For most parents with children at school age, the last few days before you send your kids back to school after the Christmas holidays means preparing them for the approaching exam season.
Almost every high school year group in the UK has January exams, so regardless of whether your child has just started secondary school, or they’re just about to sit down for their GCSEs, some pre-exam prep is never wasted. Here are some of our favourite exam prep tips.
Exam Timetables and Work Management
Children tend not to be the most organised. So, one of the best ways you can support them is by helping them to create an exam timetable to support their work flow. If kids don’t have a consistent flow of work to work through, they may end up leaving everything until the last minute, which vary rarely produces strong academic results. Here’s a great online tool for producing a professional timetable.
Carrot and Stick Revision
Unless you child is incredibly academic, it’s unlikely that they’ll simply sit and revise without any encouragement or reward. Probably the best way to help your child out is by giving them some kind of incentive to doing their work.
If, for example, for every chapter of the textbook their complete they get a pocket money increase, you’ll very quickly find that they’re zooming through their work without you needing to be on their backs.
The Right Equipment
Although they might not seem it, the vast majority of children are quiet, insecure and shy. This means that they are very receptive to peer-pressure and the other troubles of being young. Making sure they have the right bag, pencil and laptop case might seem like trivial factors to you, but for your child, it can mean the difference between returning to school full of confidence and lacking it.
This can have a massive impact on their exam performance, because they may be too timid to try an answer which requires a bit of courage. Therefore, ensuring that your children have the right equipment to see them through their exams has the potential to really boost their performance.
If you’ve been trying to come up with ways to help your kid prepare for their post-Christmas holiday exams, hopefully these tips will help you out. They might not all be applicable, but one of them is sure to boost their exam performance, so keep them in mind as the Christmas holidays draw to a close.