Students have a tendency to drift as spring arrives. After spending months indoors, the warmer temperatures and shining sun become major distractions, which make it more challenging to focus on schoolwork.

While the school year may be winding down, this is not the time to slack off!

There is still time to get better grades. There’s time to study harder. There’s time to complete an extra credit project. There’s time to develop better study skills. And most importantly, there’s still time to make a BIG difference on the final report card.

If grades need improving, the time to get started is right now! Slacking off now can be downright dangerous to grades. Students who have worked very hard the entire year can actually lose their academic footing if they let their focus slip from school. That’s why it’s important to remain motivated. After all, there are still end-of-year projects, group work, and final exams on the horizon. The truth is that this is the perfect time to renew a sense of school dedication. Because even though the school year is coming to a close, a lot can be accomplished in the time left.

So stop daydreaming about summer! There’s work to be done!

Here’s how to stay motivated (and even pull up grades) in the time left:

1. Dust Off That Agenda. Agendas have kept students organized throughout the school year and now’s not the time to leave them forgotten in lockers or at the bottom of a school bag. Need to renew the drive to succeed? Flip through the agenda for a reminder of everything that has been achieved so far this year.

2. Work Towards a Goal. It’s easy to coast for the rest of the year, but rather than slacking, set a goal and work towards it. Whether it is by fine-tuning study skills or pulling up a math grade, having a goal to work towards makes staying motivated easy.

3. Take On Extra Credit Projects. Students that need a leg up (whether to pull up grades or to secure a university admission) can really benefit from extra credit projects. Talk to teachers about bonus projects or assignments. Teachers look favourably on students who make an effort, and this is especially important when it comes to creating final report cards.

4. Make Better Grades Your Mantra. To get better grades you have to do the work. To do the work, you have to be motivated, which is challenging this time of year. Create daily reminders of what the goal is—write “I want better grades” in the agenda, put it on post its by the bed, and say it out loud while walking the dog. The more it’s said and heard, the more it will be believed and achieved.

5. Get Extra Help. End-of-year projects and exams can stress even the most organized students. Enlist the help of a professional tutor to help manage current workload and learn helpful tips to make studying for finals stress-free. Oxford Learning has many great programs that help students make the rest of this year as successful as possible. Call today and make the rest of this year count!

Make the rest of this year count. The clock may be ticking on the school year, but there is still time to make this grade the best grade ever!

The Importance of Reading: A Quick Review

Good reading habits are not just about developing strong literacy skills in the quest for good grades—reading is a habit that has benefits for students and adults alike:

•    Reading increases vocabulary and vocabulary has been shown to be a key indicator of future school success (Did you know that studies show that vocabulary use in grade one predicts more than 30% of 11th grade reading comprehension?)
•    Reading is THE core skill that is used in learning every subject in school
•    Reading has been shown to activate several different areas of the brain simultaneously
•    Reading can improve social skills
•    Reading books (not EReaders or off a monitor of any sort) can cut back on the amount of time spent in front of media and technology (up to 7 hours a day)

How to Encourage Reading . The Basics:

•    Make books available to kids.
•    Go to the Library.
•    Gifts books as gifts.
•    Lead by example—kids become readers when they have a role model who reads.
•    Read a book as a family—get multiple copies for all members.
•    Read to young children every night.
•    Try a new genre.
•    Read anything—cookbooks, magazines, comics, textbooks…
•    Get a nightlight for your kids’ beds.
•    Put a book on the bedside table.
•    Read books from a series.
•    Read books from the same author.
•    Read books that are becoming movies.
•    Read scary books and up the thrill quotient!
•    Have a school friend recommend a book.
•    Ask the schoolteacher what the other kids in the class are reading.
•    Listen to audio books in the car.

Advanced Tips:

But what if you’ve tried all these tips and your child is still more slug worm that bookworm? We came across these great tricky tips that just might help:

Give kids banned books—or let them read above their level… anything that sparks their interest. Tell them the book is bad (for whatever reason) and they’ll only want to read it more. Sounds like Psychology 101!

