It's your child stressed about their upcoming GCSE exams?
Exams were always a stressful time growing up, but thanks to the advent of the internet and globally available information, we can take the best proven wisdom from around the world to help our children in this stressful time.
Today we're going to teach you 4 important steps you can take to have this positive impact on your child exam year.
Before we jump in, let's appreciate that technology has come on a long way in recent years, and there are a multitude of apps and resources that can help students along in the process.
The one that stands out in having a positive impact in engagement with revision is 'GCSEs with RevisePal'.
It is hands down the most interactive and rewarding revision app available today and was made with GCSE students success and engagement in mind.
Want to check it out? Click below to take a look at the free mobile app.
The 3 Most Important Steps to Helping With Your Child's GCSEs
Make homework an event
I'm sure most parents don't stoke the fires that homework is a negative thing in life... But let's take that one step further, and actually go into the situation with enthusiasm. It's infectious.
The first few times your child brings back homework, see it as an exciting challenge yourself, and want to do well yourself, and this will rub off.
Imagine getting to the point where you are tackling questions together, with an enthusiasm that you kind of suggest taking the work to do it yourself. In many cases this will stoke children to want to do it, Instead of you doing it. You may remember this psychology from younger phases of children's lives.
Faux Test Conditions
Old but gold.
There are three huge benefits from this one.
Firstly, your child will go over material once more, using the retrieval method to strongly fasten those neurons together, i.e. memorisation.
Secondly, they will get familiar with test Conditions, which will reduce nerves in the day, again increasing performance significantly. Especially if you're child tends to get nervous in exams.
And thirdly, it will be an excellent guage for where there are gaps in knowledge. Check if there are any patterns of mistakes, and try to get to the bottom of them by listening, not telling off.
Use the available digital tools
When we were doing our GCSEs, we had text books, classes, and bitesize was just about becoming a thing. Now there is a plethora of tools, but also, even more distraction to students.
It's a different challenge they face.
That's why the best tools need to be both effective and engaging. Here are some of the best tools you can get for your child today.
BBC Bitesize
The classic when it comes to school studying. A lot of information in here in a very well structured format. Everything they may want to know should be here.
As we know, information use useless if it's not engaged with, and while bitesize does have some quizzes to treat the memory of what had been read, at find this is a better companion til and more useful as a type of encyclopedia when a child is stuck.
SnapRevise
We've got a lot of time for this one, definitely engaging, especially if you're child likes video content, these quick lesson type videos are structured just right to guide students through the understanding of plenty of rich content.
Revisepal
Past papers and quick quizzes have been scientifically and empirically proven to be better methods of revision than highlighting or reading. The challenge had been making this method engaging and simple.
That is what had been achieved at RevisePal, thousands of questions in nearly every subject in the syllabus to in a style not dissimilar to Duolingo, the most popular learning app ever.
An interactive and intuitive interface combined with a competitive leader board will encourage students to reach the end of the quizzes, which are specific for GCSE exams, and subsequently be a lot more confident, and perform much better.
These are in my opinion the most important things you can do to help your student child this year. Beyond that, let's be supportive, patient, and empathetic with them in this time, and demonstrate how to handle pressure, challenge, and how to help those we care about.
What did you think of these tips? What else would you recommend that had worked for you?
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