4 Study Skills Tips To Get Your Pre-Teen On Board This School Year - Merit Educational Consultants
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4 Study Skills Tips To Get Your Pre-Teen On Board This School Year

Want your kids to start this new school year with good study habits? After a summer of rolling out of bed in the late-mornings and having no homework, it can be difficult to get your kids’ mindset to change, so they’ll start planning how they’re going to get homework, test prep, and chores done.

Here are 4 tips to reset their patterns so they’ll be on track for this school year.

#1: Start homework as soon as they get home
Sure, give your kids a snack when they arrive home to let them decompress from school and share with you the highlights from their day.  But after that last sip and bite, that’s when they need to check out their planners to determine what needs to be done and in what order. They need to see what assignments are due first, and tackle them right away.

Don’t let them argue that they want to play a few video games or check their social media outlets before they do their homework.  You know that these distractions will suck them in and zap the energy they need to take care of their academic responsibilities. Don’t give in!

#2:  Do homework on the day it is assigned — not the night before it’s due
While doing homework on the same day it is assigned may  sound logical to you and me, it’s surprising how many students insist on doing their homework the night before (sometimes the morning that) it’s due. This is a bad habit because inevitably something always comes up — it’s pizza night out with the family or a surprise visitor invades the house or they get sick — and then the homework doesn’t get done. Besides, if they do the homework on the day it’s due, the concepts will still be fresh in their memories and there’s a better chance that they’ll get higher scores and retain the information for tests down the road. This also gives your child the opportunity to meet with their teachers or friends to get more clarity about things they didn’t understand BEFORE they need to turn in the work or take the test.

#3: Don’t do the weekend’s homework on Sunday night

Another really bad habit is doing the weekend’s homework and test prep on Sunday night.  It’s almost an epidemic among high school students to save all of their work for Sunday night. They say that they need a break and would prefer not to do any work until the end of the weekend. But, set up good habits now.  Insist that all homework, test prep and projects get done after school on Friday. You heard right!  Be prepared for a lot of whining about this but stand your ground. Who’s the boss? (Pro-Tip: It’s not Tony Anza!)

If they wait until Sunday night, think of all of the reasons that the work won’t get done:

  1. They won’t have the book or worksheet (and it’s too late to get it from a friend)
  2. They won’t have time to finish it because they underestimated how long it will take to complete the assignments; and
  3. They won’t have time to study the material to really understand it before the test. Besides, wouldn’t they rather have a stress-free weekend knowing that they have already completed all of their work and can really decompress and have fun?

#4: Homework and test prep first; then video games, social media, or TV
Insist that all homework and test prep gets done before they engage in their social outlets.  If that means taking away cell phones and video games, then so be it. This is a vital piece to instill in your kids before they become independent teens with terrible study skills. After they become teenagers, it’s going to be really difficult to get them to embrace these helpful habits, so get them started now while you have control over their activities!