HOW TO MAKE LEARNING BETTER FOR YOUR 10-YEAR-OLD

The only difference between learning schoolwork and the latest TV show’s title is that schoolwork comes with tests. When kids think about school, they think of tests and homework. Kids don’t love these aspects of school, but tests can help enhance and measure learning. To help kids, the first thing you can do is set a positive attitude towards school work. 

Create A Positive Attitude Towards Schoolwork

A lot of kids ask: What’s the point of schoolwork? 

And while kids may easily lose motivation from bad grades, grades don’t determine or show their true learning ability. Teachers now use individualized tests like i-Ready to identify a child’s specific strengths and weaknesses to enhance learning. 

Show The Relevance Of Schoolwork To The Future

Connect schoolwork to your child’s interests and to real life. Math is all around us, for example, in the kitchen, while you are shopping or cooking. So is reading: magazines, books, road signs, websites, cartoons are all opportunities for your kids to engage with the world around them. 

Empathize With Your Child

Sometimes school and learning can be challenging. Show your child that it’s OK to struggle, that they can learn from and overcome challenges. You can show them how you might struggle with something like a new recipe or a new work assignment, and give them strategies for tackling a new skill or challenge. 

Embrace Tough Questions Together

Show the importance of learning the tough subjects. Let your child in on your everyday hardships to show them that allows us to grow as people.

Beyond sympathizing with low grades, help your 10-year-old improve the scores by getting hands-on in their education. If your child struggles in math, give them a math question every day. Track their math improvement using assessment tools like i-Ready levels.

Be Your Child’s Study Partner And Tutor 

Take part in your child’s schoolwork by:

• Have open conversations about schoolwork, the school, the teachers, your child’s experience, etc.
• Use all available resources to enhance the learning experience. Use different learning styles and learning materials.
• Discuss the things that your child learns in class and relate the lessons to real-life experience as much as possible.
• Track your child’s academic progress. Go through your child’s i-Ready answers together, discuss their areas for growth, and celebrate successes.
• Create a study haven for your child. Allow them to dictate what it looks like, the decoration, and who gets in their space.
• Give your child a question every day. As they research the question, they learn a lot in the process.
• Use every waking moment as a learning experience. Take walks and discuss the things you come across. Let your child read the labels in the supermarket for you. Ask your child to do small math tasks like calculating the change you should get from the cashier.
• Be a role model. Share with your child your discoveries and things you know. Introduce a different perspective to learning that does not involve classrooms and teachers. Go on adventures together and teach her about the birds, the animals, the history of that place. Chances are, you will fascinate her enough to want to learn things herself.

Develop Your Child’s Love For Reading

Text is the primary way that schoolwork is presented. If your child enjoys reading, they are less resistant to books. Do these things to make your 10-year-old love reading.

• Spend some time every day reading together. You can make it a family routine to read every day.
• Have written materials everywhere. Get comic books, kid’s magazines, newspapers, storybooks, etc. Let your child stick papers on her walls. You can even have a reading room with books and magazine excerpts stuck on the wall.
• Switch up between screen time and reading time. Instead of watching movies all the time, get her storybooks to entertain herself when you take away the remote.

Use Game-Based Learning

Expand beyond books. Use games to teach math and critical thinking. Games like Chess, Sudoku, joining dots, finding missing words, and other logical games enhance your child’s reasoning. Reasoning is a primary ingredient to learning. The other part is memorizing what they are taught. Brainstorming, dictations, and quizzes sharpen memory skills. Here are more examples of learning games for ten-year-olds.

Instead of giving rewards for every study goal your son achieves, turn his goal achievements into a long-term investment. 

For example, what if he earned a point for every goal achieved? When these points get to say, 100, he can get maybe an hour of screen time, or he could save and earn more points to redeem them at 500 points for his favorite toy?

It takes an average of 66 days for a task to become routine. By the 66th day, doing homework (or whatever the goal was) can become automatic. If the goal was to do a math question every day, by the 66th day that habit will be established and may lead to gains in math learning.