It’s the New Year, which means that it’s time to set academic resolutions to improve grades and confidence. Understanding more about areas needing improvement and setting academic goals together can be a fun way of bonding that sets the right tone for the New Year.
Academic goals for young students should be specific and personalized to them. According to Paul Tough, author of “How Children Succeed,” sharing resolutions with the entire family can make resolutions more successful. He states that “in the planning stage, children should be able to contribute ideas and suggestions so that they feel as much of a sense of ownership over the resolution as their parents.”
What Can You Do To Motivate Your Child To Make Resolutions?
Any conversation you have with your child about goals and resolutions should always be fun, motivating, and informative. Frame your discussion in a way that ensures children understand that goals are exciting ways to better themselves and not a reflection of wrongdoing.
Making academic resolutions can be valuable to both your child’s current and future schooling. It helps encourage better communication skills and allows children to understand the importance of setting and sticking by goals.
Check out the three academic goals your child can make this year:
- Finish Homework Early: It’s no secret that homework is the last thing children want to tackle after a long day at school or on the weekends. However, making a goal of finishing homework not just on time—but ahead of time—helps children become proactive and plan their time wisely. It also helps your child avoid unnecessary stress from handing homework in late or rushing to finish it on time. You can encourage them to prioritize their homework by having them submit it at least one day before the due date weekly.
- Improve Organization: Whether it’s misplacing an important paper or forgetting about an upcoming test, when students are disorganized, it can affect learning. Organization skills are the process of building logical and systematic working skills through planning—being organized can make learning easier in many ways. Stronger organizational skills translate into tidy notebooks, clean book bags, neat lockers, and even better grades! Check out these organization tips.
- Encourage Hand Raising: It can be intimidating for students of any age to raise their hand with an answer without being prompted. However, with practice, children can gain more confidence in themselves and their solutions or questions in class. Create a game at home that involves children raising their hand to offer an answer and praising them for doing so. Practice at home will help them build up self-confidence that will translate into the classroom.
Student academic goals are important not just for now but for the future as well. Resolutions allow students to understand themselves better, challenge themselves, and become more confident in their abilities for the new year ahead.
