With the start of a new term comes the opportunity for reflection. Taking the time to review what worked the last term and what didn’t will help identify the easiest areas for improvement. There are a few things that you can do to help prepare your child for the new term, to make sure they start off on the right foot.

1. Go For The Easy Improvements

Targeting incremental improvement is about doing more of what worked as much as it is about limiting or eliminating what didn’t work. Expecting a student to go from a C to an A is unreasonable in a lot of cases. As it often takes discipline and good habits (among other things) to achieve top grades but the focus should be on effort and progress. Take the time to sit down with your child and honestly assess what worked well and what didn’t the last term. It may only take 10-15 minutes of honest assessment to unearth some great insights into how you can leverage what’s working for your child especially for this new school term.

2. Make A Plan For The New Term

Begin to prepare for a long-term plan. It is much easier to keep a plan up to date throughout the new term if you have one started. Print out a monthly calendar from a program such as in Outlook or Excel. List out any key dates throughout the term as you become aware of them.

Lastly, make sure you keep the planner somewhere in plain sight, this will also help you stay on top of what your child is up to, as you will be able to see whether the planner is being updated regularly.

3. Commitment Goal Setting

When goal setting with students we generally categorise goals into two different categories, results and commitment. A results-based goal is simply an overall goal such as a specific grade in a subject. Whereas a commitment goal is often used to help a student target deadlines or a set amount of study each day or week. Goals should be discussed in consultation with students, letting students assign their own goals is important to their ongoing internal motivation. Read more about goal setting techniques here.

4. Plan Suitable Study Locations

It has been proven that studying in different locations can help improve memory and recall. Everyone is different, some people work better with ambient noise, others don’t. Test out different locations to see what works best for your child. Replace any stationary that ran out or may be broken, there is nothing worse for focus and motivation than having to stop and go and find another pen because the one that you have has run out of ink. Brainstorm a couple of different study locations and plan to rotate your study locations.

Get One-On-One Support

If your child could use help with a specific subject or you would like one of our certified tutors to work through these strategies and more to ensure a productive and successful new term, call and speak to one of our consultants today on 1300 4200 79 or click here and fill in the form and your regional manager will be in touch.