Help Your Child Learn Good Study Skills

The most important task your elementary age child performs is one that is done at home - studying. Many people, including parents, take studying skills for granted. Poor studying skills can affect a child's entire educational experience. By far, not everyone instinctively knows how to study. You, as a parent, can help your child immensely by guiding them in the best ways to study and do homework.

Studying require several skills: organization, self-discipline, and a study plan. These are not natural skills, but can be taught and become habit.

Here are some helpful tips that you can encourage your children to practice to get more out of the time they spend studying:

* Break a large task into smaller parts. Go over each part. When a part is learned, go on to another part, eliminating that which has been learned or memorized. This way the student sees the task becoming more manageable and smaller.

* Use index cards while studying. They can be very helpful, whether the task is memorizing math facts or keeping track of the characters and sequence of action in a book. For science and social studies, write down the chapter-end study questions on cards. Students search out the answers, write them on the cards, and review the cards until they are confident with the answers.

* For history facts, teach your child to make a grid of information. For example, if the 13 American Colonies are being studied, make a grid on a piece of paper with the following columns: Name of Colony, Founder, Settlers, and How They Made A Living. This can be applied to many different areas of study.

* Encourage your child to tackle his/her most challenging homework subject first and save the easiest for last. Thus, if your child is very good at math but shaky on spelling, spelling should be studied first.

* Use the child's test scores to adjust the studying schedule and technique. If your child is memorizing spelling words but not doing well on tests, begin helping him/her use the words in a written sentence. This is another area in which index cards work well.

* Practice taking tests at home. Many people do poorly on tests, not because they don't know the answers, but because they become stressed at the idea of taking a test. Help your student practice taking different types of tests at home. Rehearse taking tests with multiple answers, essay answers, and fill-in-the-blank answers. Also help your child learn to take tests with a time limit. Teach him to move on from questions that he/she does not know and answer the questions known in the time limit given.

* Of course, it is important to make sure your student has uninterrupted time to study. Set aside a time and a place for your child to study. Provide a distraction-free area for your child to study. If he/she insists on having a radio or television turned on, make sure the volume is low.

* As a parent, you can make sure that your child has all the supplies he/she needs for studying. If extras, such as materials for a science project or folders for a social studies assignment, are needed, be sure you acquire the materials well before the assignment is do to be completed.

* You are responsible for making reference material available to your student. Make time to take your child to the library to use reference materials if they are not available in the home. The internet can be a great resource for many homework projects. Supervise your child's use of the internet and help him/her find the information they need.

Helping your child develop good study habits early is one of the most important things you can do as a parent. A child who learns good, solid study habits early in his/her education is a more successful student with more confidence and less stress about schoolwork. Good study habits last a lifetime and become good work habits later in life.