Ready or not, here it comes: the start of a brand new school year!
With school starting up, your schedule may already be jam-packed with activities. If you start feeling like there just is not enough time in the day, please let us know so we can help!
Our goal at Action Karate Plymouth Meeting is to help your child be more successful, not just in martial arts, but at home and in school.
We want you to have your best school year ever and reach your martial arts goals at the same time!
That’s why we came up with a few Back To School Success Tips to help you start the school year off with a bang!
1. Write Out A Daily Schedule
Write out a schedule, listing the time your child will get up, eat breakfast, and leave for school. Plan out the entire day, all the way to what time your child will get home, have dinner, do homework, and go to bed.
Post this on your refrigerator or use a small white board.
2. Plan Out Your Routines
Start preparing daily routines now.
Sit down with your child and discuss how long it will take them to get ready in the morning so you know their proper wake-up time. Run through a few rehearsal days before the new school year.
Children typically undervalue the time it takes for them to wash, brush, dress, and eat. A few practice runs will show them just how long they actually need to get ready in the morning, and will help the transition be much smoother on the first day of school.
3. Establish The Rules
Setting and implementing fair rules and reasonable consequences for misbehavior does not make you a “mean” parent. Quite the opposite!
Rules can keep your child safe, healthy, and focused, and unappealing consequences (like temporarily losing cell phone, video game, or TV privileges) can provide strong motivation for your child to do what is right.
Rules and consequences are powerful parenting tools…use them!
4. Show Lots Of Love
This goes without saying, but your child needs unconditional love during the back-to-school season — and every season.
When children feel secure in their parents’ love, they tend to be more successful, confident, and responsible at school and at home and tend to be more well-adjusted later down the road in their adult life, too.
I read an article written by a child physiologist that stated that we need 18 hugs a day for good mental health, so pour on the love! You really can’t “overdo” it!
5. Remove All Distractions While Studying
If your child has annoying siblings coming in and out of their room yelling, or if they have a cell phone ready to ring at any moment, they are bound to waste time.
Remove all distractions as best as you can. Let your child study in a quiet and comfortable room, or let them go to the library or a friend’s house to study.
6. Finish All Assignments At Least One Day Before They’re Due
This includes homework, unfinished classwork, and projects.
Help your child prioritize their work into two different piles: “Due Sooner” and “Due Later”. That way they can finish the assignments that are due sooner, first. Remind them that all work must still be neat and presentable, regardless of how little time they may have to complete it.
7. Always Hand In Neat Homework
Teachers normally have better impressions of students with better-looking papers, even if they may not be as good as a messy one.
This will not necessarily help improve grades immediately. But a good impression will make it much easier for your child to communicate with their teacher, and the teacher may be more inclined to help a student that is obviously putting in their best effort. This, in turn, may help contribute to better grades in the long run.
8. Have A Positive Attitude Towards Every Task
Your child should approach every assignment, test, and exam with a positive attitude.
Have them tell themselves, “I WILL ace this!” before every project or exam. You’ll be surprised by how much this can help!
Feeling confident is proven to help students be more serious and makes them study harder the night before.
9. Learn From The Habits Of Successful Students
Encourage your child to observe their fellow classmates that are succeeding in class.
Be sure they understand the difference between being inspired by someone and mimicking them. Your child shouldn’t feel like they have to copy their classmate’s every move and plan. But picking up on things like studying habits and how they prioritize their time may help influence your child to make some positive changes in their own routines.
10. Learn From The Habits Of Unsuccessful Students
Obviously, just as watching successful students may help inspire your child to make positive changes in their habits, watching unsuccessful students may highlight shortfalls in your child’s approach to schoolwork. Changes can then be made to rectify these habits and ultimately lead to better grades.
11. Be As Organized As You Can
It takes about 5 minutes for an unorganized person to find their things. Multiply that by the number of after-school activities your child will have to hunt down equipment for, the number of homework assignments that require a search throughout the house for lost books or notes…all of a sudden all of your free time is gone!
A good 20-30 minutes will be wasted if your child is not organized. That time can be spent finishing an assignment early and having a few extra minutes of downtime for a video game or your child’s favorite show!
12. Review Notes Immediately After Class
If not, encourage your child to review them in study hall and/or at home.
Reviewing notes once a day for 5 minutes will highly increase your child’s chances of remembering them. If they didn’t take notes, create or write on index cards at home – pulling information from their textbook – and follow the same process.
13. Study With A Friend Or Parent
Your child’s learning is not limited to a certified teacher! They can learn from various sources, such as a classmate or parent.
This is a great way to bond with your child while staying involved in what they’re learning in class.
Who knows…you may learn something, too!
14. Don’t Hesitate To Get Help
It seems pretty obvious, but some students are too shy to get help or just don’t care enough to do so.
If your child is comfortable asking for help, they will be able to understand the material easier and help them feel prepared to get an “A”. They can study all they want, but if they don’t seek help in fully understanding what they’re learning, they will never achieve the grades they’re striving for.
Follow these simple back-to-school success tips to help make this school year the best one ever!
Action Karate Plymouth Meeting is here to help you and your child all year long! We love seeing our students succeed in everything that they do!
