Helping Parents Help Their Teens
We’ve noticed that a lot of parents are asking us about the same issues. "My teen doesn’t know how to study, my teen used to get good grades but now she’s lacking motivation, my teen gets really stressed out about tests and exams" – stuff like this. Almost EVERY teen struggles with these sorts of issues at one stage during their time at high school. Even straight-A-getters. … [Read more...]
When it comes to exams, we like to think of our brains like our muscles when we exercise. Most of us don’t launch into exercise like an Olympic marathon runner. We take a bit of time to warm up, to override the niggly pains, to come into our stride. Sitting an exam is exactly the same. It’s our experience that for the first half an hour or so of an exam, your brain is just … [Read more...]
With exams just around the corner we know how stressful things can get... Especially when you’ve got a number of teens at high school! If this is a position you’re in at the moment – may the force be with you. Hopefully your teen is going OK and isn’t too stressed! If they are panicking, we’ve got a tip for them to help remember much more in the last few days leading up to … [Read more...]
There's not just one right way for your teen to go about studying for exams. However, there is something that every teen should do during their exam preparation. Something so effective in helping students prepare for exams in fact (we speak from personal experience), it almost feels like you're cheating! It doesn't matter what your teen's predominant learning style is or how they … [Read more...]
Studying hard for their exams is not the only thing your teen needs to do in order to be well prepared. They also need to dedicate time to planning how they’re going to answer their exam questions. Because there’s actually a right and a wrong way to tackle exam questions. And this is most apparent with short answer questions (those requiring one or two lines maximum), and long answer … [Read more...]
Between the two of us we've sat quite a large number of exams since high school. In fact, we estimate we've sat 98 2-3 hour exams between us. This doesn't even include tests or assignments or internal exams. (That's not supposed to impress you by the way... Only to inform you we really have sat a lot of exams!) And on top of our own experiences, we're each currently spending three to … [Read more...]
When exams are looming it’s easy to get caught up in the exam preparation side of things and completely forget about planning your time in the exam. That’s right – your teen needs to sort out an in-exam strategy too. Not doing so can be the difference between scraping a pass and absolutely nailing it. Your teen needs to have an exam plan. A plan for how your teen spends their exam … [Read more...]
This year NCEA celebrates it's tenth birthday. Yet the exam and marking structure of it still remain a mystery to many parents. Which is totally understandable. It's absolutely nothing like School Cert and seems to have undergone changes every year since it was implemented. However, once one becomes familiar with NCEA - as we are - a few solid patterns emerge. One of these patterns is … [Read more...]
Earlier this week we talked about what tutoring is for and what it's not. The crux of the article was that in order for your hard earned pennies to pay off, your teen can't treat tutoring sessions as homework or study time. Furthermore, tutoring isn't cheap! You’d hardly expect a $5/hr tutor to be amazing. So if you do decide to get one for your teen, you want to make sure they’re … [Read more...]
In this article we’re going to talk about the most valuable study tool for your teen this year. Subject Maps eliminate all of the major problems teens struggle with during exam study. They will save your teen huge amounts of time They will give your teen a 'study roadmap' to follow when studying They will ensure your teen studies the right stuff, and ignores the surplus … [Read more...]
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