10 Effective Homework Tips to Help Your Child Succeed in School
At every grade, your kids are going to get assigned homework. With busy work schedules, balancing work and family life can be quite challenging. When it comes to helping your kids improve their homework skills, you probably have some ideas on what to do, but need a little direction on how to get started. Homework is important, but helping your children with studying isn’t an easy task. But we’re here for you! Here are ten studying tips that can make homework easier for everyone!
1. Ask The Teacher For Their Own Homework Tips
First and foremost, before your kids start studying at home, go straight to the source and talk to your child’s teacher. Ask the teacher: what their homework rules are. Teachers understand that managing homework at home can be a challenge, so don’t be afraid to ask them for their own personal study tips. They’ll be sure to give you some insight that can get your creative juices flowing for making homework a fun activity.
2. Give Short Study Breaks For Kids With ADD and ADHD
A lot of parents want to know if there are any specific study tips for kids with ADD and ADHD. First, you need to make sure that you divide their homework tasks into small sections. This is the first step on how to focus with ADHD.
Let’s say, they have ten math questions to complete for homework. Divide them into two or three questions, then once they are done the third question, give your kids with ADD a three-minute break. Do not give them breaks for more than five minutes, as their attention might get diverted into something else and it’ll be harder to get them back to doing their homework. In the case of ADHD and studying, less is more. The less time you give them on break time, the more homework they will get done.
3. Get Your Kids to Develop Their Own Homework Skills
Since your kids are going to do all the studying at home, sit down with them and create an outline of their homework schedule. This is particularly useful for high school study tips because teenagers usually want to provide their own input on when they want to study and for how long. We all know that kids study at their own pace, so while they study, they will eventually get comfortable with their own homework skills.
For example, if they have math and English for homework. They may want to get the hard subject out of the way and then do the easiest subject after. While some other kids studying at home want to do the easiest subject first, then work up the energy to do the hard subject after. Let them.
“Find an ICAN Education center in Toronto”
4. Get Your Kids Studying in a Fun Study Corner
You don’t want your kids to come home from a long day at school and cringe at the thought of doing homework. You know what the solution is? Set up a fun study corner! Let your kids pick out the desk and chair and help you set up their own personal study corner. If they like a particular kid’s character like Spiderman or Dora The Explorer, go all out, and stock up on school supplies of that very character. Make sure to get a bright desk lamp that will help them stay focused!
For kids with ADD, it’s a good idea to create two different fun study corners as they might get used to one corner and get distracted. With two different study corners, you can change it up and this will help them to focus and not get bored easily.
5. Disconnect From All Multi-Media Gadgets
Looking at cell phones, television, iPads, and laptops are very distracting when kids are studying. The best way to improve your kids’ homework skills is to let them disconnect from all multi-media gadgets. If they need to use a dictionary, do not let them use the computer, give them a paperback dictionary, instead. If they need to look information up online, let them do it right before their study break end, have them write it down, and then continue with their homework.
Watch a quick video on homework tips
6. Set a Timer
Another way to improve your kids’ homework skills is to get a timer and set the timer on their desk or around their study corner during homework time. Let’s say they have math for homework, ask them how long they think it will take them to finish their math homework. If they say they need about thirty minutes, set the timer for two intervals of 15 minutes each. For kids with ADD, divide thirty minutes, into 5-minute intervals with 2 minute breaks in between.
7. Mix Things Up
If your child prefers to do a little math, a little reading, and then back to math, that’s totally fine! This goes back to letting your kids develop their own homework skills. They will get used to studying at their own pace and mixing things up from math to English may help them retain information later during test time.
8. Motivate Your Kids With Review Games
At the end of the school week, your kids probably won’t want to look at another text book again. So make reviewing fun! In order to remember what they learned during the previous school week, play a word game with them that included the vocabulary they had to use. Use a white board to play hangman and have them guess the words they learned.
If they had science homework, get a neat science magazine or newspaper article that covered the topic they had to study about and read it together. After they can talk about it with you and apply it to real life.
9. Reward Their Homework Efforts
Once you’re finished reviewing your kids’ homework for the week, create a checklist and check off everything that was completed for the week. To keep your kids motivated to study, reward finished homework with a treat of their choice.
If they want ice cream, give them their favourite flavour. If they want to go to the movies, let them choose the movie they want to see. With hard work comes rewards, and completing homework is one of those tasks that definitely needs to be positively rewarded.
“See the list of ICAN Education 2018 Summer Programs of Academic Enhancement and Enrichment Activities”
10. If Homework Problems Still Continue, Consider ICAN Education Tutoring
If the nine previous homework tips still don’t help your kids’ homework skills, consider enrolling your kids at ICAN Education. You’d be amazed at what two hours a week of tutoring can do to help your kids with ADD focus on completing their homework. Even if your kids don’t have ADD, tutoring can help them develop good study habits and even improve their grades. All ICAN Education tutors are certified in their chosen subjects and can help your kids achieve effective homework skills.
Interested in enrolling your child at ICAN Education? You need to book a FREE Assessment, by clicking here.
After your child has completed the FREE assessment, we can discuss the suitable tutoring programme best suited for your child.
ICAN Education has several locations in the GTA West, Mississauga, Brampton, Milton, and Burlington. To locate the closest ICAN Education centre near you, click here.
Do you have any studying tips that you’d like to share? Let us know by posting your comments below and let’s move the conversation to Twitter @icanedu. We appreciate your comments and questions, so don’t forget to ‘Like’ our Facebook page and drop us a message!
Here’s a quick checklist to get homework done!
