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Apr 2007
Success in learning is keyed to long-term recall
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Dear Dr. Fournier: Whenever I
ask my daughter about her final exams, she says,
"Don’t worry – I have it under control." She
always feels like she is ready for exams. She
does OK on tests but final exams are often a
disaster.
The school has said she might have memory problems and that I should have her tested. But she can remember everything else – even things from when she was a baby. It doesn’t make sense. |
The Assessment: Learning for long-term recall requires more than just a good memory. It also requires learning with context and meaning for our lives. Think of the clues your daughter uses for her long-term memory. She might remember a trip to the zoo because her little sister got lost; she might remember a distant relative because of a different accent or funny expressions. When children recall seemingly minute details from early in their lives, invariable there is a special meaning to them.
Unfortunately, that is not how children learn in school. Children read information in books, take notes from lectures, and listen to facts in videos. Many children take this knowledge in the order it is given without knowing how to personalize it and make it meaningful in their lives. This type of recall with no personal attachment will work for little bits of information needed for tomorrow’s test. However, once students write the information on the test paper, they often place it out of their minds, and therefore lose the long-term attachment they need for final exams – and for life.
The children who do well on chapter tests but "freeze" on final exams might not have memory problems at all. These children do not fail exams because of a lack of ability to recall, but because of the quantity required for recall. In preparing for final exams, they must abandon their short-term recall techniques and learn the information all over again because the first time lacked any context or meaning.
What To Do: A parent’s job is not to teach schoolwork but to monitor. Monitoring means that you check to make sure your child is carrying out her responsibility as she should.
When your daughter says she has exams "under control," she believes that is an honest answer. But she loses control because she does not know how to learn differently than she did for the individual tests. No one has taught her techniques to help her take ownership of knowledge – that is, to take the dry facts from school and make them meaningful for her life. She simply falls back on short-term recall, waiting until the week before finals to begin to memorize instead of starting sooner so she can learn.
Do not expect your child, on her own, to change study habits before finals. Outline a
new process with her to help with long-term recall. As you monitor, insist on seeing her efforts.
Get your child a calendar for May and have her prepare a Ready-For-Exams Program. Insist on having the plan completed before taking action. Have your child decide and record the following:
The dates and times for each exam.
A date to ask each teacher what material will be covered and what format will be used for the exam. (Your child must show you a written list and should keep the information for reference.)
A date to show you all notes, old tests, quizzes and other materials needed to study for each exam. (You might want your child to set up file folders for each subject to keep the material handy for review.)
A date to have a mock exam ready for each subject. (This puts your child truly in control of the exams by personalizing use of the knowledge she must learn.)
A date to show the mock exams to each teacher and ask them to make sure the questions are on target. Have each teacher initial these mock exams.
A date to take each mock exam and correct it from notes.
Time to learn what she missed on the mock exams. She should plan to complete learning two days before each exam. She can only review material the night before each exam.
A date to celebrate the end of exams and to do – not buy – something special with the family.
Each time we ask our children, "are you ready for exams?" we assume they know how to analyze the task ahead. It is in this assumption that many children find failure for lack of being taught the life skill of planning.
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Childhood and its many definitions
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Dear Dr. Fournier: I am
retired, but keep on the volunteer list at our
local school board. I am keenly interested in
education, and have to say that it is hard to
ignore the problems in our country in the
education sector.
One thing that has always bothered me is the increasing tendency to refer to a child or children as "kid" or "kids." I grew up on a farm and we had many kids in the pasture...please help us get on the right track. |
The Assessment: Seeking an umbrella term for children of all ages, I acknowledge using the word "kid" to excess.
It is easy to use a word that has an immediate identity ranging from a tiny preschooler to a strapping high-school athlete.
I do not believe we can get on the right track with our terminology until we answer one basic question: What do we mean by the term, "childhood?"
Our country has become ambivalent about childhood, as if no one knows who a child is anymore.
I am amazed at how many daughters dress like their mothers and how many boys look as if they were interns at their fathers’ law firms. On the other extreme, some girls dress as if they have forgotten to take off their pajamas, and boys are cloaked like tramps.
I have come to realize that children in the second group are being given the "opportunity" to assert their "individuality" with the freedom to "express their inner selves."
Either way, through rigid dress code or experimentation, children are allowed to experience the freedom of adulthood without the responsibility that goes with such freedom.
And there are other signals. I remember calling one school to inquire about placement for a child and asking about any special difficulties the administration had witnessed among the students.
"Only with dating," I was told. "When some of the girls don’t get asked out, they get hurt."
Quickly apologizing for not making myself clear, I specified that I was talking about a fourth-grader. So was the school representative!
While speaking to parents at a local high school years ago, I introduced a concept I call the "Swiss Cheese Kid."
During the question and answer period that followed, a father asked me, "Why do you use the term ‘kid’?" My answer: "If I referred to your high-school son or daughter as a child, you might not think I was talking to you."
Unfortunately, I have adopted the use of the term "kid" because too many adults today refuse to see children as children – and I use that term to include preschools through older teens.
Many adults have bought into the notion that our little ones must be treated as if they were older, and our older ones must be given privileges without responsibility as if they were younger.
What To Do: As a society, we must decide who are the children – and who are the parents. When a father of a third-grader asks me, "Just when will he take full responsibility for himself?" I always answer, "When he pays his own rent!"
It is the parents’ role to give each child guidance, and to give each child a childhood.
