1-day memory workshop for kids

Electronic entertainment - Not a boon to an infant

Many of today's children are growing up with continuous access to electronic media right from the time they get up till the time they hit the hay. Many marketers claim that exposing children to baby videos gives a head start but research shows that the opposite is true. The new media environment is a recent occurrence and no one still knows the full extent of exposing children to a constant stream of this stimuli. However it is a well known fact that babies brains are optimized to learn from social interactions. Exposing the kids to this new media world reduces the time they spend with other people and thereby can impair many aspects of their development. Multiple studies have shown that infant TV watching is correlated with poor language development. A Thai study published that children under 12 months who watched TV for more that 2 hours a day had a six-fold increase in the risk of language delay.

Exposure to baby TV watching is also associated with reduced cognitive ability. The quick and bright colours may also interfere with the normal development of attention. Studies reveal that electronic entertainment has no benefit and clear costs before the age of 2. However, educational TV exposures for older nursery-school-aged children is a mixed blessing (though it has its own pros and cons) depending on the information it offers. In this light "Go outside and play" is backed not only by commonsense but by modern brain research too!

Believe in your memory

We might have seen many people writing down everything they wish to remember on a piece of paper. Now my question is that, does this really help you out? As an educationalist, I would say that if you write things down with the intent of aiding your memory (as in case of kids for cramming poems etc.), then its fine. However, if you consider it as a substitute for memory, you are going to miserably fail because your memory will get worse through neglect and non-use. Please keep in mind that the memory should be trusted. The more you trust it, the more reliable and useful it will become. Writing down everything on paper, without trying to remember, is all against the basic rules of strong memory. This actually means

1. you are not trusting your memory;

2. neglecting the confidence in your memory ;

3. not exercising your memory;

4. your interest is not strong enough in retaining it.

I have had many parents complaining about the terrible memories of their children because they can't remember their school work and consequently score low grades. Yet, some of these same children are too good in remembering the cricket scores or the batting averages of top batsman. So can we stamp them as kids with poor memory? Absolutely no, it is only their lack of interest in academics and memory is not to be blamed. If kids can remember things that they are interested in to such a tremendous degree, it proves that they have a good memory. Hence this true memory needs to be believed in the first hand for proper training. Only then can any brain training sessions be successful. So start believing in your true memory!

Studying strategies for kids

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!

Exam Scores - an absolute measure for ability?

Exams have a role to play in helping us identify children's strength, but they are just one way of trying to measure ability.That's it. There isn't a single test in this whole world that can absolutely measure the full extent of your child's individual gifts and talents. This is because the point at which the individual skills begin or end cannot be measured. Well, there are of course well-researched tests that are valid and reliable but they are based on statistical averages. However, these cannot change the fact that each child is unique, brilliant and beaming with their own skills. The exams should not aim to find out what your child does or doesn't happen to know. Rather, they should be more geared to make the child use their independent thinking to find solutions to problems for themselves. By all accounts of genius in history, not all have not sailed through the path of academic exams to reach the position where they are now. On the contrary, they identified their own strengths to make it to the top!

Child's natural ability

Any parent who has spent hours trying to sort out their laptop, or struggled all week to stop their digital watch going off every 10 minutes, only to have their 6-year-old fix it for them in under 10 minutes. I think you got exactly what I mean! A child doesn't know that something is highly complex until we tell  them so. If we pre-condition them into thinking their ability, it actually means that we are putting brakes on them even before they get started. Let us consider a scenario wherein children learn to ride a bicycle. Despite the difficulties involved in learning it, lots of children successfully tackle the situation. How? This is because they don't see it as a problem but as an opportunity. They are not worried about the process but their focus is on the goal. No one ever told them to be "super-smart" to do that. When they fall off a couple of times and get hurt, they never link it to a failure instead they succeed after a number of tries. Hence this process of finding solution is a natural ability for both children and even adults!

But if we are using this natural ability, then why is that when children are faced with abstract problems they find it difficult to solve? The solution is that they should always try to find a way into the problem. Unless they train themselves not to let the situation throw them, they may panic at this stage. The problem may look alien to the children, but that does not mean that they lack the skill, knowledge or experience to solve it. The trick is being able to transfer what they already know to the 'strange situation' they are looking at. By training them on few 'tricks of genius' and helping them to master the art of solution-finding, they will be able to unlock and maximize their natural gift whenever they need to!  

A memorable day at the Vidyatheertha foundation award function - Chennai

 

The Sunset fell past the horizon, as a black haze fixed itself over the sky, perilous lightning strikes filled the sky, and the moon glowed over the sky, creating a gloomy look over the waxing sky. But the Sringeri Mutt Hall at Mandavelli was beaming with radiant lights and over pouring with students from all important schools of Chennai and gearing itself to announce the winners of the Inter-school essay competition (TOPIC - The Efficacy of Chanting mantras). Sri Vidyatheertha Foundation has been conducting Inter-School essay competition from the year 1995 as per the directions of His Holiness Jagadguru Sri Bharathi Theertha Mahaswamigal in the city of Chennai.This time as many as 2100 students took part in this event and this is the highest turnout in the last 18 years.  I happened to be a part of this function that inculcates moral, ethical, traditional and patriotic values in students. What mesmerized me (particularly in this function) were the words of Smt C.P. Vijayalakshmi, Asst Director, Doordarshan Kendra who emphasized on the utterance of namah' s of lord. She preached that even an illiterate who is not exposed to the Vedic mantras can attain moksha if he just utters the name of his God. Her lectures on the divine path and mantras were so encouraging and inspiring to kids who attended the function that day. As rightly said that we are in the Kaliyuga, I personally feel that such kind of exposure is required for children of these ages.It was indeed a memorable day in my life!