Take 10 minutes to watch this great video that looks at how our current education model is outdated, and how it’s failing to teach today’s children.

“Today’s kids live in the most intensely stimulating period of the history of the earth. They’re besieged with information…and we’re punishing them for getting distracted.”–Sir Ken Robinson.

We already know why it’s important to make learning part of your holidays, so, with the holidays fast approaching, we compiled 12 ideas to keep your kids mentally engaged over the holiday season. Check in often for new ideas, and if you have your own idea, we’d love to hear it!

Day 2: Snuggle Up With A Book.

Reading is one of the greatest ways to work on school skills over the holidays. Books not only tell stories of great adventures they help media-saturated children unplug. It helps children learn how to sustain their attention and develop vocabulary and reading comprehension—all great skills that are necessary in the classroom.

Need some ideas on what books are appropriate for what age? Visit Family Education’s reading list for some great book suggestions broken down by age groups

Tip One: Get Crafty Together

We already know why it’s important to make learning part of your holidays, so, with the holidays fast approaching, we compiled 12 ideas to keep your kids mentally engaged over the holiday season. Check in often for new ideas, and if you have your own idea, we’d love to hear it!

Day 1: Get Crafty Together.

Crafts are a great family holiday activity because they reinforce many important school skills such as attention-to-detail, following instructions, and maintaining focus, as well as encouraging creativity and imagination. Plus, kids have a great take-away that they can feel proud of!

There are many great craft sites available. Check out Oxford Learning guest blogger Secret Agent Josephine’s many great crafts on Alpha Mom. This one for holiday wreaths is budget-friendly and uses many supplies that you have around the house. Families with older kids might like her recent holiday artwork project.

Do you know the five most common signs that your child might be struggling in school?

Here they are:

5.  Your child frequently makes comments such as, “The teacher picks on me,” or ” Do I have to go to school today?” or ” This assignment is pointless.”

4. Daily homework is not being completed .

3.  Assignments and projects are missed completely or submitted late.

2. There are poor tests scores and poor grades on projects and assignments.

1. Your child is uninterested in school and school-related activities.

Not all of these signs of school trouble have to happen at the same time, but when one or more happens frequently,  it’s a sign that things may be getting off track.  The sooner that parents and students get help, the easier it will be to get back on track and put and end to school troubles.

Report Cards can be very stressful for families. Kids don’t want to disappoint their parents, or be punished for bad grades, and parents don’t want to find out that their child is struggling academically. While report cards can be stressful, they don’t have to be.

Before stress levels reaches the danger zone, consider the following:

It’s Still Early—this is the first report card, which means that there is still ample opportunity to make improvements this school year.

Language—report cards often contain confusing educational jargon, which can be frustrating. Forget the gobbledygook and focus on the teacher’s comments. These comments can give you a better idea of how your child is performing overall.

Context—some school years are more challenging than others. Certain grades are transition years, such as the first year of high school, or the shift from early to middle school. These years can be challenging to all students, regardless of their academic abilities.

Now that parents have read the report card, it’s time to have a chat with the kids about their grades. Here are some tips that will help parents—and kids—banish any icky report-card feelings:

1. Be calm, cool, and collected. If you’re upset or angry about grades, hold off on the discussion until you can speak calmly and rationally.
2. Say something nice. Start with empathetic and positive comments. Highlight something positive about the report card, no matter how trivial. For instance, “You are really kicking butt in English.”
3. Listen to your child. Recognize the struggles. School can be tough. It is helpful to students to know that you are listening to their concerns and complaints.

The final report card takeaway is this:

Problems Require Action! Remember that the report card is a red flag. There may be plenty of time left in the school year, but if you don’t act now, the urgency of poor grades will be forgotten.

Kids forget stuff all of the time. Where they left their book bag. What day the next soccer game is. When Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone.

Before writing kids off as hopelessly forgetful, consider that they may have simply never been taught how to remember.