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Responsible decision-making
April 12, 2007 12:00 PM Filed in: Skill Sets
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Dear Dr. Fournier: When my daughter comes home from school in the afternoon, we often end up arguing because she can’t make a decision. She can’t decide what play clothes to wear or when to do her homework. I realize that this is not solely a homework problem, but surely the indecisiveness that is so frustrating to me also affects her work in the third grade. How can I help my daughter become a hassle-free decision maker? |
The Assessment: Your child spends all day in school facing only one decision: to do the "right" thing by following the teacher’s instructions, or to do the "wrong" thing and suffer the consequences.
In school, explicit instructions leave little, if any, opportunity to make choices. Workbooks and ditto sheets give clear mandates: "Write the sentence and underline the noun." Some students are even told when to line up and use the bathroom, whether they need to or not.
This right-or-wrong approach replaces decision making with obedience. The two qualities are not mutually exclusive. As parents, we can teach our children how to obey the rules and still allow them the freedom to make appropriate decisions. Effective decision making is not always a matter of right and wrong. Children need to learn how to identify problems (not just solve them), how to recognize various options (not just one "right" answer), how to weigh the pros and cons (not just memorize one response), and how to select the best possible choice.
Children who have problems with decision making tend to be at two extremes, and might even fluctuation between them: "I don’t know – what do you want?" and "I want this and I want it now."
Your child seems to be in the first group. These children have not developed the ability to recognize decision-making choices. These children wait for mandates and are overwhelmed by choices.
Given the freedom to decide, the second group will go overboard and want it all. Although this child makes up his mind quickly, he has not learned how to analyze options and make confident decisions. The child who desperately wants a toy can be the same child who sets it aside in a couple of days only to be miserable until he can impulsively have his next toy.
What To Do: Make a list with your child of those areas for which there are NO choices. These rules, which deal with important values, are to be followed obediently. Examples could be words you are not allowed to use or "house rules" such as keeping your bed made and your clothes off the floor.
With these mandates out of the way, other matters may be decided as they arise. Pick some routine decisions your child should make, such as selecting what play clothes to wear. Let your child know that before she decides, she is to tell you what the options are and the pros and cons of each. Congratulate your child for her analysis regardless of the decision.
This process also applies to school work. For example, your child reports: "I will do my math and spelling now for about 30 minutes, and my social studies and composition after dinner. The advantage is I will have time to play. The disadvantage is I am leaving the hardest work for tonight when I will be tired." When your child’s decision produces disadvantages that might lead to unnecessary hassles and scoldings later on, your child can turn back to her list of pros and cons and discover a new option to resolve the situation. In this case, your child could exchange at least one of the easier assignments to avoid poor quality learning.
It is easier for parents to be the decision makers rather than teach children how to make their own decisions. However, the only way we have a right to expect responsible decision making from our children is the old-fashioned way – they must learn it.
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Make a homework checklist
April 05, 2007 12:00 PM Filed in: Elementary
School
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Dear Dr. Fournier: My
daughter has a problem handing in her homework.
Her teacher and I got together and set up a plan
to help her. The teacher agreed to give my
daughter a daily calendar with homework
assignments written on it. Every day I sign the
homework sheet and the homework. Believe it or
not, my daughter still does not get her homework
in every day. When she doesn’t, she gets a zero
and all the work we have done is for nothing.
My daughter will soon be in middle school where she will have too many teachers to do all of this. What else can I do? |
The Assessment: In helping our children turn failure into success, we have two choices: to offer a strategy that helps them to be in control of their success, or to give them a crutch that furthers their dependence.
Even the best intentions can go awry when we do not establish a strategy that answers one basic question: "What does my childnot know how to do that she is expected to know how to do?"
In this case, you assumed that your daughter needed to know her homework assignments, but the problem was not doing the homework, but handing in the homework. If you had examined the steps involved in the homework process, you could have developed a more specific strategy, and one that would put your child in control, not you and the teacher.
What To Do: Write down a detailed, step-by-step homework checklist that includes all the tasks involved from the time your child writes down the assignment until she turns it in.
As part of this checklist system, you should designate a "Homework Place" for your child to leave all finished work so that you can check it by a certain time each night. As soon as you have checked to make sure the assignments are complete, your child should put her homework in her bookbag to have it ready for school the next morning. This procedure reduces the familiar confrontation of "Have you finished your homework yet?" It also puts your child in charge of setting a timetable for achievement.
Once you have completed a homework checklist, make enough copies to have a different list for each night. Your daughter is responsible for checking off each step as she completes it. For a child who doesn’t hand in homework, a checklist might read:
In School
Write down the assignment.
Write the action required (such as reading a chapter, writing answers to questions, computing math problems or copying spelling words).
Write what I will need to take home (such as textbooks, notebooks or worksheets).
Check off each item as I put it in my bookbag.
Show my teacher I have completed the "in school" part of my checklist.
At Home
Recheck that I have everything I need to complete my assignments.
Decide the order I will do each assignment.
Decide exactly what time I will do each one.
Develop a daily completion plan for homework and other at-home responsibilities.
Put together all materials I will need for my homework.
Follow my completion plan to finish my work on time.
Leave my work in the special "Homework Place."
Have my parents check the "Homework Place" to make sure I have not forgotten anything.
Put everything in my bookbag and leave my bookbag at the door.
Forget about homework until tomorrow and have fun!
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