Decades of research have identified study techniques that can vastly improve learning, but the most bitter truth is that most teachers don't practice them or only a few parents are aware of them. Fortunately, these strategies aren't complicated and can be easily practiced at home. Students often wait till the last minute, then make up for the lost time in a marathon revising session. This approach is not to be encouraged as it leads to short-term memory . The power of spaced study is to be enforced as the brain can retain many kinds of information longer if there is time to process the learned information between training sessions. Two revising sessions with time between them can result in twice as much learning as a single session of the same total length. One reason as to why this spaced training works out with all ages and ability groups is that the breakup time allows the brain to consolidate the newly learnt information. The next approach is to expose the kids to elaborative study techniques like short answers and reasoning rather than multiple-choice questions. You can take advantage of this fact by quizzing your child to improve his/her performance at school. A third way to improve the child's learning is mixing up. Children who see ten similar examples in a row learn considerably less than the children who see ten different examples. This strategy can be applied to work across domains like sport, art, science, maths or any other subject. Learning in multiple contexts gives your child's brain a deeper connection to the material.
At first, your child may find these approaches discouraging because they often result in more errors during studying- but with practice they will perform well in their exams with less effort. Sometimes new changes ought to be reinforced!
