It’s only natural to worry about your child’s success at school. We live in a world of high expectations, where five GCSEs are the minimum requirement for giving your child the edge. The good news is that their potential can be easily developed from a young age and success can stem from simple everyday attitudes and examples. These days, there’s plenty of information readily-available on the topic.
Today I am going to tell you three ways you can support your child’s learning and potential to do well at school
Failure is the key to success
We all know that learning from mistakes is a key part of life, and any skill requires a period of incompetence in order to get competent. Teaching children to try, try again is the best way to increase their learning and develop their success in any field. But how do you do this?
A great example is to teach them to play chess, it’s been described as the perfect teaching tool because of all the positive effects it has on children’s logic, problem-solving and strategic planning. Memory, maths, imagination and creativity all get a boost during a game of chess and learning to lose gracefully and good sportsmanship are part and parcel of a good game of chess.
Allow your child to follow their passions
It’s no use trying to impress your own thoughts and interests onto your child. To push kids in one direction or another with the hope of finding the golden ticket is to deny them the opportunity to figure out what really makes them tick.
Instead of pushing your children to take part in activities that every other family is doing, take the time to get to know and understand your child’s interests. Observe your child at play, ask open-ended questions and listen when your child shares their dreams. One of the top secondary schools in Leicester has the aim to develop intellectual curiosity, academic excellence and a life-long love of learning and this can start with encouraging individual thinking and interests.
If your child shows specific interest and takes a lot of joy in a certain topic at school, they will find it a lot easier to excel. Spending time with them as they connect and enjoy a subject will also give insight into ways we can help transfer that joy to a less loved topic.
Involve games in learning
Albert Einstein said that play is the highest form of research and if you can turn learning into a game, children, who are hard-wired to play, will respond and learn much more quickly. Using games in teaching can help increase student participation, foster social and emotional learning, and motivate students to take risks, especially for students who may struggle to focus or find their niche in learning. Reward a good school week with some screen time.
Educational games are a great tool for building the foundation math and language skills that today’s primary school curriculum requires. You might not believe it, but games like Scrabble or Hangman can inspire a love of words where reading a book might be a struggle. In fact, Scrabble is widely recognised as having benefits for literacy rates. Children can develop important skills while they play.
Last Updated on June 22, 2023 by Lucy Clarke
