Determine which way is easiest for your child to remember information: auditorily, visually or in text format.
2. Conduct classes in game form, that's more interesting.
3. Use various techniques for memorizing information (mnemonics, cards, associations, etc.).
4. Help your child feel confident: don’t scold him, listen carefully, encourage him for his success.
6. Create a trusting atmosphere in which the child will not be embarrassed to ask questions, discuss, share his point of view and will not be afraid of criticism.
7. Set priorities: it is better to go from complex to simple, from important to unimportant, and do not forget about rest.
8. Create comfortable conditions for classes.
9. Follow a clear schedule of lessons and sections, allocate a certain amount of time for homework.
10. Teach your child to take notes, this way information is absorbed better.
11. Find the most interesting topics for your child and explore them, find connections with those school subjects in which the child is lagging behind. Study additional material on topics.
12. Use the timer method: study for 25 minutes, rest for 10 minutes, or study for 50 minutes, rest for 20 minutes.
13. Create a learning wall at home with cards, write down everything important and interesting there, and sometimes test your knowledge with a quick survey.
14. Enroll your child in courses on speed reading, development of thinking and memory - these classes will help you study more productively.
15. Monitor your child’s proper nutrition and sleep patterns so that his resources are not depleted.
It is possible to improve academic performance; the main thing is to find the most convenient approach and teach your child to work with information correctly. The ability to quickly assimilate material will be useful to the student in the future and will make his life much easier.
Why do some children happily study for straight A's, while others give up? And if the existing system school education works correctly, then why do students with poor and bad students often achieve greater heights in life than excellent students?
Answered by Doctor of Psychological Sciences Alexander Lobok, who has been working for two decades to pull children out of educational depression.
“A child’s academic performance comes from the word “succeed.” Therefore, we are not talking about intelligence here, but about the speed of perception of the teacher’s tasks, about the ability to complete the task within the allotted time,” explains Alexander Lobok. 
“It is known that Albert Einstein was a poor student. Andrei Sakharov had a reputation for being slow-witted and did everything slowly. Of course, this does not mean that every underachieving child outside of school will reach the heights of Einstein or Sakharov, but underachievement is often inherent in deep children.”
“And imagine what will happen if such a deep child ends up with a teacher for whom progress is speed. The student will begin to live in constant stress. The worst thing is if the parents also start to get nervous, because then the child will begin to read their emotions, making sure that own inferiority, is that he is worse than others."
“And for a child not to believe in himself is unnatural. Imagine that a six-month-old baby has lost faith in his own abilities. In this case, he would live in constant fear, would be afraid to explore the world, and would not learn to walk. But he believes in himself and is very assertive in exploring the world. And that helps him progress incredibly quickly.”
“A child is always charged with the energy of achievement, and it’s good when there are adults nearby who encourage, praise for micro-successes and raise the bar. If they don’t believe in the baby, then his faith in himself will disappear.”
“If you take a two-month-old child and transport him to Vietnam, he will still easily master the local language the most difficult language and in a couple of years he will babble in Vietnamese. But if a two-year-old child were placed in school, distributed educational material to lessons, would they be forced to cram words from morning to evening and scolded for mistakes? Then he would not have mastered Vietnamese, Russian, or any language at all,” Alexander Lobok is sure.
“When the child begins to speak the first words, the parents are truly delighted; it never occurs to them to scold them for incorrect pronunciation. Therefore, mastering a language turns into great joy for all parties in this process. Although each child has his own trajectory and his own speed of learning.”
“But when a child comes to school, he understands that literacy here is something else. It's a constant pressure that turns every mistake into a nightmare. And in order to get rid of the nightmare, the child begins to avoid studying. Modern methods of teaching schoolchildren cause rejection, not interest.”
“As a result, many children in school simply cannot read. Yes, they know the letters, they know how to put them into words and pronounce it all together. But to read means to see what is hidden behind the text, to create a picture in your own head.”
“And if a schoolchild does not know how to comprehend what he read, then he cannot understand the terms of the task, cannot understand the page he read, cannot keep up with the program, which is endlessly overloaded at a time when children stumble on basic things.”
“School does not develop imagination, does not teach to imagine. But a child’s imagination is a saving thing. If he can turn lines from books into... visual images, then reading becomes a great pleasure for him, and not hard labor.”
The calendar year is coming to an end, and the school year is in full swing. And often it is just before the New Year that both children and parents begin to realize that academic performance is far from desired. And often, no matter how hard you gnaw on the granite of science, the results in the school diary are not encouraging. Even if it doesn't seem obvious, school success starts at home. And what both children and their parents can do to improve their average score - we will tell you in this article.
The question “How to improve your performance in school” actually has two parts. To find the correct answer to it, you need to divide it into two: how to actually improve academic performance and how to help a child improve academic performance - depending on who exactly will answer it - the student or his parent. But even when separately highlighting and emphasizing the roles of the child and the parent, it is important to remember that in the end everyone plays for the same team, and victory in this battle also depends on the quality of teamwork.
