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Study skills 101

How to help your child get a handle on studying

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Originally published in Today's Parent April 2010

Toronto marketing professional Graydon Lau has more than a few regrets when he thinks back to his test-taking days in school. It wasn’t that he was a bad student: Lau pulled in decent B grades. The problem was his habit of cramming. “I was a procrastinator — still am,” says the 44-year-old father of Taylor, 13, Mackenzie, nine, and Cameron, four. “Looking back at all the headaches and heartaches, I don’t want my kids to suffer like I did.” So he and his wife have made it a priority to instill good study habits in their school-aged kids.

With tests entering the school curriculum as early as grade one and building to exams in high school, it’s more important than ever for parents to help their kids learn effective study skills. Of course, there can be a fine line between offering support and stressing them out. “It’s not about pushing kids to get 100 percent, but pushing them to raise their own standard,” says Vivien Hui, director of the Kumon Math and Reading Centre in Richmond, BC. When they’re given the right tools and techniques, students are empowered — and motivated — to study independently.

Not sure how to get started? Here’s a cheat sheet of winning strategies to help students of all ages develop strong study skills.

Make "study" an action verb

Preparing for a test shouldn’t be a passive activity of reading and reviewing. The more creative and action-oriented kids are when studying, the more likely they are to recall the information during a test. Toronto mom Rosemary Greisman thinks that’s why her kids, Noah, 17, Greta, 16, Hannah, 13, and Lea, 12, study for science faster and better than other subjects; the fact that they’ve done experiments helps them remember the concepts.

Similarly, it’s easier to remember information generated by your own mind, so it can help to summarize chapters, organize notes under various headings or map connections between ideas. Or try having your child read a section and explain it to you in 10 words or less. Some kids might benefit from “teaching” the material to a friend or study partner. For math, Hui recommends taking mock tests, which some teachers and textbooks provide.

Younger kids might respond to acrostics (such as Never Eat Soggy Wheat for the points of a compass) or funny songs. “I made up a song for spelling: ‘There is no a in they,’” says former primary school teacher Carol Henderson, who’s currently president of the Alberta Teachers’ Association. Once they’re introduced to tricks like these, children will eventually build on them and figure out their own ways of learning, she says.

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