Families Education
Helping your Child Become an Effective Learner Nowadays, there are many things that can get in the way of a child learning effectively, including not wanting to practise difficult things; being discouraged by failure; comparing themselves with others; or simply not making much effort. This is frustrating, both for the child who is under performing, and for parents, tired of nagging and at a loss as to how to motivate them. It’s worth bearing in mind that a child hasn’t learned to see the world the way we do and doesn’t know how it works. Feelings are the only tool they have to navigate and experience the world and often they find these hard to interpret. If they feel confused, contradicted,overwhelmed or under pressure, they are unlikely to be able to explain what’s wrong and so they switch off. We’ve all asked the question: “Why did you do that?” and been met by a shrug. They ‘did that’ (whatever it was), because they were reacting to what they were feeling at the time. Looking at it through a child’s eyes, we might see it as selfpreservation in a crazy-ish world! Many children feel that they have to ‘wait to grow up’ before they can DO anything, and some behave as though education is being ‘done’ to them. Punishment and bribery may change the outward behaviour, but will not fix poor motivation,which is needed for meaningful, happy learning to happen. To help your child when they have gone off track, step back and look beyond the behaviour. Understand that deep down, your child wants to succeed, wants you to be proud of them and doesn’t want to let you down, but has got stuck and doesn’t know how to get unstuck. Explain to your child that their job as a child is to grow- what they know, what they can do, their experience and their abilities - and that school is a place that can help them to do this. Children also benefit from focussing on grasping one skill or piece of learning in any task, so that they know what they are aiming for and when they have achieved it.
A Simple Way to Explain Learning to your Child
SO much happens in everyday life! The part of our brain that loves new things really enjoys it, but if it isn’t exciting, it doesn’t remember anything for more than about twenty minutes because there’s just too much going on! To learn something new, we must take action, and that action is practise! When you do something over and over again, your brain gets the message that what you’re doing is important and makes a little track about it (called a neural pathway). After a while, when you’ve done familiesonline.co.uk
By Gail Hugman
it lots of times, your brain knows it’s important and wraps up the little track to make sure you don’t lose it! That’s when you say: “I’ve got it!” For example, spend three minutes every day focused on learning one of the times tables. Write it out and say it repeatedly and in a week or two, your brain will wrap it up so you’ll know it forever. Your brain wants to help you!
Gail Hugman is the founder of Lessons Alive. Gail has 46 years’ experience teaching and motivating children to be the best they can be in school and in life. This article contains extracts from her book 100 Things to Learn Before You’re 10, available at www.theendlessbookcase.com For further information, visit www.lessonsalive.com
Using Spelling to Practise Three Essential Learning Skills Tell your child which skill they are developing each week.
Listening
Week 1: Break each word into syllables or phonics,and talk about the sounds in each word. Make sure your child is correctly pronouncing them. Week 2: Whisper the words, so they need to listen carefully and tell you what you said!
Memory
Week 1: Make two sets of the words on small cards and play pairs. Lay the cards face down and win by selecting matching words.
Week 2: Write the letters of each word onto post-its and muddle them up. Let your child rearrange them to make the word!
Organisation
Week 1: Teach your child to sort the words in alphabetical order to remember them. Week 2: Tell them to sort them according to the number of letters in the word. All these activities will not only help your child to remember their spelling words but will consciously boost their learning skills, too. You can use other subjects to boost skills, too.
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