Education

MyTutor reveals three top tips to boost your child’s study techniques

After a year of Zoom classes and disrupted studies, the fast-approaching first term is bringing a whole lot of pressure and anxiety to children who have fallen behind in their learning – and their parents too.

Cherubs recently caught up with the UK’s leading online tutor MyTutor to get their best tips to boost your child’s study techniques. From managing procrastination to tackling their most-dreaded topics head-on, these clever tricks will help your child get back on top of their learning and ready to dive into the new year.

1. The Eisenhower Matrix (how to decide what to do, when)

A lengthy list of homework can be daunting for any child. The Eisenhower Matrix is a simple way to work out which of your child’s tasks are urgent, which are important, and which can wait. All you need is to create a simple grid of four boxes on a sheet of paper and work with your child to write in their various tasks, like this:

Whatever you’ve got that’s urgent and important should come first – though the aim is to try to complete every item while it’s important, but not (yet) urgent. Any items that are not urgent and not important, consider putting to one side.

When the Eisenhower Matrix is used in businesses, urgent tasks that are not deemed important are usually “delegated” i.e. you get someone else to do it! Since you can’t get anyone to do your child’s homework for them (sorry), they probably won’t need to use this box for school revision, however it might be useful to question whether something that falls into this box actually needs to be done (and no, that doesn’t mean your child should put house chores or their least favourite subject in there!).

This matrix can be a great tool to teach your child how to prioritise their various tasks while taking away some of the panic they might be feeling when they’ve got 20 things to study and don’t know where to start.

2. The Pomodoro Technique (to beat procrastination)

This one sounds a little fancy, but in fact pomodoro is simply Italian for tomato. It’s also a common shape for a kitchen timer! Neither of those things have anything to do with your child’s study however – and you don’t need a tomato-shaped timer to try this technique (although a timer that’s not a phone is a good idea to help shut out distractions). One of our favourite learning experts, Barbara Oakley, recommends this process as a way to bust procrastination and completely focus on any given task. Here’s a handy infographic that illustrates the process: The main goal of this technique is to shut off distractions and allocate specific periods of time for highly-focused study, but an equally important aspect of this technique is teaching your child how to manage their wandering thoughts, as well as the importance of taking regular short breaks.

Try planning out two to four of these cycles over the course of a study day, or one in an afternoon.

3. Eat your frog (do what you’re dreading!)

Eat your what now? No, we haven’t gone crazy, and we don’t encourage cruelty to frogs! The ‘eat your frog’ method is a way to bust procrastination, inspired by American writer Mark Twain’s quote, “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning, and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”

Do you know that feeling when there’s something you really don’t want to do, and you end up procrastinating all day while it looms larger and larger in the back of your mind? It’s likely your child knows the feeling too. This method is a great way to break free of that nasty cycle by facing the dreaded task (AKA your frog) first thing – either in the morning if they’ve got a day’s revising ahead of them, or first thing when they get home from school if it’s homework.

It sounds a bit silly, but when your child faces the task they’re dreading most first thing in the morning, it means they don’t have to think about it again that day.

MOUNT HOUSE SIXTH FORM

At Mount House all students take three or four A Levels, in addition to the Extended Project Qualification. From September 2021, we will also be expecting students to choose one subject from our new ‘Fifth Column’ on the timetable. There is a choice of options detailed overleaf, and within that we hope all our students will find something which interests them, as well as offering them an academic stretch and challenge. These options will extend their formal learning and ensure that Sixth Formers progress to university and beyond with a wide range of academic skills and experiences.

For more information about Sixth Form and Open Days, please call 020 8449 6889 or visit the website www.mounthouse.org.uk

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