How to make your child excel in school

10 Ways to Help Your Child Succeed in Elementary School (for Parents)

Support from parents is key to helping kids do well academically. Here are 10 ways parents can put their kids on track to be successful students.

1. Attend Back-to-School Night and Parent-Teacher Conferences

Kids do better in school when parents are involved in their academic lives. Attending back-to-school night at the start of the school year is a great way to get to know your child's teachers and their expectations. School administrators may discuss school-wide programs and policies, too.

Attending parent-teacher conferences is another way to stay informed. These are usually held once or twice a year at progress reporting periods. The conferences are a chance to start or continue conversations with your child's teacher, and discuss strategies to help your child do his or her best in class. Meeting with the teacher also lets your child know that what goes on in school will be shared at home.

If your child has special learning needs, additional meetings can be scheduled with teachers and other school staff to consider setting up or revising individualized education plans (IEPs), 504 education plans, or gifted education plans.

Keep in mind that parents or guardians can request meetings with teachers, principals, school counselors, or other school staff any time during the school year.

2. Visit the School and Its Website

Knowing the physical layout of the school building and grounds can help you connect with your child when you talk about the school day. It's good to know the location of the main office, school nurse, cafeteria, gym, athletic fields, playgrounds, auditorium, and special classes.

On the school website, you can find information about:

• the school calendar
• staff contact information
• upcoming events like class trips
• testing dates

Many teachers maintain their own websites that detail homework assignments, test dates, and classroom events and trips. Special resources for parents and students are also usually available on the district, school, or teacher websites.

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3. Support Homework Expectations

Homework in grade school reinforces and extends classroom learning and helps kids practice important study skills. It also helps them develop a sense of responsibility and a work ethic that will benefit them beyond the classroom.

In addition to making sure your child knows that you see homework as a priority, you can help by creating an effective study environment. Any well-lit, comfortable, and quiet workspace with the necessary supplies will do. Avoiding distractions (like a TV in the background) and setting up a start and end time can also help.

A good rule of thumb for an effective homework and/or study period is roughly 10 minutes per elementary grade level. Fourth-graders, for example, should expect to have about 40 minutes of homework or studying each school night. If you find that it's often taking significantly longer than this guideline, talk with your child's teacher.

While your child does homework, be available to interpret assignment instructions, offer guidance, answer questions, and review the completed work. But resist the urge to provide the correct answers or complete the assignments yourself. Learning from mistakes is part of the process and you don't want to take this away from your child.

4. Send Your Child to School Ready to Learn

A nutritious breakfast fuels up kids and gets them ready for the day. In general, kids who eat breakfast have more energy and do better in school. Kids who eat breakfast also are less likely to be absent, and make fewer trips to the school nurse with stomach complaints related to hunger.

You can help boost your child's attention span, concentration, and memory by providing breakfast foods that are rich in whole grains, fiber, and protein, as well as low in added sugar. If your child is running late some mornings, send along fresh fruit, nuts, yogurt, or half a peanut butter and banana sandwich. Many schools provide nutritious breakfast options before the first bell.

Kids also need the right amount of sleep to be alert and ready to learn all day. Most school-age kids need 10 to 12 hours of sleep a night. Bedtime difficulties can arise at this age for a variety of reasons. Homework, sports, after-school activities, TVs, computers, and video games, as well as hectic family schedules, can contribute to kids not getting enough sleep.

Lack of sleep can cause irritable or hyperactive behavior and might make it hard for kids to pay attention in class. It's important to have a consistent bedtime routine, especially on school nights. Be sure to leave enough time before bed to allow your child to unwind before lights out and limit stimulating diversions like TV, video games, and Internet access.

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5. Teach Organizational Skills

When kids are organized, they can stay focused instead of spending time hunting things down and getting sidetracked.

What does it mean to be organized at the elementary level? For schoolwork, it means having an assignment book and homework folder (many schools supply these) to keep track of homework and projects.

