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Every child has their own way of learning. If you tap into this learning process the right way, it can make all the difference in how your child develops and grows along with their education. While many strategies exist to help your child excel, it is those learning strategies that complement your child’s innate learning process that will produce the best results. Fortunately, because young minds are able to learn new skills, certain learning strategies exist that will augment any child’s ability to move towards the head of their class. Here are four such strategies that will impact your child’s performance in school.
Advanced Memory Skills
The ability to retain and recall information is a useful skill to have during any test. For this reason, it is necessary to begin challenging your child to store and recall information at a very young age. The more the mind gets used to storing and retrieving data, the easier your child will handle test situations that center around the use of this often neglected mental skill. One strategy that really works to help kids develop a strong data storage and recall process are games where the object is to remember and retain as many items in the mind to recall back from memory as possible.
Mental Modeling
Building on the idea of information storage and retrieval, the natural step beyond this realm of thought is the idea of mental modeling. The ability to visualize and manipulate ideas in your child’s mind will help them approach problems with a far better grasp than their peers. The ability to mentally map and manipulate items in a model will expand the use of their imagination to become a truly excellent problem solving tool. One easy way to help a child develop this skill is to practice playing chess blindfolded. As their sighted opponent, you will have to move the pieces on the board, but their mind will have to constantly keep track of how all 64-pieces on the board are being repositioned throughout the game. At first this may seem difficult, but a child’s mind is capable of not only playing a single game of chess blindfolded, but a child with a disciplined mind can learn to keep track of multiple games of chess blindfolded. It all depends on how far your child wants to train their mind to keep track of so many variables. With this kind of mental skill under their belt, following along in school will be a breeze.
Reading Out Loud
While many children do just fine reading to themselves, these same children will sometimes lack the general confidence to read out loud in a competent manner. Uncomfortable with their inability to read well out loud can have a major impact on a child’s classroom performance. This is why it is critical to begin making a child read out loud from a very early age. The more children get used to saying words and reading phrases and sentences aloud, the easier it will become for them to perform this skill before their peers with confidence. Some strategies to help your child enjoy reading more are to find books that are in their areas of interest.
Extra Schooling
Often summer break can have a detrimental effect on a child’s ability to retain information already learned. Many weeks away from the classroom can cause a child’s mind to lose focus and forget things it has already learned and mastered. Fortunately, there are some strategies that will help to eliminate this problem. One way is to have your child attend summer school. In summer school the student can gain additional experience with regular classroom subjects: keeping ideas learned at their grade level fresh in their mind as they approach the new school year.
Everyone wants their children to do well in school. The strategies that will help your child to do better in school will depend on first understanding what motivates your child to learn and retain information. Armed with this insight, you will be able to better direct your child with strategies that make learning both fun and effective.