11 secrets for your child’s learning success (tips for parents and teachers)

Happy teen writing notes on notebook at home

What conditions should be created at home and school so that your child can better understand the educational material, pay more attention in class, and remember more information? We share some ideas, which will be useful to both parents and teachers.

Healthy sleep

Doing homework or (much less!) staying up late on social media is a really bad idea. Our brains need healthy sleep in order to learn successfully. That is why, the right decision is to hire someone to write a paper instead of you, and get high quality content for the smallest price. Between doing homework till night and sleeping, the last option is better. Lack of sleep aggravates mental performance in every possible way: it has a bad effect on attention, working memory, mathematical ability, logical thinking, and motor skills.

The interesting thing is that the negative effect of regular sleep deprivation accumulates. This fact has been investigated in detail in scientific experiments. In one of them, the night’s rest time was limited to six hours or less. After five days, the cognitive ability of the subjects was the same as after two days without sleep, that is, a 60 percent decrease!

More movement!

Some simple exercises in the morning, training at a sports club, or even just taking a walk after school will help your child learn much more successfully! Modern people tend to lead sedentary lifestyles. But we still need activity. Research shows that physical activity stimulates the brain and helps improve long-term memory, logical thinking, attention, and the ability to solve new problems. Exercise should not be too intense: overexertion can be detrimental to cognition. Experiments have shown that the golden mean is half an hour of aerobic exercise three times a week.

Small groups

The current education system does not take into account that students of the same age have different intellectual abilities. After all, each brain’s neural connections are unique!

Pupils master certain knowledge in different periods and to different degrees. When there are many children, it is difficult for a teacher to keep track of them all, so there should be a limit to the number of students – the fewer the better.

Smaller classes ensure success simply because the teacher can keep an eye on each child. With a small group, the teacher can better see when students are making mistakes, whether they are working at their best, and how well they have understood the material.

All other things being equal, smaller class sizes create a more conducive atmosphere for learning.

First the key idea, then the details

Memory tends to retain the most important things we encounter. Details can be retrieved by recalling the essence.

The brain is better able to grasp generalized concepts rather than specifics.

Of course, detailed knowledge is very important for success in school. Interestingly, it is possible to remember details based on the content.

If you want your child to learn the material well, don’t start with details. Focus on the key idea and build details around key concepts.

Maintaining interest

Attention is one of the secrets of high learning achievement. It is inextricably linked to the interest or relevance of information. We notice anything unusual, unpredictable, different, and emotionally stimulating. These signals are processed by the brain and remembered much better than neutral ones.

The more attention the brain devotes to receiving signals, the better the information is encoded and therefore stored. One of the most important tasks for the teacher is to keep the pupils’ attention.

Small blocks of meaning

Most teachers bombard their students with too much information and give too little time to digest it. Professionals who are well versed in their subject simply forget how to be a beginner.

To improve the learning process, the teacher should present the information in small portions, giving children a break between the meaning blocks of the lesson. Ten minutes can be spent on a single idea. During this time, a specific thesis should be formulated and then the connection between the details and the main concept should be explained clearly, precisely, and in detail. 

Single-tasking

Observe your child doing her homework. Is she listening to music and actively texting with friends? Are there several windows and programs open on the computer that is not related to learning? Surely such an atmosphere makes it difficult to concentrate on the task at hand.

Scientists have proved that multitasking is a myth. The brain is incapable of paying attention to several different things at the same time. It is impossible to stay focused and process information well by bouncing from one thing to the next.

Repetition

Students forget 90 percent of what they learn in a class within 30 days. And most of the information slips their minds in the first hours after the lesson.

You can increase the storage time of information by repeating it at regular intervals. The number of repetitions and the interval between them are critical for the transition from short-term memory to long-term memory.

Ideally, the material should be repeated twice more within a day (best done in the first hours after the lesson). The information should then be revisited after three or four days.

For the final consolidation of knowledge, it is better to repeat certain topics once every six months. The content of the review material can be adjusted according to progress. This approach takes a lot of time but is of great benefit when studying any subject, especially foreign languages.

Memory is fickle at the time of learning – repetition makes it more reliable.

Reducing stress levels

Too much and prolonged stress harms learning. Children suffering from nervous tension are not very successful in maths and languages. Their memory is much weaker than others. They are less able to generalize and adapt existing information to new scenarios. They have a hard time concentrating.

Under extreme conditions, stress hormones can even damage brain tissue!

Researchers have observed that children who constantly watch their parents fight or experience intense psychological pressure show poorer academic performance than their peers who live in calm conditions. So a stable emotional situation at home and school is one of the most important factors for success in learning.

A multi-sensory environment

The more senses that are involved in the learning process, the better the information is remembered.

In experiments conducted by the cognitive psychologist Richard Meyer, groups who worked in a multi-sensory environment always performed better than those who received information through only one channel (e.g. hearing or sight).

If you want your child to learn the topic better, present the information not only verbally, but also visually. One effective method is to use animation together with oral storytelling. The principle of consistency is important: extraneous material is best avoided.

Consider how visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory stimuli can be used in combination with traditional ways of presenting the material.

Encouraging innate curiosity

Children are born with irrepressible curiosity and a strong desire to explore the world. They enjoy trying new things, analyzing objects and their properties, and conducting experiments (simple at first, then more complex).

Every child is a natural explorer. All you have to do is encourage her to explore.

To sum up, you need to create conditions such that the learner can actively test the environment, follow the call of her brain, experiment, observe, make her discoveries, gain knowledge through play, apply theory in practice and enjoy the process. Besides, addressing to the best writing services isn’t a bad idea, if it can reduce stress during doing an assignment. Don’t hesitate to make an order and get your papers in the shortest terms.

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