Check your child's assignment book and homework folder every school night so you're familiar with assignments and your child doesn't fall behind. Set up a bin for papers that you need to check or sign. Also, keep a special box or bin for completed and graded projects and toss papers that you don't need to keep.

Talk to your child about keeping his or her school desk orderly so papers that need to come home don't get lost. Teach your child how to use a calendar or personal planner to help stay organized.

It's also helpful to teach your child how to make a to-do list to help prioritize and get things done. It can be as simple as:

1. homework
2. soccer
3. put clothes away

No one is born with great organizational skills — they need to be learned and practiced.

6. Teach Study Skills

Studying for a test can be scary for young kids, and many educators assume parents will help their kids during the grade-school years. Introducing your child to study skills now will pay off with good learning habits throughout life.

In elementary school, kids usually take end-of-unit tests in math, spelling, science, and social studies. Be sure to know when a test is scheduled so you can help your child study ahead of time rather than just the night before. You also might need to remind your child to bring home the right study materials, such as notes, study guides, or books.

Teach your child how to break down overall tasks into smaller, manageable chunks so preparing for a test isn't overwhelming. You also can introduce your child to tricks like mnemonic devices to help with recalling information. Remember that taking a break after a 45-minute study period is an important way to help kids process and remember information.

Your child probably will be introduced to standardized testing in elementary school. While students can't really study for standardized tests, some teachers provide practice tests to help ease students' worries.

In general, if studying and testing becomes a source of stress for your child, discuss the situation with the teacher or school counselor.

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7. Know the Disciplinary Policies

Schools usually cite their disciplinary policies (sometimes called the student code of conduct) in student handbooks. The rules cover expectations, and consequences for not meeting the expectations, for things like student behavior, dress codes, use of electronic devices, and acceptable language.

The policies may include details about attendance, vandalism, cheating, fighting, and weapons. Many schools also have specific policies about bullying. It's helpful to know the school's definition of bullying, consequences for bullies, support for victims, and procedures for reporting bullying.

It's important for your child to know what's expected at school and that you'll support the school's consequences when expectations aren't met. It's easiest for students when school expectations match the ones at home, so kids see both environments as safe and caring places that work together as a team.

8. Get Involved

Whether kids are just starting kindergarten or entering their last year of elementary school, there are many good reasons for parents to volunteer at school. It's a great way for parents to show they're interested in their kids' education.

Many grade-schoolers like to see their parents at school or at school events. But follow your child's cues to find out how much interaction works for both of you. If your child seems uncomfortable with your presence at the school or with your involvement in an extracurricular activity, consider taking a more behind-the-scenes approach. Make it clear that you aren't there to spy — you're just trying to help out the school community.

Parents can get involved by:

• being a classroom helper or homeroom parent
• organizing and/or working at fundraising activities and other special events, like bake sales, car washes, and book fairs
• chaperoning field trips
• planning class parties
• attending school board meetings
• joining the school's parent-teacher group
• working as a library assistant
• reading a story to the class
• giving a talk for career day
• attending school concerts or plays

Check the school or teacher website to find volunteer opportunities that fit your schedule. Even giving a few hours during the school year can make a strong impression on your child.

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9. Take Attendance Seriously

Sick kids should stay home from school if they have a fever, are nauseated, vomiting, or have diarrhea. Kids who lose their appetite, are clingy or lethargic, complain of pain, or who just don't seem to be acting "themselves" should also might benefit from a sick day.

Otherwise, it's important that kids arrive at school on time every day, because having to catch up with class work and homework can be stressful and interfere with learning.

If your child is missing a lot of school due to illness, make sure to check with the teacher about any work that needs to be completed. It's also a good idea to know the school's attendance policy.

Sometimes students want to stay home from school because of problems with classmates, assignments or grades, or even teachers. This can result in real symptoms, like headaches or stomachaches. If you think there's a problem at school, talk with your child — and then perhaps with the teacher — to find out more about what's causing the anxiety. The school counselor or school psychologist also might be able to help.

Also try to avoid late bedtimes, which can result in tardy and tired students. A consistent sleep schedule also can help students.

