Choosing The Right Educational Support For Your Child

CHOOSING THE RIGHT EDUCATIONAL SUPPORT FOR YOUR CHILD =====================================================

ABSTRACT:

Ideas to help parents tailor educational support to their child's situation and needs.

__________________________________________________- Contents...

1 INTRODUCTION 2 IDEAL LEARNING STEPS: 2.1 Enjoy! 2.2 Understand 2.3 Remember 2.4 Apply 2.5 Achieve 3 LINEAR OR SPIRAL LEARNING? 4 Putting it all together 5 Conclusions __________________________________________________-

1 INTRODUCTION

Because you care deeply about your child you will want to engage them about their education, ensure that they make good progress so that they perform as well as possible in their most important subject exams, equipping them for a successful and fulfilling career and life.

If your child needs extra support, either because they are struggling, are not being stretched to their full ability or just need a bit of a boost, then your choice of approach will depend upon their needs and the stage at which you decide to bring in support.

The closer they are to the exams, the less choice there will be regarding approach. For example, if their exams are about to start, they will simply have to attempt past papers and receive focused help in areas where they drop marks. Although always essential, the importance of practice papers does depend to some extent on subject and level. For example students studying for end-of-Key Stage 3 Maths find that going through the syllabus scarcely prepares them for their SATs, because the each year examiners find fresh ways of testing the depth of candidates' understanding of how numbers work. At GCSE and above, however, the questions become much more topic-focussed.

If you are acting early on the need for support, well in advance of their exams, then you have the option to begin by laying really firm foundations (in terms of motivation, context, framework...) on which to build detailed knowledge. For example, in science they can be helped to appreciate the impact that science and technology has had on our lives and how science manages to advance. In science they can also go on a fascinating journey from inside the atom, through the environment to beyond the universe - linking together key points across all topics in chemistry, biology and physics - so that when they are studying a particular topic they will always have an understanding of how it all fits together.

If they are already well into their exam year, then either it may be best after each school lesson to go through any aspects that particularly challenged them, or to run through the next school topic beforehand so that they avoid getting lost or falling behind at school, and so obtain maximum value from both their school lessons and educational support. Students will tend to find some topics easier than others and some more challenging. In that case you can opt for an optimum blend of approaches - reinforcing the challenging school lessons, and during the easier ones, allowing them to follow a journey that lays solid foundations and provides a deep, interlinked understanding across the whole subject.

Below are some ideas to help you tailor educational support to the situation and needs of your child...

2 IDEAL LEARNING STEPS: Enjoy, Understand, Remember, Apply, Achieve

2.1 Enjoy!

For almost all children, effective learning must start with enjoyment. Keeping your child engaged will entail using creative methods, e.g. involving interesting props, music, models and games - rather than just words, paper and computer screens. The only difference between viewing an activity as "work" or "play" is whether or not you enjoy it. So, in life, if a child can genuinely thirst for the knowledge that they need and then earn through doing things that they enjoy, then they will have a successful and fulfilling education and career.

2.2 Understand

Unless something has grabbed a student's attention - i.e. unless they are enjoying it - it will be tough for them to get their head round it and understand it.

Particularly if your child has learning difficulties, strategies will need to be selected to help ensure that understanding. These may include, for example:

. asking questions in a way that builds the student's confidence; . asking questions in a clarifying manner, and then have the student describe his or her understanding of the questions; . constantly displaying an outline of the syllabus and lesson so that the child can maintain a constant awareness of the context; . providing clear copies of visuals, key points and notes.

In day-to-day life, if someone with even average-to-low ability has an all-consuming hobby, then they will tend to search out, sort and instantly absorb everything that they can find out about it. For example, anyone who is into music recording will know all about using slow-attack dynamic compression to make optimum use of the recording bandwidth whilst increasing the apparent loudness - things that make limited sense to those who don't share their passion. Enthusiasm and seeing links are keys to understanding.

2.3 Remember

It's really hard work for a student to remember things that they don't understand. If they don't understand, then the only option is to learn by rote - which is dull, effort-intensive, brain-crowding and fast-fading. On the other hand if they understand something, then associated knowledge automatically becomes part of their thinking and is simply absorbed. For example the average traveller may find it tedious to pore through rail timetables and connections, whereas a railway enthusiast or train spotter who enjoys trains and researches & understands how they are constructed, driven & managed may simply come to know all the latest timetables. Understanding makes memorisation automatic. Sometimes additional memory aids are required - such as amusing acronyms, e.g. for the sequence of colours in the visible spectrum (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet) - ROYGBIV: "Rinse Out Your Granny's Boots In Vinegar!"

2.4 Apply

But in exams these days students are not expected just to recall or explain things, but to use what they have learnt to solve problems. For example, in cell biology, they may not ask a student to recount the stages of cell replication, but to interpret a graph showing how the measured quantity of DNA in a particular cell grew steadily for a while then suddenly halved. Maths is almost entirely about application. As above, in order to apply knowledge, a student must first both understand and remember it. Practising application both reveals any gaps in understanding or memory and helps plug those gaps.

2.5 Achieve

Of course in an exam, it's not good enough for a student simply to "know their stuff" and apply it - if they are to excel they also need to play the game of exam technique - communicating their expertise, impressing an examiner and obtaining a high score when the marking schemes are applied systematically.

