Go find ‘study tips’ on the internet and you are surely to find the typical ‘study hard, pay attention, use a calendar etc…”.  As an experienced teacher, and an overachiever as a student, I can tell you that there are some ‘smarter’ ways to improve your grades.

Here are 5 secrets to getting good grades:

1.    What’s Your Teacher’s Style?

If you have a new teacher, ask him or her if you could see one of his or her older tests (obviously not the same one you will be writing).  It can be from a different subject and even a different year.  See what kind of tests your teacher likes to give.  Does your teacher prefer multiple choice or essay questions?  If your teacher likes to give essay questions, then what ‘keywords’ does he or she use (e.g. compare and contrast, explain, describe)?  Obtaining a test from your current teacher will give you more insight as to how to study for the test. 

2.    Time Is On Your Side.

Studies show that students retain more information when they study in small chunks as opposed to longer periods of time.  Set specific times for yourself and stick to it, even if you’re not finished.  If you aren’t finished, you should still take the break and come back to your work.

If you are consistent with the breaks, you’ll be consistent with the study time as well!

Get the hardest and most undesirable work out of the way first; otherwise you will spend too much time on it later on as it will steal your time away from you.

3.    #3 Is For Three Calendars.

That’s right.  Three calendars.  Get a weekly, monthly, and yearly calendar.  The weekly calendar is perfect for when you have a test next Thursday and a report next Friday.  By ‘seeing’ the next week, you will be better planned.  The monthly calendar is good for being prepared for exams, major projects, and mid-terms.

The yearly calendar, though, doesn’t have much function.  Then why am I suggesting that you get one?  Well, a yearly calendar provides you with a significant psychological advantage.  You see, by putting up a yearly calendar, and of course filling it out as you go along (i.e. you should first write on the weekly and monthly calendar, then copy them to the yearly calendar), you will be able to look back and see the amount of work you have done.  When you see all the assignments, and the amount of work you have put in, you will be more likely to be motivated to continue studying even when you don’t feel like it. 

Imagine, it’s January and it’s winter time.  You are tired and you don’t feel like doing homework or studying any longer.  So, you look at your yearly calendar and realize that you’ve put in tons of work over the past few months.  It would seem like a waste to quit now, wouldn’t it? 

4.    Know Thyself.

Everybody has down times and peak times.  What are yours?  Perhaps you have extra curricular sports after school and other sports or lessons in the early evening.  Then when do you plan on doing your work? 

It’s important to know the time of day that you have your energy and the time when you are tired.  Maybe from 5:00 to 6:00 would be a good time to study before you go to karate class which starts at 7:00.  Or perhaps you can squeeze in 45 minutes right after school.  What you must do is determine the best times to study, and stick to that schedule.  There’s no point on saving homework for 8:00 after you’ve had baseball practice and swimming lessons.  Find your time!

5.    What’s Your Type?

What kind of learner are you?  Are you audio, visual, or kinesthetic?  Is your dominant intelligence verbal, artistic, interpersonal, or logical?  There are many free online tests you can take to get an idea of your learning preference and type of intelligence.

So, let’s suppose that you are a visual learner (you learn best by watching).  Then, you should try to study by using visual aids such as mind maps, diagrams, and pictures.  Or perhaps you are an auditory learner who is dominant in musical intelligence, then you might consider remembering math formulae by writing them into song lyrics.

Regardless of your learning style and type of intelligence, you can find ways to study that’s best for you.

     Clearly, the pattern here is to study smart.  Make studying cater to your lifestyle and skills and take advantage of some of the resources that at your disposal.  Persistence, hard work, and some self knowledge will help you get better grades in school.

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    If this past June’s report card didn’t look as good as you had wished, you can help your child maintain math and language skills over the summer.

     You can help your child learn by involving him/her is real-life hands on learning at home.

     The first way you can help your child is to have the two of you do some cooking or baking.  Cookbooks and measuring cups provide a good opportunity for learning fractions.  Cookbooks have the measurements and the measuring cups are good hands on tools, often labeled with the fractions.  Your child will be able to see that 1 cup is greater than 1/2, which is greater than 1/3 and so on.  You can teach your child how to add fractions by adding the contents in the measuring cups.

     Food shopping is another great way to learn math skills.  When you take your child to the supermarket, you can look at food prices and compare them.  This strategy of comparing decimals and whole numbers is an important math skill.  After you have paid for your groceries, you can have your younger child categorize the foods on the bill.  Your older child can round the decimal prices to whole numbers (e.g. %7.89 could be rounded to $8.00) to see if the food bill was correct.  This can also be done after dinner at the restaurant.

     Instead of throwing away all those flyers (and perhaps sometimes coupons), you can use them to show your child how to compare prices and determine which flyer has a better sale.  Again, this skill requires estimating, rounding, and adding.

     Board games are great educational tools.  Boggle and Scrabble are two great choices.  Scrabble is an obvious winner with regards to learning spelling and vocabulary.  Allow your child to use a dictionary.  This will help him/her improve vocabulary, learn correct spelling, learn how to use a dictionary, and boost his/her confidence.  I let my kids use a thesaurus and if they can come up with a synonym I give them extra points.

     You can also take out a deck of cards to teach math.  War is a great game to play with young children.  Take out the face cards and have your child determine who wins each round.  This will force your child to look at the two cards and compare the numbers.

  Finally, are you planning on doing any renovations around the house?  If so, measuring tapes are excellent tools for learning math skills.  Your child can measure length using fractions (e.g. 5 ⅜) and whole numbers.  You can also teach your child how to find the perimeter or area of a specific space.

  There are many more ways that you can prevent your child from losing math skills over the summer if you are creative.  It is well known that the best learning is done when it applies to real life.

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