10. Make Time to Talk About School

It's usually easy to talk with elementary students about what's going on in class and the latest news at school. You probably know what books your child is reading and are familiar with the math being worked on. But parents can get busy and forget to ask the simple questions, which can have an effect on children's success at school.

Make time to talk with your child every day, so he or she knows that what goes on at school is important to you. When kids know parents are interested in their academic lives, they'll take school seriously as well.

Because communication is a two-way street, the way you talk and listen to your child can influence how well your child listens and responds. It's important to listen carefully, make eye contact, and avoid multitasking while you talk. Be sure to ask questions that go beyond "yes" or "no" answers.

Besides during family meals, good times to talk include car trips (though eye contact isn't needed here, of course), walking the dog, preparing meals, or standing in line at a store.

These early years of schooling are an important time for parents to be informed and supportive about their child's education and to set the stage for children to develop and grow as young learners.

Seven secrets to success: helping your child excel in school

Seven secrets to success: helping your child excel in school One of the most common questions that our teachers and principals receive is how parents can best support their child’s learning

One of the most common questions that our teachers and principals receive is how parents can best support their child’s learning. As a school leader, parent of five children, and Nord Anglia’s latest addition in Abu Dhabi, Ethan shares his advice on how parents can make the most of their child’s experience in school.

As parents, we encourage our children to reach high. As a lifelong educator, I help learners reach academic, university, and career goals. Personal and professional experiences show clear advantages when school and home work closely together. In addition, research repeatedly validates the immense benefit of parent involvement, as reported by prominent institutions such as University of Leicester and Harvard.

If two students otherwise have similar abilities and school quality, the one with focused parent support will enjoy a distinct advantage. While strategies abound for encouraging learning at home, the following points provide a focused path to success:

Reading is perhaps the most important key to learning. Help your child become an avid reader by finding topics of interest. Make family reading a way of life. A former student earned a perfect score on the SAT university admissions test. He said the most important advice he could give others is to read as much as possible, starting as early as possible. Read and succeed.

Talk with your child daily, about school and life in general. Help your child find strengths and interests, and encourage creativity. Communicate with teachers early when you have a question or concern. Volunteer at school and be an active learner and teacher.

How is this accomplished? By focusing on discrete habits. Aristotle says it best: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Fundamental habits that lead to success include attention, listening, organization, good conduct, sharing, and timeliness. Perhaps most important is the habit of respect to adults, peers, and self. Search “habit training for children” to find countless resources online.

When our children were young, magical joys included exploring a local creek for frogs and turtles, or jumping in fresh rain puddles. Taking walks in nature is one of the best ways to build a sense of wonder, peace, and gratitude.

Thomas Merton said, “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” How true this is for all of us! By sharing art, poetry, and music with your child, you help develop their humanity in profound ways, while giving them the gift of beauty.

Limit media that wastes time. Instead, encourage your child to use Khan Academy, Global Campus, and similar resources to accelerate learning. 

Model a lifestyle emphasizing good nutrition, fitness, and adequate rest. Help your child understand the enriching value of hobbies, sports, and other interests. When you take care of yourself, it becomes easier to take care of your child.

Infusing home life with these significant practices provides a foundation of learning that inevitably guides a child to school success and lifelong learning. As parents and teachers, we promote inquiry, wonder, and joy through practices such as these. Moreover, we help our children lead a full life.

5 answers to the question of how an ordinary child can become an excellent student

In order for a child to be successful in learning, it is necessary to create many conditions. The very first thing is the general readiness for the educational process. It is expressed in the manifestation of perseverance, attentiveness, the ability to be stress-resistant. Usually such readiness is born along with the appearance of age-related changes.

A child of primary school age has a high activity of the cognitive processes of the psyche, which help him remember information, analyze, and reason. Processes such as thinking, speech, imagination, memory are responsible for this. nine0003

Most of the first graders, developing in accordance with their age, have formed intuitive and logical thinking, optimal performance, good motor skills and a desire to study for one "five". Why, in this case, not all children are successful, given that their level of preparation is approximately the same?