As the World Memory Champions can tell you, there are tricks—simple tricks—that everybody can use to improve memory abilities.

So what’s the secret?

When it comes to improving your memory, the most important secret is … imagination.

And luckily for forgetful students, kids have a natural abundance of imagination.

Telling stories and visualizing details improves the ability to recall details. That’s because visual memory is larger and stronger than logical memory.

The main memory technique involves making visual associations. This is where imagination comes in. The associations do not have be logical or make sense. They only need to be relevant to the individual.

For students, it might be the only instance where being illogical, nonsensical, and random pays off in school.

Here are some of the best tips that filmmaker Josh Freed learned while filming his documentary
Where Did I Put My…Memory?

1. Numbers: Imagine numbers as shapes or common images. For instance, the number 5 could be a snake, the number 8, a snowman. Then, recall numbers by crafting a story around the numbers. This technique could be very helpful in helping young children remember phone numbers.

2. Placement: Always remember where you left something by imagining it blowing up. Rather than dropping off a book bag in the front hall, pause and visualize it blowing up. Or, maybe a less violent image for younger children—perhaps the image of taking a nap would work.

3. Names: Visualize something about a person’s name. Associate the first letter of the name with an object. For instance, the name Laura could be associated with a shamrock because she was wearing green when you met her, and shamrocks are lucky. Lucky and Laura both start with the letter L.

4. Singing. There has been much success with singing instructions and repeating the chorus. The Alphabet Song has been helping preschoolers learn the alphabet for years, while teacher Alex Kajitani has become known as the Rappin’ Mathematician for using rap to teach math skills to students.

5. Making up stories. Making lists and writing things down is a tried and true way to avoid forgetting, but when these sorts of memory aids are not available, making up stories can not only help people remember important tasks and details, it can actually help make the brain stronger, and less reliant on outside tools to aid recall.

Check out the article The Secrets of Mastering Your Memory for more information and for information about how technology will help memory in the future.

In high school, you’re pretty much your own person. Which is a good thing, but this new freedom comes many more responsibilities. One of them happens to be getting help.

When it comes to having troubles in school, there are some instances where your parents can help. But in cases when your parents or peers can’t offer support or guidance, it isn’t the end of the road. You’re not on your own.

Schools always have support systems, such as help groups, and it is very important that you take advantage of them!

But recognizing that you need help and doing something about it is up to you. Nobody is going to do this for you. You have to be the one to ask for help. This is a big responsibility.

In most cases, extra help such as support groups will take place during your personal time i.e. your lunch break, or after school. More than likely, you will have second thoughts about “wasting your time taking to them,” but it is very important that you think about your future in such cases.

After all, this is high school and the decisions are up to you. If you decide to skip these help groups it will reflect on your final grade and (depending on the course) future grades.

So, whenever you come across such a feeling and decide to skip a session, just think that in five years it won’t matter that you went to this ‘stupid’ help group, only that you’re glad that you did, and decided not to waste your time by not asking for help.

About me: I go to South Secondary School in London, ON and I have two younger siblings. I have always been a movie guy. But movies aren’t the only thing I enjoy. In the summer I love to bike with my friends down to the Thames River and ride along the trails. The sights and the entire ride are always beautiful. Anyway, hopefully you’ll enjoy my  posts! Remember to leave feedback and comments at the bottom! – Dylan.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever left studying to the last minute, then stayed up too late, trying to review as much material as possible.

Keep your hand up if you’ve ever been reviewing your study notes right up to the last second as you walk into the classroom.

Cramming is a study technique that we are all familiar with. And despite what teachers and parents say, it’s one that has actually been proven to have a beneficial outcome for students.

Cramming is even a recognized study habit, with universities providing how-to guides for students to maximize their minimized study time.

If you MUST cram, there is a right way and a wrong way to go about it.

