A School Performance Check-up

            Now that we are finished with a quarter of school and are well immersed into the second quarter, it would be helpful to evaluate some important aspects of your child’s school performance. It’s not too late to make some improvements that will make a big difference for the rest of the year. Answering these questions will help you evaluate your child’s performance and develop a plan to succeed this school year.

1.     Do you know how to communicate with your child’s teacher? While we may be afforded many tools for communicating, we all have our preferred way of staying in touch. Some teachers check email multiple times in the day, some prefer phone calls after school, and some still find the old fashioned method of writing a note to be the most effective means.

2.     Do you recognize the teacher’s primary means of making class announcements? When teachers need parents to know specific details about important events, they usually put them in letters (print or email). Blog posts, phone texts, and other forms of communication are merely reminders. Be sure your student gives you all letters sent home by the teachers.

3.     Do you know the primary way your teacher reports student grades? Elementary classes send home a test-quiz folder; secondary grades give students progress reports; and our teachers upload grades weekly on Gradelink.com for all students and parents to view. Monitoring weekly grades should be a team effort by teachers, parents and students.

4.     Do you have an effective plan for completing homework? Is your child too often working on homework at a late, unproductive time of night?  Is homework being completed so quickly and thoughtlessly that it has no chance of improving mastery? Perhaps a more consistent homework plan needs to be created. For homework completion to be successful, you must consider when to work on it, where the student will work on it, and how they will be accountable.

5.     Do you have an effective study plan? You may want to refer to a previous article on “The Value of Study Partners.” Many parents make the mistake of thinking that children should be able to study alone, and many students make the mistake of thinking that they should be able to study alone. Studying alone usually takes longer and reaps worse results than having a study partner. If you would like your child to see an improvement in grades, consider revising the study plan.

6.     Do you have a plan to help your student concentrate? No creative plan is needed here, just some time to unwind and a reasonable schedule. Yes, school should be taken seriously, and school performance is more important than pleasure. However, every kid has a limit. Kids need sleep and physical exercise to function mentally. Be careful to not overschedule their day with organized activities and cheat them out of a reasonable bedtime. A little free time each day to get some exercise benefits children more than many realize.

7.      Do you have a plan to help your child unwind? When children get stressed, it can materialize in undesirable moods as well as aches and pains. Stress is not all bad; it helps us perform optimally. But children need a means to unwind from the academic rigor and social challenges they encounter at school. The best relief is a happy, healthy home. No matter what may happen at school, children need to count on parents to talk to and a positive environment to come home to. Possessing an inward love for our children is not enough; let’s be sure to express it by making home a place of unconditional love.

The Value of Study Partners

“What can I do to make better grades?” When answering this often asked question, we first focus on study skills. If you are not already using the help of another person to study, finding a study partner may make a considerable difference. When students have to verbalize their answers to another person, the experience resembles the test taking experience much better than studying alone. The accountability provides a much better test practice scenario, and it gives the student a better assessment of their actual level of preparedness for the test.

Who is the best study partner? For many reasons, mom or dad do the best at getting the job done. You can read about the reasons why in "Why Parents Make the Best Study Partners," but the main reason involves the motivation parents have in making sure their children do well in school. If a parent is not available, siblings and friends can be effective study partners. As long as study partners are advanced enough to read the material and check their partners’ accuracy, they can help.

Study partners have to be responsible enough to thoroughly work together until the content is learned. For example, two students may be quizzing each other with their study guides for a history test. If a student misses a question, the partner needs to repeat the question periodically until it is answered correctly. If partners are helping each other with math problems, they need to be willing to stick with the task until each partner fully understands and works the problems alone. Study partners need to do more than give advise; they need to help each other until problems can be performed independently.

Students of all ages can benefit from partnerships, but younger children may require more instruction and supervision. For instance, third graders may need instructions like, “Quiz each other with multiplication flash cards; switch once someone has answered correctly ten times; both of you must complete six rounds each.” Older students who are already acquainted with rigorous, Christian school academics know how to study for the test, but they may need supervision to make sure time is used wisely.

Partners need to learn how to give clues before simply giving away an answer. They should help each other think of cues and mnemonics to help them remember difficult content. This is how the Guinness World Records holder, Chao Lu, memorized over 67,000 digits of pi. The sillier the association or cue, the better students will remember them.

Research reveals that students who study with a parent outperform those who study alone, but the research also reveals that students who perform the best study with a parent and a peer. Perhaps it’s time to increase your use of study partners.