Useful Parental Information

Useful Parental Information 

HOW TO STUDY SCIENCE

ALWAYS:  Keep a calendar and look ahead – lots of things happen at the same time in the semester, and you will need to pace yourself and plan.  Go to class. It’s much harder to learn from other people’s notes than from your own. BEFORE CLASS:  Skim what’s coming up in the textbook, so it’s not all totally unfamiliar and you have some idea of what’s coming.  Skim the previous day’s notes, so you can relate each lecture to what came before. TAKING NOTES:  Take notes on everything, except (perhaps) things your professor SPECIFICALLY says you don’t have to know for an exam. If you only take notes on what “seems important,” you run the risk that you will miss important material that didn’t seem important in lecture.  Write down the instructor’s MESSAGE, which (a) may not be every word on the board/slide and (b) may be MORE than what is on the board/slide. Include sketches of the figures; they often contain important concepts.  Use abbreviations to speed note-taking.  Keep true to the instructor’s outline structure (or create your own) so you can tell how each topic relates to the others. Otherwise everything seems like an isolated fact, making it very hard to learn.  Make notes to yourself in the margins of your notes, indicating potential test questions or especially big ideas. Clues to potential test questions are material that your professor repeats several times, problems that your professor works in class, and statements like “I put this stuff on every test I ever write.” READING THE TEXTBOOK:  Do not “just read” without thinking about what you are reading – that’s “pretend studying”  Study your textbook along with your notes – do they agree with each other? Do you understand the flow of the story? At the very least, annotate your notes with helpful ideas from the textbook; better yet, rewrite them in your own words (see below). REWRITING YOUR NOTES:  Rewrite your notes in your own words, incorporating useful information from the textbook. If you do not understand it well enough to rewrite it in your own words, make a note to ask your instructor as soon as you can.  Why rewrite? o You are constructing knowledge as you are deciding how to rewrite your notes in your own words and integrate them with the text. o Later material builds on



1) 5 Tips on How to motivate Your child.

1. Keep a relationship with your kids that is open, respectful and positive. Stay on your kids’ team, don’t play against them. This will allow you to be most influential with them, which is your most important parenting tool. Punishing, preaching, threatening and manipulating will get you nowhere and will be detrimental to your relationship and to their ultimate motivation. Your feelings of anxiety, frustration and fear are normal and understandable. But reacting to your kids out of these emotions will be ineffective. Remember, your child is not behaving this way on purpose to make your life miserable or because they are lazy good-for-nothings. When you feel yourself getting worked up, try saying to yourself, “My child is just not there yet.” Remember, your job is to help them learn how to be responsible. If you get negative and make this a moral issue, then your child might become defiant, reacting to you instead of thinking through things himself.

2. Incorporate the “when you” rule.  One of life’s lessons is that we get the goodies after we do the work. When you practice shooting hoops every day, you start making more baskets. You get paid after you work at your job. So start saying things like, “When you finish studying you are welcome to go to Gavin’s house.” Or “When your homework is completed, we can discuss watching that movie you wanted to see on Netflix.” Enforce this rule and stick to it. If your child does not yet have the ability to plan and initiate and persevere, by sticking to this rule, you are helping them learn how to do what their own brain is not yet equipped to do, which is to create the structure for him.

3. When you are invited in. If your child is not studying and his grades are dropping, you’re invited in whether he wants you or there or not. Again, you’re there to help set up a structure that he is not able to create for himself. The structure might include scheduled study times, having the computer out in a public place in your home, and saying, “No video games or TV until after homework is done.” You might decide that he must spend a certain amount of hours devoted to study time. During this time, no electronics or other distractions are allowed. You might make the rule that even if he finishes all his homework, he must complete study time by reviewing, reading, or editing. You might make the rule that he devotes an hour-and-a-half to quiet time, no electronics, and just doing his work. Understand that it’s not meant as punishment; rather, this is helping him develop a good work ethic and to focus on his school subjects. Some kids do better listening to music while they study, but no other electronics or multi-tasking is recommended.

4. Ask the teacher. If your child’s grades and work habits are not up to par, you can set up a plan by sitting down with him and his teachers. He might have to check with them to make sure he has everything before leaving school, and then check with you before going back to school to make sure all his work is in his bag. Once your child gets better at managing his time, completing his work and reviewing his subjects before tests, then it’s time for you to back off.

5. Identify a study spot. You may need to sit with your child while she’s doing her work or at least be nearby to help her stay on track. She may need a quiet location away from brothers and sisters or she may do better in a room near others. You can help her experiment. But once you find what works best, keep her in that location. You will not do her work for her, but you may need to review her work and ask her if a certain paragraph makes sense to her, for example.

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