But we’re not saying that we condone cramming tips. While we do support the getting of better grades, in the long run, cramming is not the best way to go about it.

In terms of what’s going on in the brain, the neural connections being formed during the cramming process are temporary. All of the information being stored is in the short-term memory. So while cramming can help you rock that test tomorrow morning, when it comes to long-term remembering, it’s utterly useless.

That’s because in school, learning is incremental. Students need to remember—and understand—the material they study, because lessons tend to build upon what was taught previously. Learning only for the test is not helpful when considering what will be taught next year, or the year after that.

After all, you can’t perform quadratic equations if you can’t remember how to multiply.

It just makes sense that students take the time to learn and understand the material.

The best way to study for long-term recall is with a technique that experts call the “spacing effect.” This technique doesn’t require longer or more intensive studying: it simply means that students space out their study time. An hour here, and hour there, makes for a more effective—and long-lasting—approach to studying.

When it comes to education, better grades on the next test are important—and cramming can get you there—but better grades quickly are not as important as developing solid study habits that won’t leave you stressed and scrambling at the last minute.

And, better grades quickly are not as important as putting in the time to develop real and lasting understanding.

To sum up:

Cramming PRO: A quick way to review material and re-familiarize yourself with concepts to get a decent—even awesome—mark on a test.

Cramming Con: Reviewed material leaves your head as quickly as it’s stuffed in there.

1. Take Envy-Worthy Class Notes. The first step in making homework easier actually begins in class with good note taking. In order to take the kind of class notes that other classmates will ask to borrow, students have to be actively paying attention in class—texting, daydreaming, or crushing on the cutie two rows over might be fun, but certainly doesn’t work in students’ favour when it’s homework time.

2. Use Your Agenda. Schools don’t pass out agendas so that students have a place to doodle—an agenda is actually a very important tool that helps students stay organized. But, it can be used for more than just copying down daily homework assignments: it can help students prioritize their workflow, organize their time, keep track of questions to ask the teacher, and much, much more.

3. Know What Works for You. There’s a lot of differing advice about how to proceed with homework. Start with the hardest subject. Start with their easiest subject. But there is only one piece of advice that students really need: do whatever works for you. Getting the homework done is the name of the game, so whether students like to get math out of the way first, or whether they always read for English while sitting on the couch, the important thing is that they develop a routine that helps them easily get into the homework groove.

4. It’s Homework Time. If there’s one thing that we know about the brain, it’s that it can be easily trained. It’s wired to develop habits and to recognize schedules, like when it’s time to eat, and when it’s time get up. The brain can also be readily programmed to recognize when it’s homework time. In order to do this, students need to work on homework at approximately the same time every day. By being consistent about when they crack open the books, students will find themselves getting into the homework groove regularly and effortlessly.

5. Homework Habitat. The idea of having a set place to do homework and to study is not new. What is new, however, is research that says that different study locations can help students actually experience better recall. If getting up and moving around, or exploring different locations to crack open the books helps students beat the study blahs and improve recall, they should go for it! (See tip three: Know What Works For You) However, having a place where students can dump their bookbags and keep their school supplies is still a great idea—it helps them get organized, eliminates time-wasting activities such as searching for that calculator or pencil sharpener, and goes a long way to helping establish a groovy homework routine.

6. Remove Distractions. TVs. Cellphones. iPods, Computers: when it comes to homework procrastination, these are all tried-and-true tools of the trade. A student sits down to do homework and on the second question needs to Google something. Suddenly it’s an hour later and question three hasn’t been started. It’s a scenario that all students—young and old alike—are more than familiar with. If getting the homework done quickly and correctly is the name of the game, then removing distractions is key. Turn the TV off. Take the earbuds out. Step away from the laptop. If certain questions require online support, save them until the rest of the homework has been completed.

That being said, if students work better with a little background noise, then put the radio on at a low volume, (see Tip 3) and be sure that any rockin’ out isn’t distracting from the task at hand.