Tips for parents to help their children become excellent students are given in this article.

We only do lessons in a good mood

Not everyone realizes that analytical readiness for learning can be good, and psychological readiness not so good. This can affect the desire to learn and the ability to understand the material. If a child is upset, angry, ill, or experiencing any other emotional discomfort, then the result of completing educational tasks is unlikely to be effective and will please parents.

The main thing is to study in a cheerful mood. Otherwise, the child will be distracted, think about what haunts him, do not follow the course of his thoughts, make mistakes. But this does not mean that a child, if he is not mentally prepared to complete a learning task, may refuse to do it. Parents should find out the cause of a bad mood, talk heart to heart, reassure, support, cheer, relieve anxiety. Then the lessons will be performed efficiently and easily. nine0003

We create comfortable conditions for learning

It is difficult for children to perform well in school tasks when there are no appropriate conditions. For example, the desktop and chair are not comfortable for the child, younger brothers or sisters are noisy in the room, the TV is loud, there are a lot of unnecessary items on the table, the lighting falls from the wrong side, and so on.

In such cases, it is difficult to concentrate attention, to completely immerse yourself in the learning process.

Parents should create conditions for their children to have full-fledged learning activities. The workplace of the child should correspond to the height and weight of the child, there should not be any extra items on the table. It is important to create silence during the execution of tasks. If there are other children in the family, you can send them for a walk or turn on the TV in the next room quietly, remove pets from the room so that the student is not distracted by playing with them. So children will get used to the fact that studying is an important thing. nine0003

Helping a child in first grade

Some parents believe that the child from the first days of school should do all the tasks on his own. If he doesn't do it - finds it difficult, refuses, makes many mistakes - they scold him, demonstrating the fear that he will never be an excellent student.

First graders are still small children. It will take several months before they finally adapt to the educational process, become more self-confident, responsible and independent. Before that happens, it is the responsibility of adults to help him. nine0003

Sit down for lessons together. You don’t have to do them for the child, just be there, observe, if necessary - prompt, guide, encourage. The beginning of educational activity is a crisis period, so the emotional support of parents, especially in the first months of education, is the key to a good mood for the child and successful studies in the future.

Scold less and praise more
To bring up an excellent student, it is worth giving up the habit of yelling and swearing every time a child makes a mistake or does not understand the material covered. As a rule, children become what their parents consider and call them - they subconsciously learn all the phrases and attitudes spoken by adults. It is difficult to say that a child will become an excellent student if the family laughs at his failures and teases him with a “loser”. nine0003

It is worth paying attention to success, praising personally and in front of the whole family - this will raise children's self-esteem, help them believe in themselves and form the desire to study even better in order to hear praise as often as possible.

Distributing the load correctly

Sometimes children who have good potential and all the prerequisites to study "excellent" are not successful students. The reason for this may be simple - excessive stress on the psyche and intellect. This happens when first-graders, in addition to studying, are engaged in other areas of activity: they study a foreign language, jump on a trampoline, swim, play football or attend a music school. Sometimes a child is so overloaded with additional education that he simply does not have the strength for school life. nine0003

How to avoid overload?

The optimal solution is to combine forms of education.

How to make an excellent student out of a child - practical and useful advice from a teacher | 76.ru

Alexander teaches history, social studies and law

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Everyone remembers from school how much homework they gave him. It seemed that the teachers of some subjects forget that the students have a dozen others. Forced to learn dates, formulas, solve problems. What is the problem here? 76.ru spoke with a young teacher of history, law and social studies from Yaroslavl, Alexander Nikiforov. He has been working at the school for three years and managed to understand why our education system is not ideal. He also gave advice to parents on how to help their child become an excellent student. nine0003

— When you see kids carrying giant briefcases, you feel sorry for them. On the other hand, what to do - now there is more information, you need to know more ... But is it possible? What are the most important problems in education today?

