Study Smart

[zac's mum]

It depends on which age. Generally for primary school I’d look at the exam format and work backwards from there. See where the weaker components are, then find targeted advice/tips to improve that component.

[floppy]

bbbay\" post_id=\"2023140\" time=\"1620448592\" user_id=\"175278:

Dear parents

Any advice on how to “study smart” for our child? Please share what have worked for your child, so that other parents may consider teaching it to their child.

To study smart means there’s no magic formula or magic potion that can be duplicated and applied on every child. You have to consider each child’s personality, strengths, weaknesses and learning style.

Example. Some children can learn how magnets behave just by reading / visualizing; other children will need to physically touch, feel and play in order to learn. At home, we can do the former easily but usually lack the resources / materials to do the latter. As a result, some child cannot learn despite spending a lot of time on books due to the mismatch in learning style.

[floppy]

Another aspect of “studying smart” is to know when to move on.


It is important to understand what is “good enough” for every child. For some, that could be 50%, for another 90%. While it’s ideal that we all score 100%, that’s practically impossible. Don’t try to boil the ocean. That said, asking parents to let go is often harder than telling the child to study

It’s also common for children (or parents to insist them) to spend equal amount of time on every topic / subject. It looks good on paper but that’s not meaningful. Some times, it’s better off not revising or to spend minimum time on a topic. The last marks are often the toughest and it’s not worthwhile to spend 80% effort to chase 20% of marks.

[SG_KP1]

Marginal analysis and diminishing marginal returns. Maybe microecon should be a compulsory subject?


Added benefit for AL – where can I spend my time to hopefully jump the next/most AL levels…

[sharonkhoo]

I copied this from another thread where this was discussed a little. I give a concrete example below which I think illustrates what the others are saying:

slmkhoo\" post_id=\"2022791\" time=\"1620263975\" user_id=\"28674:

Swc\" post_id=\"2022786\" time=\"1620261441\" user_id=\"178585:

The concept of smart studying means it should not and cannot be a one size fits all. To study smart requires one to identify where one's weakness is and use different methods to attain mastery. Hours of repeated practice might not be the best way. To cite a simple eg for illustration, if a child cannot spell a certain word, it might not be the best to ask the child to write 100 times that same word so that the child can learn the spelling. Maybe using mnemonics method might be a more efficient and effective way to help the child learn it. Hence, simply increasing the number of hours put into one subject might not automatically equate to a correlated increase in scores.

Agree - studying smart has to be tailored to ability, learning style, amount of time available, etc.

My examples: I have a daughter who is weak in Maths. For her, studying smart is focusing on the basics for quite a long time until it becomes well understood and the methods are ingrained. During the school year, we encouraged her to try all questions set as homework, but by the last few weeks before exams, we told her to forget the toughest ones and focus on the easier 80% to make sure she can do as well as possible in those. And we recognised that top marks were out of her reach. Maybe if she only had 1 subject to study and could spend all her time on it, she could have done better. But she couldn't do that without sacrificing other subjects, so we worked with the time available.

I have another daughter who is strong in Maths. For her, studying smart meant spending less time doing the bulk of the questions since she was managing those without difficulty. We asked her to focus on the toughest questions so that she could learn the skills and techniques to cope with the unusual and tricky ones. In the run up to the PSLE, she did the Maths papers set by school (enough practice on all types of questions), and at home, just 5 \"tough\" questions a day. So her Maths revision was much less (in time) than her sister, but her marks were always much higher.

As for learning style, we realised fairly early on that 1 daughter preferred to read information silently (more visual), while the other preferred to read information out loud (more auditory) and also standing up and moving around (more kinesthetic). So we asked the \"read aloud\" one to do that part of her revision in another room so she didn't distract her sister.

[bbbay]

It seem like the study smart, begins with understanding each child learning style, strengths and weaknesses? With these knowledge, it will be easier to formulate plans?

[zac's mum]

Yup! Here are some handy tables:


https://postimg.cc/gnKXbtpV

https://postimg.cc/4YLYmKmn

https://postimg.cc/CRLZhCMW

[sharonkhoo]

bbbay\" post_id=\"2023160\" time=\"1620458032\" user_id=\"175278:

It seem like the study smart, begins with understanding each child learning style, strengths and weaknesses? With these knowledge, it will be easier to formulate plans?

Yes. The \"smart\" actually refers more to the parent than the child if the child is young.

Another crucial thing is to set goals appropriate for the child. We have to accept if our child is not top-student material, or just inherently weak at something. It doesn't mean they shouldn't be encouraged to work at those subjects, using whatever methods and means work best for them, but it does mean that setting high targets (which they can never meet) is not likely to help motivate them. It could even cause them to give up. So for some kids, a reasonable target might be a B, or a pass, or just to get a few more marks for each test. For another child, it could be that anything short of 95% might be a poor grade in that subject. It is a strange fallacy (maybe just Asian, or just Chinese?) that if you set 100% as the target for everything, it will inspire children to keep trying. It may for some, but I think it demotivates most kids.

Besides learning styles, which ZM has provided some info about, there are other basic things which sometimes we parents overlook. Things like allowing kids to have some leisure time each day, making sure they get enough sleep, controlling the time spent on gadgets, not adding work if they finish what was set, allowing to have some choice in terms of where/how/when they work, etc. Or not establishing routines so the child has to be nagged and reminded all day (which saps everyone's energy).

[zac's mum]

Regarding setting certain marks as targets…I realized after some trial and error that it may be unduly “harsh” to set a fixed numerical digit or percentage.


The reason is, sometimes the things tested are not entirely the same. So for Eg. Now with the weighted assessment format, Term 1 could be Oral exam, Term 2 Compo, Term 3 S&T…Term 4 entire set from Paper 1-4.

It wouldn’t be fair to say, take the Oral exam result (AL1) and set a target of AL1 for the Compo exam. Or take the kid’s P4 results (total 13) and say next year P5 let’s set a target to improve to total 12. For one, every year in primary school the topics get more difficult. The exam format also changes from lower primary to upper primary. Expecting the kid to improve on his AL grade/marks (an impersonal number) by say, throwing $$ at non-targeted tuition, and then feeling upset/disappointed when it never materializes, is not the “smart” way to do it.

Understand the child’s weak components. I have learnt to set small targets, Eg when I see improvement in child showing his Math workings properly in the exam paper, we celebrate. When I see improvement in the child getting a certain weak Science topic correct, we celebrate. These smaller targets are more reasonable. Qualitative improvements such as in attitude & willingness to take notes/revise un-nagged…are also worth celebrating. Yes even if the marks don’t go up. Such are good study habits that will take them thru to secondary school and beyond anyway.