Did you or your student fall short of your academic Goals this Fall?
Well you’re in Luck! Use these 4 Tips to help improve your New Year, New Beginning, and Fresh Start this Spring
Tip # 1 Communication
Parents should email, schedule a parent teacher conference, and be in constant contact with student’s teachers. Teachers help students more when they see their parents are involved and concern. In a perfect world, we would expect a teacher to go above and beyond for every student but, that is just not the case.
Furthermore, we have seen first hand the difference in building a relationship with the teacher. As apart of Math-A-Matics Tutoring services, we will reach out to student’s teachers with parent’s permission. Teachers allow students to re-take quizzes, actually see their exams (since teacher are not returning exams to students to see their mistakes), and offer more guidance and attention to the student once they know a parent has gotten a tutor involved. Just getting low-grade alerts and periodically getting on your student to study or complete assignments is not enough. It is very important to build a relationship with the teacher to understand where the student went wrong, if there is a legacy gap, or a possible behavior issue.
College Students
Similarly, college students your professor’s office hours can save your life. This designated time can prove to your teacher you care about the class, give you the opportunity to get extra help, and become more than just another name on the roster. This small amount of time out of your day and a little extra effort can make a difference especially if you are borderline passing or right on the 79/89 mark and you really want that ‘B’ or ‘A’. Remember it is the professor that “Gives” the grade and makes the final decision on your failure or success in their class. We have personally seen this make a huge difference even in classes with a large number of students where it may be hard to make a connection with the professor.
Tip # 2 Get Organized. I repeat… Get Organized.
We know this is one you have heard time and time again but it is imperative to be get ORGANIZED. We have encountered students from elementary through college and the ones struggling and lost in their classes all have the same problem! They whip out a binder, folder, or messy notebook with 5 other subjects, papers falling out and at random pick a paper out to share that they know they forgot they even had.(smh)
Our Motto is: If you can’t find it, you can’t study it!
We recommend getting separate binders for the classes you or your student are having the most trouble with. Grab some dividers and label them homework, quizzes, notes, etc. Additionally, organizing all fall semester information can be helpful because everything learned in the spring semester builds upon this information. Making fall semester information a useful resource to refer back to things you may have forgotten.
Tip # 3 Time Management
We always make time for the fun extra curricular activities like hanging with friends, video games, basketball, cheerleading, and music, and we know the times for all of our favorite television shows but, can you recall the last time you studied? Do you really go out of your way to make time to study or does your student just squeeze a small window of time in when test day is approaching? You must make time for studying just like we make time for all the fun activities.
Helpful to tips:
- Keep a Log: So you know how much time your actually putting into studying and gauge which times are most effective for which subjects. We give this Study Log to students who need help identifying their effective study time.
- Find a quiet study location: Don’t study in the bed under the covers, you are just asking to fall asleep. Avoid areas like the living room where the TV is on and or siblings are playing.
- Take Breaks and Review Material: Reviewing is when learning and reinforcement truly takes places.
Tip # 4 Eliminate Distraction
Calling all Smartphones, tablets, and electronics!!!! I repeat… ALL ELECTRONICS must GO!
You must be honest with yourself, are you really studying on your electronics or chatting with friends, checking Facebook, using Snap Chat, IG, Periscope and telling everyone your studying but really are not? As hard as it may seem you have to cut the cord on your electronic devices to fully concentrate and focus in on what you’re studying.
Gather the materials needed to study and if something is on the web that you need either print it out before hand or log out of programs you know are causing you not to focus when using your devices for studying. Some examples would be muting i-messages and setting up automated don’t disturb due to studying for tools you can’t simply log off. Yes, your smart devices do have this feature.
Test these 4 Tips out this Spring Semester and watch the improvement.