Tips for parents
Probably every parent has faced the question of how to improve their child’s performance at school. In an effort to find answers to this, adults often resort to systems of motivation and reward for good grades or punishment for bad ones. For the most part, a parent simply cannot improve a child’s academic performance, but they can help a student do so. In general, the approach to adjusting a child’s school life largely depends on his age, so it is appropriate to divide the recommendations into three groups.
Before asking the question “How to improve a student’s academic performance?”, it is worth taking a critical look at your own behavior. Children copy their parents in many ways, and if a child sees mom or dad with a book or textbook, then his interest in learning will be much higher.
If we're talking about about the child's progress in primary school, then in many ways his interest in learning will stimulate the parent’s attention to educational activities your child. Ask him about how the day went in class, what he liked or was interested in, what seemed difficult and incomprehensible. By doing this, you show that you support your child in his endeavors and are ready to help, which gives the child more confidence in himself and his potential.
Praise your student’s successes, even small ones, and in case of failure, adhere to the principles of constructive criticism: find the source of the bad grade and try to explain the material to the child so that he understands why he made a mistake and how to do it right.
Encourage your child's interest in the subject or topic. Perhaps the future Tsiolkovsky, Mendeleev or Pushkin lives in your house. Of course, purchasing all the additional benefits for a young genius can become a fairly significant budget item, but you can always get by e-books and a simple reader for them.
Answer your why’s questions, even if you are tired or don’t understand the topic at all - in the latter case, you can always offer to find the answer together. Believe me, you will miss these times later.
Provide a comfortable study space at home so your child can focus on learning. Special attention should be paid to nutrition, it should be balanced and not contain too much simple carbohydrates and fats. You should put a small bag of nuts in your school backpack - this is a simple and healthy snack between classes.
Particular attention should be paid to the quality of the child's sleep. Rest should last at least eight hours, take place at a pleasant temperature and in a well-ventilated area. At the same time, do not allow drafts, they can have a detrimental effect on the child’s health. We recommend using it - it constantly supplies fresh, purified and heated air into the room with the windows closed.
During high school For a child, society and new friends become increasingly important. Methods for improving academic performance are also changing somewhat, maintaining, however, everything that was relevant for elementary school.
Allow your child to study with friends. Even though such classes are not held every day, such preparation for a test or simply doing homework is much more effective, since the children will explain the material to each other. The only thing is that it is still better to conduct such classes under the supervision of an adult, so that time is spent on studying.
Observe your child while preparing classes, without interfering in the process itself unless he asks for it. Such observation will help you figure out what exactly causes difficulties in tasks and what distracts the child and change the situation for the better.
Adolescence is one of the most difficult periods In human life. If you are lucky, then the child’s performance will not change, and all that will be required from the parent is to help understand incomprehensible material and explain complex topics, in extreme cases, by attracting tutors and providing the necessary materials for learning. And if you are unlucky and your child’s head is torn by a real hormonal boom, then you should at least be patient.
It is important to remember that in many ways it is your attitude towards school that will determine how your teenager will relate to it. Open criticism of teachers will destroy their authority in the eyes of the student, which means he will not pay attention to their subject.
Try to interest the teenager in the prospects of his future life - student, favorite profession. Of course, at this time the child’s desires are quite chaotic, but attention to some objects can be achieved in this way.
Leave room for error. In any case, your child is just beginning his life path, and the most important thing that you can convey to him now is that you will always support him, and school is not his whole life. There is nothing terrible in the fact that a future programmer is not good at chemistry, and an artist is not good at mathematics.
When they talk about how to improve a student’s performance, they often forget about the role of the child himself in this process. There are several tips that will help, if not become an excellent student, then at least improve your knowledge. A parent can tell their child about these simple techniques and help them master them.
Let's start with the simplest things. Concentrating on the lesson and taking notes on what the teacher gives will greatly help improve your knowledge. In addition, taking notes in class helps to fully develop all types of memory, “hammering” knowledge into your hand, which means preparing homework and writing quizzes and tests will become easier.
Ask questions. It is worth remembering a very important rule - there is no shame in not knowing something. Therefore, if some moment in the lesson seemed incomprehensible, it is better to ask the teacher again, either immediately or after the lesson. In order not to forget your questions, it is better to mark them in your notes.
In addition, questions show interest in the subject and help establish contact with the teacher.
If the topic has aroused interest or the subject is on the priority list for future profession, worth finding Additional materials and study them. School program Essentially a minimum, expanding knowledge and one’s own horizons is always beneficial. Found materials together with school knowledge can be combined into your own tutorial, designing it in the form of a book or a poster on the wall, and which will significantly speed up both the assimilation of the material and preparation for exams.
In many ways, the answer to the question “How to improve your academic performance” lies in food. Even the ancients said: “A full belly is deaf to learning,” but an empty stomach does not contribute to the assimilation of material. Small snacks of nuts or fruits throughout the day will help you absorb the material in class much better.
Rest while preparing assignments. School system It is not for nothing that it provides for changes; during independent studies it is worth taking short breaks, for example, 10 minutes per hour. During such a break, you can have a snack or do a little exercise - this will improve blood circulation and increase work efficiency.
