After the Test

You and your child can learn a great deal from reviewing a graded exam paper. Reviewing will show him or her where they had difficulty and after some analysis, why. This is especially important for classes in which the material builds from one section to the next, as in math. Students who have not mastered the basics of math are not likely to be able to work with fractions, square roots, beginning algebra and so on.

Discuss the wrong answers with your child and find out why they chose the answers – i.e. what their thought process was. This will help to relate back to the question – did they understand the question? or misread a question? If they understood the question and knew the answer, did they fail to make the answer clear?

You and your child should read and discuss all comments that the teacher writes on a returned test. If any comments aren’t clear, tell your child to ask the teacher to explain them.

Reviewing the test paper is also has another benefit – it reinforces the understanding that the test was not difficult. It is important to nurture this thought process in your kids, and to link this to the revision and work they did before the test. By doing this, you are reinforcing the following thought processes:

• test or exam preparation is not difficult
• the best way is to revise the work as you are doing it
• a little discipline now goes a long long way to preparation for tests and exams
• doing the exam or test is not difficult, as long as you follow a strategy or a system
  Remember, you are looking for small wins – where you see this, make you comment and praise them on it.

Finally, don’t get upset because of a single test score. Many things can influence how your child does on a test. She might not have felt well on test day or she might have been too nervous to concentrate. She might have had an argument with a friend before the test or she might have been late to school because of traffic. Remember, one test is simply one test. This needs to be balanced with the child’s overall well being – this may require some trial and error.

Lastly, enjoy the experience, and have faith that it will work out. It does not require a major change in your lifestyle, but this can reap major rewards in the long run.

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Continuing this series of practical articles to help you and your children – Helping your Child Succeed in School, and test taking, in this article we discuss how we can work with our children in helping them prepare for exams, and getting through school.

Kids are intelligent enough to understand comprehend the world around them. They will also be willing to do something if they understand why, although this might need to be reinforced by some ‘rewards’. Here are some tips to consider.

Talk to your child about testing. It’s helpful for children to understand why schools give tests and to know the different kinds of tests they will take. Explain what tests are and how the process works.

Discuss with your child that occasionally, he or she will take “standardized” tests. Explain that these tests use the same standards to measure student performance across the state or even across the country. Every student takes the same test according to the same rules.

Don’t place so much emphasis on your child’s test scores that you lose sight of their well being. Too much pressure can affect the test performance – you do not want your child to think that you will only love them if they do well on tests.

Encourage your child. Praise him or her for the things that she does well. If your child feels good about herself, she will do her best on a test. Children who are afraid of failing are more likely to become anxious when taking tests and more likely to make mistakes.

Do try plan ahead and introduce a small amount of revision everyday, even if it is only 15 minutes.

Avoid test anxiety. It’s good for your child to be concerned about taking a test. It’s not good for them to develop “test anxiety.” Test anxiety is worrying too much about doing well on a test. It can mean disaster for your child. Students with test anxiety can worry about success in school and about their future success. They can become very self-critical and lose confidence in their abilities. Instead of feeling challenged by the prospect of success, they become afraid of failure. If your child worries too much about taking tests, you can help to reduce the anxiety by encouraging the child to do the following things. This has the opposite effect to what you need to achieve.

Make sure there is plenty of time to do other activities that allows your child to feel relaxed and content. A content child is likely to do better in the tests.

Get away from “cramming” the night before. This will likely increase your anxiety, which will interfere with clear thinking. Get a good night’s sleep. A light flick through the notes is better.

Go through the test mechanics – how to do the test:

• When you get the test, read the directions carefully before you begin work. If you don’t understand how to do something, ask the teacher to explain.
• Look quickly at the entire text to see what types of questions are on it (multiple choice, matching, true/false, essay).
• See if different questions are worth different numbers of points. This will help you to determine how much time to spend on each part of the test.
• Do the easiest questions first
• Do not spend too long on a question, move on to the next question if you cannot answer or your mind goes blank. Do not spend time worrying about it. Come back to the unfinished questions at the end.

These tips will help get the best out of both you as the parent and your children. In the next article, we will talk about what happens after the exam.

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This is the next series of practical articles to help you and your children – Helping your Child Succeed in School, and test taking. If you understand the importance of tests and results, and how to use them to nurture confidence and assurance in your children, it will go a long way to reinforcing the positive traits in your children.

What are Tests?

Tests are yardsticks that teachers, schools, school districts and even states use to measure what and how they teach and how well students are learning what is taught. Most tests are designed and given by teachers to measure students’ progress. The results tell the teacher whether they are keeping up with the class, need extra help or are ahead of other students. As parents we should also pay attention to this yardstick. Remember regular small wins is what we are looking for.

The results also tell schools that they need to strengthen courses or change teaching methods. Still other tests compare students by schools, school districts or cities. These become school league tables.

What ground work should you be going?

There are some things you can do to really help and get a head start in this process. The first thing to remember that you are not aiming to make your child top of the class for everything, but are looking for ways to boost and reinforce the overall outlook and thought processes of your kids.