Stop reading right a good part—leave the story right before the climax, and guaranteed your child will be curious enough to read in order to find out what happens next!

This tip from blogger Eden Kennedy of the blog Fussy might be the best tip yet: Read something funny to yourself and laugh about it.  When your child asks what’s funny, simply tell him that he won’t get it.  Watch this video of Eden explain how she gets her son, who would rather play video games, involved in reading—tricky!  And awesome!

Do you have sneaky ways to get your kids to read? We’d love to hear them!  Leave us a comment or share them on Twitter or Facebook.

More articles about reading:

POW! Comic Books Punch Up Reading Abilities

Why Phonics Builds Better Readers

Harry Potter is Magic for Kids’ Literacy

Want to make the most of what’s left in the school year?  Create a Countdown Action Plan!

HERE’S HOW:

1. Grab a calendar and determine how many weeks of school are left.
2. Pull out your Academic Action plan from the beginning of school and review it. Don’t have one? No problem!  You can create one at any time with some simple modifications.
3. Take a mental inventory of current academic standing. Refer to the last report card if necessary. Look at past test marks and comments on assignments.
4. Ask: “what subjects are the weakest? Where is extra help needed? Where is there room for improvement?
5. Talk to teachers and create a plan together to use the remainder of the year wisely.
6. Dust off your agenda usage skills.
7. Fine-tune organization abilities.

Need extra help?  Talk to the professionals at your nearest Oxford Learning centre.  They can help you make the rest of this school year count!

Organization is actually a very common school issue for many students–it is the cause of procrastination and it leads to frustration and to problems with time management issues.

So, to help, we complied our TOP HOMEWORK ORGANIZATION TIPS:

• Use an agenda every day, and learn to use it like a pro!
• Write the date and class on your notes. Put all loose pages in order in your binder.
• Before finishing homework for the night, double check that you have completed all tasks.
• Look ahead to tomorrow and gather all the supplies that you need for the next day and out them in the book bag.
• Keep all study and homework materials—pens, paper, calculators, dictionaries, whiteout—whatever you need—in a single spot. Get a clear tupperware bin to keep everything easily accessible. Don’t waste time searching for items you need to have at the tips of your fingertips.
• Use a wall calendar to keep track of after-school activities and chores.

• Make daily to-do lists in the agenda and check off items as they are completed.

What tips do you use to keep your family organized and to combat homework struggles?  We’d love to hear them!

Most parents of school-age children can sympathize: homework is a common issue in many households.

So we decided to put the issue of homework to a poll by asking what is your family’s biggest homework struggle?

1. Disorganization: leaving assignments to the last minute, forgetting work at school, etc.
2. Distractions: too much TV, Internet, video games, texting
3. Scheduling: lots of extracurricular activities, not enough time
4. Comprehension: not understanding questions, which can lead to frustration

What do you think the biggest issue is?  You can still vote on our FB poll!  We’d love to hear from you!  And don’t forget to “Like” us while you’re there!

Use your agenda.

The brain is capable of great feats, but it’s not perfect. So don’t rely on it to remember every little detail of what you learned in school. When a teacher assigns homework, write it down! Most schools provide agendas to students for free (or for a small charge). That’s because they are the best organizational tools available. The trick is to not just write everything down in class, but also to remember to take it out of the school bag at night, open it up, and remind yourself of what’s on tonight’s to-do list.

More agenda tips here.

Remove distractions.

Computer on, TV on, texts messages incoming…it’s not multi-tasking, it’s distracting. So shut off all the electronics and focus on the task at hand for a set period of time. You’ll find that it’s easier to concentrate and that tasks take less time.   Studies have also found that learning isn’t as deep and that retention suffers when kids multi-task.

Think actively.