There are many aspects to exam technique, but I will only deal with one key aspect here - that of obtaining a good score from those long 6+ mark essay questions. This is a key aspect because, by definition, a significant proportion of the available marks are at stake here. Become good at essay questions, and you are likely to achieve a high grade overall.

There are two main types of essay question: Debate questions and Knowledge questions...

For debate questions, the answer is generally contained in the question itself. It is generally a matter of organising the points into associated pairs of pros and cons, arriving at a verdict and explaining why, as an exam candidate, you consider particular factors to carry more weight.

For knowledge-based questions, some marks are reserved for correct technical terminology, structure, grammar and spelling. You also have to include a certain number of pieces of information - the mark scheme lists a few indicative points (examples of the sorts of points you could make) - and this is where you can really shine: Note that you are not restricted to specific points - you can make any relevant, valid points, even if they are a bit beyond the syllabus. In fact, if some of your points are beyond the syllabus, the examiner will subconsciously think to themselves: "This student has done background reading and really knows their stuff!" This helps you not only achieve high marks for the essay question itself but also to leave a good impression, so that elsewhere in the paper if your answer is borderline, the examiner will be more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt, because they will have already been impressed by the depth of your knowledge. This can make a physical difference to your grade. To achieve this, for each topic you should do a little background research, identify an associated piece of information that interests you and practice wording it very succinctly, so that you can include it very quickly when relevant.

3 LINEAR OR SPIRAL LEARNING?

Each exam subject is pretty vast. So, particularly if you are studying for several exams, how can you get into all this subject matter! Why not try the Spiral Route?

The lines that the spiral crosses divide a subject into areas, sectors, or 'topics', just like a cake is cut into pieces. Starting from the centre, the spiral represents the easiest journey into the subject. The first time round you do a quick tour of the most basic points across all areas. The next time round you spend a bit longer exploring each area in greater depth. And so you carry on round, outwards from the centre, examining each area in more and more detail, until you have covered the whole subject pretty thoroughly.

Alternatively, you could take a Linear approach and begin by exploring a first area in its full depth - but your mind would grow rather dull with more and more of the same, it would become difficult to 'see the wood for the trees', and, if the subject matter is deep enough, you might never get onto a second area!

With the Spiral Approach, you begin with a simple understanding of the whole subject, and then keep building onto this foundation. Each time you move round from one topic to the next, you get a change - and "a change is as good as a rest" - so you stay fresh. The mind takes a while to absorb information; when you come back round to a given sector, your mind has had time to digest what you learnt last time round. And it's easier to keep a view of how the whole lot fits together.

4 PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

It would be great if we all had to be told something only once and we would learn it, but in reality this is rarely the case. Most of us have to go back over things in order to root them firmly in our minds. In fact it is essential to revisit topics in order to check that we are making real progress.

The Spiral Approach achieves all that.

However, too many identical repetitions would make learning a bit dull and inefficient.

The solution is to make each turn of the spiral a bit different.

The first turn of the spiral should pick out the most mind-grabbing facts. (ENJOY)

The second should identify the key points across topics which connect the topics together. (UNDERSTAND)

The next turn should build detail onto the deep understanding that has been gained, using colourful memory aids to support any areas that you find challenging to recall. (REMEMBER)

The final turn entails working through topic-based questions in revision guides or textbooks, and then through approximately three sets of past papers, checking your answers against the official Mark Schemes. Whereas a section title tells you which topics the revision/textbook questions relate to, the questions in the exam papers don't say which topics are relevant and a single question may span and interlink several topics. A significant proportion of the challenge is therefore to work out what the associated topics are. Similar questions tend to be re-cycled every two three years, so (unless the syllabus has recently been revised) once you have three or so past papers under your belt, there should be no major unpleasant surprises in the exam room. (APPLY)

The final time round the syllabus is of course in the exam room itself. A key example of exam technique has been covered above. However, the principal reason that students drop marks in exams these days seems to be simply through silly/careless mistakes, e.g. not reading the question or making an arithmetic error. Once your child knows which grade they are aiming at (e.g. one or two above their predicted grade) you can look up what percentage score they require - It's bound to be significantly less than 100%. Therefore, rather than attempt 100% of the questions (including the tricky ones that will sap their time and potentially prevent them from tackling ones that they could have answered) it is better that they should focus on enough of the ones that they definitely could solve and make sure that they actually do grab those marks. This can be done as follows: Flick through the paper to identify the easiest questions. Do those ones first and double-check that they have been answered correctly and that those marks are securely in the bag. Then tackle and double-check the medium-challenge questions. That will generally take a student to the percentage score that they need. They can then return and pore over the really tough questions, knowing that their aspirational marks are already safe. (ACHIEVE)

5 CONCLUSIONS

In summary, enjoyment makes understanding automatic. Understanding can make remembering virtually effortless. Your child needs both to understand and remember things, in order to apply them - which is the skill required by examiners in order to award good results. So, if you have time, get your child start with the bits that fascinate them. Then move onto the aspects that connect everything together. Finally add the required level of detail and encourage them to practice applying their knowledge through topic-based questions and past papers.

Make sure that the methods they use suit their interests, abilities and challenges.

Don't let them end up making a mass of time-consuming, lengthy notes that are almost as long as their textbooks and that they will never refer to! They should only write notes that fill residual gaps in their understanding or memory, as revealed by their practice questions/papers. Then they will make maximum progress with minimum effort - I'm sure they'll be happy with that!