How to Teach Your Child How to Study

As your child progresses through school, you may discover that he or she is having trouble when it comes to test time. I know I had trouble. For me, once the test was placed in front of me I almost had stage fright. It was like my brain froze and any information, including my name, became almost impossible to grasp. The truth is I had poor study habits back then, and had to learn how to retain all the information I needed for the test. Once I developed a system I was able to remain calm when the test was put in front of me because I knew the answers. My confidence was boosted, so my fears were alleviated. The methods I put together for myself helped me maintain a straight "A" average during my college years. If it helped me, I know that it can help your child. And, once he has a firm grasp on good study habits it will stay with him for the rest of his life.

It is best to start the process at least two days before the test.

The more times you hear something, see something, or write something the more likely you are to remember it. My method requires a little of all three. The first step is to go over any and all notes made. Read through them twice silently, then read through them once more aloud. If a test is to be given concerning an entire chapter, and the notes your child has isn't sufficient or non-existant, read through the chapter, highlighting the important facts. Once the facts are highlighted, treat the highlighted areas the same as you would your notes (reading silently twice, and once aloud). There is certainly nothing wrong with reading more than that, especially out loud. Three times is the minimum.

Now, rewrite the notes or the highlighted facts. Writing it uses another part of the brain, and this step really helps the information stick in the memory.

This is a good time to quiz your child on the information. Use the rewritten work to ask your child questions based on the facts listed on the paper. Mark the facts the she does not remember. Go through all the facts so that she will know which facts she needs to concentrate on.

At this point, your child should remember a few of the facts needed for his test. Have him rewrite the ones that he is having trouble with on note cards, putting it in question form. For example, for state capitals "What is the capital of Alaska" on one side of the note card. Flip the card over to write "Juno." It will be beneficial to do this with all the facts so that your child will have it to look through right before the test just as a refresher.

Quiz your child again using the note cards, making two piles: correct and incorrect. When your child misses one, tell her the answer. Hearing it will help her remember it.

If your child is still having trouble at this point, you may want him to repeat the process on the difficult ones. Read silently, read aloud, write, then quiz.

Let your child's brain rest. Put everything away for the rest of the day.

Day two: quiz your child again using the note cards, again making two stacks: correct and incorrect. At this point it is fairly safe to assume that the ones your child has answered correctly will be remembered at least in time to take the test, but often times much longer than that.

Repeat the process for the problematic facts.

Memory Tricks

There are other ways to remember specific things. Make acronyms for phrases. For example, to remember the order of operation for math, "please excuse my dear aunt sally" represents "parenthesis, exponent, multiplication, division, and subtraction." You can also use word associations. Frankfurt is the capital of Kentucky. To help remember this think of it like this, "they eat a lot of franks in Kentucky." And, of course, making facts into songs or rhymes helps too, "in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue."

The day of the test your child needs to eat a good breakfast, and does not need to study all day before the test. He needs to allow his brain to relax so that it doesn't "freeze up" when it's time to pour the information out. A simple looking over of his note cards will suffice to refresh his memory with the facts. It may help to write any memory tricks on the note cards as well.