- I would like to point out a few points. For example, the fact that work programs contain a very large amount of information that a student must remember during the year. But children are not able to learn all this. And this is one of the reasons for the low performance. This is not only history, this situation applies to most subjects. We, teachers, are trying to minimize the percentage of what will be misunderstood and forgotten. My colleague said this about it: the head of a student is like a three-liter jar, where you need to pour four liters. nine0011

Another problem is that the teaching profession has lost its prestige. In Soviet times, the word "teacher" even sounded proud. Now the image of a teacher in the eyes of society has been formed incorrectly: this is the one who earns little and works a lot. This is not the image that motivates people to go to work in education.

Although you can look at it from different angles: a teacher is a person who explains how the world works.

There is also a problem that our education is streamlined. There are very large classes. When there are 35 completely different people in the class, it is impossible to adapt to everyone in 45 minutes. In large classes, there is always a gap: part of the class will complete the task in 15 minutes, the other in half an hour. A teacher should work with everyone equally. It turns out, equalization. Everything is the same for everyone. Those who do it quickly get bored. Those who can’t cope are more likely to give up, saying that it won’t work anyway. nine0011

Some students do not stay up and leave the 10th and even 11th grades

Photo: Alexandra Savelyeva

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Another problem is that children who do not want to study come to grades 10-11. Not everyone is motivated to go to high school. Such students come to sit out. Every year I observe how 10 people leave the 10th and even 11th grades. It turns out that they do not get a profession, and they lose time.

- How to solve this problem? nine0077

The teacher believes that the child should not use the Internet at home while doing homework. What part of your personal life should a teacher not show on social media?

— It seems to me that the specifics of work in any state institutions require a certain degree of officialdom. You need to "keep your face". For example, a police officer can even walk around bare-chested during off-duty hours, but there are still certain limits that must be observed. However, everyone's position is different on this matter. I separate my personal life and my work life. I have two different pages in social networks, one of which is completely hidden. I don't want to show my life. But I don’t blame the positions of other teachers who show photos and how they live. Moreover, we are talking more about young teachers, and their proportion is so small that it is difficult to call this a common problem. nine0003

How to behave in social networks, each teacher decides for himself

Photo: Alexandra Savelyeva

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— Should the school be engaged in education?

— The school itself includes an educational component. The school system, discipline - this is education. Most schools have introduced a business uniform, which also teaches to be organized. But what other education should the school do? The child comes into the system and must abide by its rules. The task of parents is to invest in them the concepts of adequate behavior in society. The child must come prepared for the school system. nine0003

— You are also a class teacher. Do you have any advice for parents of students? How much should they worry about their child, interfere in his life?

— It was a discovery for me that children are actually left to their own devices for too much time, living without parental control. It often happens that parents do not double-check what the child tells them about their successes. It all ends with a dialogue: “Are you doing well, did you do your homework? Yes, I'm fine". And in fact - no. Can go deuce in a quarter. And no one controls the child. It also happens: "I bought clothes for the child, fed him - on this my mission is completed." And it happens more often than you might imagine. Often, parents refer to fatigue and being very busy at work. And I believe that they may not have the strength to double-check everything. This is a lot of work. nine0011

Parents need to check more often how their child is doing

Photo: Alexandra Savelyeva

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— The most important advice here is to control. Do not be lazy to take on this responsibility, to participate in the life of the child more than just financially. It’s not always even necessary to go through physics and chemistry again, it’s enough to talk more with the child, check what exactly he did, sit next to him. Do not scold endlessly for deuces - this makes no sense. The child may simply not realize that something needs to be done to improve. And he gets punished by his parents and that's it. The role of parents is not to punish, but to ask: “What is the problem? Let's figure it out." In a situation where he is given two at school, his parents scream at home, the child feels simply unhappy. nine0011

It is necessary to accustom the child to systematic thinking and clearly allocate his time

Photo: Alexandra Savelyeva

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— Also, accustom your child to systematic studies so that he knows that, for example, he will definitely devote an hour a day to lessons. I have one of my students who can't be said to be a genius, but he has a systematic mind that makes him an excellent student. Every day he goes after school to a sports training, and after it he does his homework. And he knows for sure that he will have free time only after he finishes his lessons.

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