Children who have poor study skills try to memorise without understanding. They have no goals and not motivated and don't know how to plan. They have no idea about how much time an assignment should take, what is important information and what is not. They don't know how to organise themselves or their time. These are skills that are vital to success, not just in school, but in life.
Children must be taught these skills. Although some schools do make it a point to teach study techniques, parents cannot assume that children will learn the skills they need. So it's up to you to guide your child in learning the study skills that work best for them. Study skills are basic learning tools and once your child can use these tools, he will become a successful learner. No matter what you child's age is, he will need good study skills for all these stages of learning:
Stages of Learning
1. Getting information from books, lessons and presentations
Your child must be able to listen and read in order to take in information from these sources.
2. Organising information
Your child needs to use various techniques to organise information in a logical way.
3. Practising or going over the organised information
He must be able to review the information
4. Recalling and/or applying the information
Your child needs skills in test-taking and in writinug or preparing reports, such as those required for a project.
As parents, we need to explain to the children how to use study skills, show them one or two techniques and then guide them when he practises using the skills. The study skills below can help your child in the above stages of learning. If the teacher has spent a lot of time on the topic, it makes sense for our children to focus on the topic a bit more than another topic that the teacher only mentioned in passing. Besides getting information from the lessons the teacher has taught, we could also get our children to read the chapters in the school textbook in order to fill the gaps in the lessons.
Study Skills
1. In order to get the most information in a short-time, your child should check these -- chapter title, sub-headings in the chapter, pictures, graphs and captions
2. Remind your children to use active reading skills:
- Jot down notes
- Pick out the most important ideas and put them in his own words
- Jot down questions about the chapter
- Write down the most important idea from each paragraph or small group of paragraphs. Note that the first sentence is usually the topic sentence.
- Under each main heading, list important details in their own words
- List further points to explain, elaborate on or make clear each sub-heading
5. Get them to write one question that they think will be in a test (For example, write in the margin next to the section of his notes).
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