What does getting good grades boil down to?
a. Being the smartest kid in the class?
b. Going to the best school?
c. Studying 20 hours a week?
d. None of these.
Of course, the answer is ‘d’.
Getting good grades really boils down to being strategic.
To get good grades, your teen needs to employ strategy.
You would not want to head into battle without a well thought out strategy, and you sure as heck don’t want your teen to head into study-time without one either.
A CRUCIAL part of a straight-A-exam-strategy is knowing what you’re going to ace without too much trouble, and what part of the curriculum usually pulls your GPA down the gurgler.
I mean, knowing your strengths and weaknesses.
This is where you come in.
Your teen is probably going to need some help identifying what parts of their subjects they have a good grip on, and which parts they avoid studying because they know they’re going to be harder.
If your teen knows what parts of their subjects they’re good at and which parts they struggle with, it makes exam study a much smoother operation.
It will enable your teen to plan their time more efficiently. They can identify the tricky bits, and allocate a bit more time to those problem areas.
Because what brings a LOT of teens’ grades down, is that they don’t answer their exam papers evenly. They might answer a few questions here and there really well, but then leave other questions totally blank because they always struggle with that bit and it was just too darn hard to study for.
It’s such a shame to see this, because you know that if that teen had spent just a bit of time brushing up on their ‘weak’ points, the exam would be of a much higher standard overall.
Don’t let your teen ignore the parts of their subjects they find hard.
Because these are the bits they should be spending most of their time studying.
For the stuff they find easier – of course your teen should spend a bit of time polishing what they know to make for an A+++ answer, but it shouldn’t be the main focus of their attention.
Your teen will come out with much better results overall if they identify what they struggle with and spent some quality time sorting it out.
Help your teen utilise their strengths to boost up their weaknesses.
Doing this successfully is a MUCH better guarantee of exam success than studying ‘blind’ (without a strategy) for 20 hours a week.
I’m a big believer in making study time about quality, not quantity. It’s about how your teen uses their time, not how much time they spend studying.
It might take a bit of time and effort for your teen to figure out what parts of the curriculum they really need to sort out, but with your help it will pay off BIG TIME come exam time.
Image Credit: dandeluca on Flickr
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