The end of the school year is near! Both parents and students know what this means–final exams are on the horizon. Regardless of your child’s grade level, teachers often assign a cumulative exam, project or essay that requires your young one to apply all of the knowledge they have learned throughout the semester at once. These assignments can be stressful and often seem like an obstacle standing between your child and a relaxing winter holiday. But finals do not have to be major stressors. Here are three tried-and-true tips for taking the stress out of exam period. MAKE A LIST OF TEST DATES AND DUE DATES The first step to mastering finals is knowing what tests and assignments are included. Reach out to your child’s teachers and request a list of the remaining assignments and assessments. Nowadays, many schools post this information online and include directions and grading rubrics. Students can also review the course syllabi they received at the semester’s start in order to identify the due dates and exam dates. Build a calendar with your child to countdown the deadlines. PRIORITIZE EACH TASK Now that your calendar is complete, it is time to figure out a plan of execution. Chat with your child about his or her academic strengths and weaknesses. Does he or she love writing, but struggle with math? Be sure to allot more time for the subjects that are more challenging for your child personally. Divide the assignments or review material into smaller, manageable pieces. Ideally, your child never spends longer than thirty minutes to an hour on the same subject in any given study session. TAKE BREAKS It is an unfortunate conflation to equate studying for long periods with studying effectively. Discourage your student from pouring endlessly over textbooks and notes for weeks before finals. It can be stress-inducing and unreasonably exhausting both mentally and physically. While cram sessions and procrastination are at times unavoidable, taking small, intermittent breaks can do wonders for morale and mental health. Make sure to follow these three foolproof steps in order to guarantee that our child makes it to winter vacation stress-free. After all, finals should be an opportunity for your child to showcase their knowledge, not to feel bombarded with anxiety. Once finals are over, be sure to gather to family together and soak up a well-earned holiday. Good luck!
There are many different reasons to love flash cards. Maybe you haven’t found your reason to love flashcards yet and think they are very boring. Here are some of the reasons that we love flashcards and thing that you should too. Let’s start off with why flashcards are important. There are tons of articles online talking about flashcards and what they can do for you as a student. In case you missed all these great articles, check out our list of reasons to use flashcards… Study flashcards burn information into the brain as they engage active recall. They aid in spaced repetition. If you’re unfamiliar with the idea of spacing in learning, it basically involves spacing learning events apart rather than massing them together. They activate metacognitive faculties. An example of this is when you believe something to be true and suddenly find out that it isn’t true. Because the answer shocked you, it has become ingrained in your memory and has deepened the learning association. This type of self-reflection is known as metacognition. They are a method of self-testing. They enhance retention. They improve comprehension skills. They allow for visual learning. With improved learning comes better exam results. Now that you know the importance, it is time to make flashcards! There is a great article online titled “8 Ways to Create Better Flashcards”. Here is some ideas from this great article: Use Pictures. For best results use pictures with words. More is Better. Create a variety of cards of the same thing to help you remember it in different ways. Keep it Simple. Sometimes you may be tempted to group things together in categories. This makes it harder to remember stuff. Try to keep the cards to 1 thing instead of grouping them together. When you’re right, you’re right. Sometimes you have words that are synonyms. As long as you get one of them, call it a win. Eventually you will remember both words. Opposites Attract. Don’t let them. Using phrases like the opposite of hot is _____ are a bad idea. This will not help you remember the words. It will only confuse you. Keep it Short. Keep your questions simple and direct. Our brains are lazy will try and find the easiest way to remember the thing on the card and forget the rest. Learn, then memorize. Understand what you’re teaching yourself before you memorize it. Be careful with corrections. If you use cards like ones that have you fix the error, your mind may remember the error in the future instead of the correct thing. There are many ways to make using flash cards fun. A fun article “Becoming a Flash Card Master” lists cool ways to make flashcards more fun. One of the things this article talks about it using a scorecard to keep track of scores while playing games with the flashcards to make it more interesting. Make a game out of flashcards and have a competition to see who can get the highest score! Here are 5 games they wrote about: The Magic Show The Quick Flip The Hint/ Gesture Game The Slow Reveal The Pictionary