It is worth meeting with your child’s teachers as often as possible to discuss his progress and what they are likely to cover in the school term. Ask the teacher to suggest activities for you and your child to do at home to help your child’s understanding of schoolwork.

Make a study area – a quiet, comfortable place for studying at home. It is good to get your child used to this and form a habit to study here.

Do provide books and magazines for your child to read at home. By reading new materials, a child will learn new words that might appear on a test. Ask your child’s teacher for lists of books for outside reading or get suggestions from your local library. Provide games and puzzles or other things that make your child use their brain – problem solving, creative, or making things….

It also helps if your child has an evening and bed time routine – this makes it easier, and is not questioned, and helps to ensure that he or she is well rested on school days and especially on the day of any tests. Children who are tired are less able to pay attention in class or to handle the demands of a test.

Plan ahead. Start studying for the test well in advance. Make sure that you understand what material the test will cover. Try to make connections about what will be on the test and what you already know. Review the material more than once. Make a study plan – which topics your child needs to cover on each day. Make it a habit for your child to study a little every day if there is no homework.

Each time your children do this, reward them at the end by giving them something or playing with them or letting them do something they enjoy. It is also good for a child’s discipline to stick to time limits as much as possible.

You will to find and strike a balance between this and not over ‘cramming’ and at the other extreme, total freedom for the child. Where you put this scale is up to you, but there is no doubt that this kind of programmed approach is very effective.

The next article in this series will discuss some practical specifics in relation to tests and exams.

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This is the next series of practical articles to help you and your children – Helping your Child Succeed in School. Let’s face it; school is another major puzzle in a child’s upbringing. It is their ‘training ground’ to the rest of their lives.

Doing well at school certainly helps a child with confidence, problem solving skills, education and knowledge, and information management and application, and results in a positive mental state of mind. The results do not need to be academic – it can be arts, fiction, sports, something practical….it is where the child’s strengths and interest is focussed.

More importantly, regular small ‘wins’ reinforce this positive state of mind, and creates a mental state which is more open to learn new things. This means allowing a child to excel or be brilliant in one area, and use this success to encourage success in other areas, also reinforced with other small ‘wins’. This continues until the child is confident with all areas taught in school. This flows into the child’s everyday life and you will notice a confident and thoughtful child. In reality, this confidence needs be gained only in 1 or 2 areas, and the results can be amazing. How to develop or nurture a child’s confidence is a critical key to this. A confident and assured child is far more likely to pick up positive traits, mainly because this serves to reinforce the confidence and assurance the child has already developed.

School tests and exams are a huge part in this process of gaining confidence. We as parents can have a massive influence on this, and in doing so, on how much confidence and assurance your child gains.

The next series of articles will cover some of practical do’s and don’ts. At MyBrilliantKidz.com, we are always looking for practical and easy to implement ideas, all of which are tools to help make your kids brilliant.

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The previous self talk mini series article in the my brilliant kidz re-programming series discussed how to implement the personalised self talk program. This is part 4 of the self talk mini series and discusses how a self talk program can apply to our kids.

Implementing a Self Talk program for children

There are a number of questions that come to mind when thinking about this:

Should we apply this to our children?

We are looking for ways to make our kids brilliant. The whole point of this is to help and reinforce our kids’ positive actions and thoughts in order to achieve being brilliant.

What issues does doing this cover? Firstly, by introducing an activity such as this, it helps to create a positive environment where children can pick up and get used to positive habits, thought processes and actions, by becoming a daily part of your family’s life.

Secondly, you have to work together with your child on this – the effect of this is to strengthen the bonding between you and your child, which in turn nurtures trust, confidence, friendship and respect.

I know from my experience, whenever I have spent time with my children on an activity or project, especially if you can give your child ownership, it has enhanced my relationship with my children. It also brings out a maturity, focus and self confidence in them.

Thirdly, they will be reinforcing either consciously or sub consciously, positive traits that will result in them taking the next step up.

How would you implement such a program?

The chances are that your kids are not going to keep a diary or sit down and analyse – it unlikely that they will be able to understand this process, especially if they are very young. You can create a self talk program in one of two ways:

a) Create a program for them, watching and looking out for the negative aspects.
The way I would do is to create a personalised self talk program as described in previous articles, and record their self talk onto an MP3 or other recording equipment, and than playback this to them when they are asleep at night.

b) Your kids might be old enough to be able to speak to them selves – Again you create the program as mentioned in the above point, and speak it with them a few times, until they are confident to speak it themselves. This is good practice for your children, not only giving them confidence, but also reinforcing the positives far better.

You will need to also think about a system of reward – rewarding success is a huge motivator. When do you recognise their successes and what rewards do you give them? Extra play time, a special meal….? You will need to try a few things to see what works. My suggestion is to give small but frequent rewards for many small wins, and a large special award for bigger successes – for example – great results at school tests or exams, getting onto the football team, tidying up their room….etc

You need to remember that this only one tool to help your children, and must be used in conjunction with other strategies. A holistic approach needs to be taken – for example -looking at your children’s dietary needs, spiritual needs, financial intelligence, creativity and problem solving……We will be posting more on each of these at mybrilliantkidz.com.

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