Being successful in school starts with being organized and focused at home. With a few basic guidelines, organizing can get started today. Does your student have a place where she can study without interruption? It can be fun to be in the middle of family activities when studying and completing homework, but it’s a distraction.
When your student is doing homework, it’s not just about completing the assignment, it’s also about mastering the content being studied. It is about building knowledge about concepts and principles that are the framework for the course of study.
Even in the elementary grades, time alone to study helps reinforce good study habits. One idea I have used is to make good use of time by using flash cards to learn math facts and word spelling. You can get index cards and let them write their words on one side and the meaning on the other. These cards can stand upright in a narrow shoebox or plastic container for easy reference. Flash cards for core subjects can also be purchased. My children carried those cards with them and studied when they had even a few minutes in the car.
You can help them make their own flashcards about the facts they are studying by pasting the picture of the animal, country or even a letter and letting the student design the back by writing the facts they need to learn. These can be studied in your alone time and then you can have a fun time going over them together. Learning is not just a chore, it’s fun, if you present it that way. Making the cards helps the student to organize their thoughts and facts at the same time.
Learning to organize study time is essential in those early years. Take a piece of paper and make a list of what needs to be done and how long it should take. As a task is completed, let the student check it off the list. This gives instant recognition and a sense of success. It is important that they calculate this schedule themselves. As a parent, it’s tempting to help and micromanage children and this doesn’t foster self-sufficiency and a sense of being able to accomplish tasks on their own.
It doesn’t have to be a complicated system, you can just make boxes that your child can label with homework and cross it off when finished. A simple kitchen timer that doesn’t make an annoying noise works best for this.
Design a study space that contains room to write and a place to store all the supplies needed to complete schoolwork. Keeping this space organized and uncluttered is important, even if the rest of the room isn’t neat and tidy. The desk and the area around it can be the starting point for becoming an organized student.