The majority of the time, simply getting tonight’s homework done is the name of the game. And rightly so, but what happens if you’re struggling with a question, or can’t figure out an answer? Before giving up to frustration, take a small break then come back and take a look at your textbook. Flip to the beginning of the chapter and read what the chapter is all about. Do the same with the next chapter. Move ahead a few questions and see if the next section can help explain a little better. If not, use the Internet.  Don’t just stare at the question in front of you; ask yourself how this question relates to what you’ve been learning overall.  And keep in mind the point of homework: to reinforce concepts learned in class.

More active learning tips here

Get organized.

Homework is as much a part of the daily routine as waking up in the morning and going to bed at night, but it’s often the most disorganized part.  So streamline the process: keep all the homework-related accessories you need in a bin or a bucket so you don’t waste time searching for pens or for a calculator, pick the same spot to do your homework in every night, and (when possible) do your homework at the same time every night to get your body’s clock into the a natural homework rhythm.

These checklists can help.

For students:

Click to download printable version

For parents:

Click to download printable version

Sometimes the best way to learn is to forget. According to researchers, this is especially true when it comes to studying.  In fact, some studies are saying that the majority of the traditional approaches to studying are WRONG.

Want to study effectively?  Forget what you know.

So what’s right and what’s wrong?  Well, according to Psychology Today and the director of the UCLA Learning and Forgetting Lab, here’s what you DON’T want to do when studying:

1. DON’T LEARN IN BLOCKS—Don’t study math, then English, then science.  In one study or homework session, mix up what you are learning. Rather than mastering one skill before the next, take small steps in many skills. The theory is known as interleaving, and apparently the small progression in many skills approach leads to memories that are remembered much longer than the one-thing-at-a-time approach. That’s because each skill is learned in relation to the others. That doesn’t mean jumping from math to science to English—it means working on different skills that are related within a subject. So don’t burn out on quadratic equations by doing them over and over. Mix it up!

2. DON’T STUDY IN THE SAME PLACE—turns out that WHERE you study is as important as HOW, and the MORE places that you study, the better.  That’s because the background information of what you see and hear as you are studying gets remembered as well.  So if you study in the same place all the time, there’s nothing to make what you are studying stand out from all the other studied material.

3. FORGET IT… ALMOST. This technique has been researched many times. It’s known as the Spacing Effect and it says that to make studying effective you need to study, almost forget, and then re-study.  The point is to make the brain work to remember what was studied in the last session.  The harder the brain is challenged to recall, the better. So, don’t schedule a second study session too early on—that’s too easy.  The brain has to be challenged to remember.

4. WRITE IT DOWN, BUT NOT IN CLASS. According to the article, the point of note taking is to challenge the brain to remember, so take notes AFTER class.  This is a tad impractical while in school, but highlights the importance of review.  Try writing a class summary after each class without consulting in-class notes. You don’t need to know word for word–just try to recall the highlights.

1. It’s going to be here before you know it. Sure, the New Year may have just begun, but before you know it, Spring Break will be over, and kids will be studying for exams and handing in their final term projects… Which means that it’s not too early to think about what your kids are going to be doing this summer.

2. Summer can undo what your child is learning RIGHT NOW.  You know that test you help little Timmy study for last week? Well, without maintaining his learning momentum and study skills over the break, Timmy can easily forget everything that he’s working hard to learn right now, which means you may find yourself creating long division flash cards again next year.

3. Summer can have an impact on how your child learns NEXT YEAR.  After a summer off, it can take kids up to 3 months to get back into the swing of learning. That represents a huge amount of wasted learning opportunities.

4. Kids WANT to learn in the summer. The numbers don’t lie. Research in summer learning studies shows that 56% of students want to be involved in a summer program that “helps kids keep up with summer schoolwork or prepare for the next grade.”

5. Summer programs fill up fast. Most programs are already accepting applications and taking reservations for summer enrollment.  Schools and Oxford Learning are no exception.

Now that we’ve got you thinking about summer and learning, why not contact your nearest Oxford Learning centre and enroll in one of the many great summer program options?