How many times do we hear children say: “I’m just not good at it, what it took Raquel to learn five minutes takes me all afternoon”; or to the mothers: “If my daughter has a hard time studying, the poor thing goes all afternoon, from when she gets home until dinner time.”
Many times, what fails in the study of our children are good study techniques that facilitate the whole process. Have you tried making a potato omelette without a pan? You have all the ingredients, but you lack the tools to help you cook it. Next, we propose a series of tools (and how to use them) that will help your children with their studies.
TIPS TO STAY IN CLASS
With the five senses
It is important that before starting a new topic at school our son has read something at home , the evening before, so as not to start from scratch. In addition, this way you will have points of interest that you would like to know in more detail or to ask about what has cost you the most to understand.
In class, you should try not to speak so as not to be distracted. Attending to the teacher’s explanation will make your work much easier.
Take notes
We must teach our children the importance of taking direct and fair notes . How? Following these guidelines:
- Start each topic of each subject on a new page.
- Leave wide margins. This will allow you to make annotations later.
- It is convenient to clearly distinguish each topic, each chapter and each section, either with capital letters, colors … The question is to highlight some points to clearly see the structure of the topic.
- If you do not pay attention to the handwriting when taking notes, it is possible that later, when studying, you will not understand what you have written down.
- Something very common among students is to clean their notes at home, which is a waste of time. If they have already taken them clean, they will have more time to devote to studying.
- List the pages of each subject and topic. For this, you can use not only numbers, but also letters, for example: if we have 5 pages of topic 3 natural, in the first we will put T3 (topic3) 1 (1st sheet) / 5 (of 5 sheets that has the topic , it will look like this: in the first one, T3 1/5; the second would be T3 2/5; then T3 3/5, T3 4/5; and finally, T3 5/5.
- Try to expand his vocabulary on the subject to avoid sometimes thinking that he has gotten into Chinese class instead of geography. Search with him information to read on the subject in an encyclopedia, books, scientific magazines …
- It is very useful to review the notes at the end of the class. Thus, if you missed any information, you can complete it with those of a colleague or you can even ask the teacher.
THE HOME STUDY
The titles
The first thing we have to look at when studying is the titles, which tell us what we have to learn. As soon as you read them and before continuing with the text, take a minute to find out what the text is going to be about and what things that we do not know we would like to learn, also what we can use what we are going to learn (this way you will improve their interest and motivation).
First reading
Take a quick look at everything the boy has on the subject. So we will see how long it is, what it is about in general and what materials we have to study it (notes, books, an encyclopedia …). The first reading of the topic should be quick , not take too long, so that you get a general idea.
Records
Fold a sheet of paper several times, and then cut it out to get small chips. In them you can write down the words that you do not understand and then look them up in the dictionary and learn them.
