Helping Your Children To Be Successful Students
Help your child develop the homework habit Time spent together is precious. As well as homework time to practise the skills that they are learning in school, children need time to play, read, chat with you and with their friends, help out in the house, and have free, unstructured time to explore and enjoy their world.… Continue reading Tips for successfully helping children develop the homework habit.
Homework with your child can = serious fun! Some of it isn’t much fun of course but during a successful homework time together there can be wonderful shared moments of laughter, chat, triumph and pleasure. Here are some of my favourite ideas. Keep things light. When you and your child become too serious, irritated, bored… Continue reading How to make helping your child with homework more fun for both of you.
Persistence is key to helping your child develop the homework habit. “Even ordinary effort over time yields extraordinary results” (Keith Ellis, p. 74). The buck stops at you. In my experience it is also often the adult, the family coach (you) who forgets, doesn’t feel like it, is too tired, too busy, has a crisis… Continue reading How to help your child with their homework: New habits take time.
Are you frustrated about the lack of homework happening in your home? Do you find it hard to be consistent and persistent with your child and their homework? I'm here to encourage you to persist. As Babe Ruth the famous American baseball player said, "You just can’t beat the person who won’t give up. Webster's… Continue reading Being positively persistent about regular homework
Win-win or no deal: Only agree when you are both happy. The goals you set decide your success. The more thoroughly and seriously the goals are decided between you both, the more you both will take the coaching seriously, and when the inevitable moment comes that you both find it harder to work together, you will… Continue reading First the reading, writing, and maths goals – then how you work together
Create agreements that make you both happy. This week I've asked permission to share an email from a concerned family coach who is working with me. She has a young boy who is working on improving his Mathematics and reading and writing skills and he is a very skilled negotiator - even though he is… Continue reading Win-win agreements make coaching your child reading, writing, and maths skills more fun!
Haste makes for slow reading, writing and Mathematics progress: Relaxed, steady focus works. One new different thing reading, writing, Mathematics skills at a time. I often only begin coaching one area (reading, writing, or Mathematics) that a student finds difficult, and one reading, writing, or Mathematics skill they are comfortable with, and love. To begin… Continue reading Make haste slowly: Coaching your child reading, writing, and maths the fast way.
If you are really going to co-operate with Nature’s plan for the development of intelligence, you take your signals from the child. Not from some book, not from some expert, .....you take your signals from the child. (Joseph Chilton Pearce cited in Brownlee, P. 2007) Taking our signals from our children: The importance of attunement.… Continue reading Respectful partnership: A buzz for you both
Coming from left field: How to use reverse psychology when coaching reading, writing, or maths skills. Surprise works! Your main aim when teaching your children is to encourage your student to stay alert, or in optimal learning mode while learning reading, writing, or maths skills. So I often do the opposite of what an adult… Continue reading Coming from left field when coaching reading, writing, or maths: The importance of surprise!
Is your child reluctant to go to school? Not bringing homework home? Refusing to read and write? Disliking mathematics? Parental involvement in children learning to read, write, and do mathematics is a key factor in them doing well at school. Parental involvement shapes the child's identity as a learner, and sets higher expectations for the… Continue reading Help your child develop their reading, writing, and mathematics skills: Don’t leave it all up to the teachers.
Families as Coaches 