Focusing Up With Exam Season On The Horizon

With half-term over, it’s likely that your kid’s teachers (if they’re old enough) are going to start talking a lot more about the upcoming exams. Whatever level your child is at, you should be helping them take exams a lot more seriously. The sooner they get the right attitude towards them and have a studying plan to face them down, the better they’re going to be able to get into the right studying groove. Here, we’re going to look at a few tips you can take to get them ready for those exams.

Understand the importance of the exams

You should make sure that you know what exams, exactly, are coming up for your kids and how important they are in terms of their future plans. For any exams previous to GCSEs, you want to help your child in getting used to exams and understanding the importance of the study, but you don’t want to push them too hard since the results don’t quite have as much impact. Beyond that, you need to start talking about their goals after the exams, and how the exam results play a role in that to help them understand the importance of studying. Some exams are worth putting in a little more work than others.

Create the right space to study

Studying at home is going to become a vital part of any test preparation. The lesson learned in class and the homework they get to do is not going to be enough. As such, you want to make sure that your child or teen has the right space to study. This should be a space that is as free of distraction as possible and provides a comfortable and supportive space for them to be able to focus on their work. This might mean investing in ergonomic office furniture for the home, as well as making sure that they don’t have anything like TVs or unnecessary technology around them that might pull them from their studies. If your child doesn’t have a space that helps them focus, then they’re not going to be able to get much studying done at home.

Check how they’re doing with homework

While homework might not quite be enough, looking at how they have been performing through their homework and, indeed, in the classroom can give you a good idea of how you can start helping them study more effectively. The best place to start might be with the person who oversees their journey through both of these areas of study: the teacher. If you talk with the teacher about where they might be struggling, then you might be able to get a better idea of what resources you can use to help them improve in their studies. You should also make sure that they’re getting the time and the space they need to do their homework. You don’t want to get too involved in helping them with their homework, you just want to make sure they’re able to do it as best as possible at home.

Learn their learning style

Not everyone learns in the same way. The sooner that you get that idea, the sooner you might be able to help your child identify resources that might help them better get certain concepts or parts of the curriculum into their mind. For instance, some kids are visual learners, some are auditory learners, and some are reading/writing learners. As such, some might benefit from graphs and other visual tools explaining subjects to them while others might do better with educational videos. Others, still, might benefit from writing down lesson notes with you, but wording them in different ways to make sure that they understand them. Once you understand what your child’s learning style is, it becomes a lot easier to find the resources that are specifically going to work for them.

Make studying part of their schedule

A structured approach to studying is the best way to make sure that your child is getting the time and space they need to learn. Aside from creating the right environment to study in, you should also look at how they’re using their time. Helping them develop good study habits at home, as recommended by teachers and educational experts, involves helping them make weekly and daily plans. This way, not only can you make sure that they are fitting the time to study in their schedules, but you also ensure that their schedule accounts for every part of the curriculum they might need to cover before the exams, as well.

Use some techniques to vary it up

Rote memorisation of their textbooks or study notes might not be the best way for every kid to learn what they need to know. Regardless of what their learning style is, you should look at techniques you can use to make studying more novel. Making it less boring and predictable can help them be more engaged and motivated. For instance, one of the most reliable methods for varying up a study session is to make use of flashcards, which are cards that have brief, easily digestible pieces of information on individual cards. You can place them around the home for them to pick up and read, helping them more casually enforce the learning of those concepts. Then, you can do a rapid-fire test of those concepts to see how effectively your child has learned them.

Don’t try to rush it all at once

The importance of making studying part of their routine over a longer period of time is to make sure that your child has the time and opportunity to study all of their curricula ahead of the exams. The week before the exams should be used to have a primer and to remind themselves of what they have already studied. It shouldn’t be used to try and rush through multiple subjects at once with the home of driving everything into their heads within a short period of time. Trying to learn like that typically doesn’t work and only makes them much more stressed before the exam, which can in turn make it harder for them to focus when they actually need it.

Do and go over mock tests with them

Another way to help them learn is to test their knowledge and how well they’re able to apply ahead of time. You can find mock tests for all levels and all subjects online. Download them, make sure that they fit your child’s curriculum, and sit some mock tests with them at home. This might feel like a repeat of the same things they’re doing to prepare at school. However, the main difference is that, this time, you’re going to be able to go over all of the results with them. You can pore over how they have done with a much closer eye, finding the specific areas that they have trouble with. Once you do that, it becomes a lot easier to focus down on the specific subject that they’re having trouble with, making sure that you’re working directly to their needs.

Get a tutor for the parts they’re having trouble with

Even with your help, your child might feel like studying alone isn’t something that they’re able to do very well. A guiding hand can make a lot of difference, depending on their learning style, and you might not be the best equipped to help them get through their lessons. To that end, it’s not difficult to find cheap online tuition that actually does a good job of helping them go over the subjects that they’re learning. Take the time to find the right tutor online and you can recreate the experience of your child learning from someone, but in an environment that has a lot less stress than the typical classroom. You want to avoid overloading them with too many guided lessons after their school day is over, but it can be a great way to refresh over the weekends or on one night every week.

Talk about exam stress with them

You want to make sure that your child isn’t just academically prepared for the upcoming exams, but that they are emotionally and mentally prepared for them, as well. Exam stress is a very real thing. Making sure that they are as best prepared as possible with the studying tips above will help, but you should also talk about other methods of dealing with that stress. This can include making time for extra-curricular activities, ensuring that they are taking breaks from studying if they’re going a little too hard, and even learning some at-home meditation or breathing exercises when they’re starting to feel the physical effects of stress, such as anxiety.

There’s a lot that you can do to help your teen prepare for exams but you have to remember that the final results are going to come down to their efforts. You have to let them study and try their best, you can’t sit them for them.

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