TLDR:
To help your child stay focused during study time, encourage them to keep their phones in a separate room while they study.
To support your child's daily motivation, suggest they avoid using social media in the morning as it can be distracting. Encourage them to treat social media as a reward to enjoy after completing their study sessions.
To ensure your child stays motivated and avoids burnout, help them strike a balance between their sports and social activities during SWOTVC
Advise your child not to spend excessively long hours studying. Encourage them to focus on efficient learning strategies and prioritize their studies.
As a parent, you can support your child's academic progress by helping them stay accountable. Check-in with them regularly to see how much work they've completed each day
With the completion of IB mock exams in most IB schools, the time has started for the current grade 12s to begin their last stretch of preparation for the upcoming exams. How effectively they utilize these upcoming weeks will be the ultimate gauge of their performance in the final examinations.
We are all well aware of the pivotal role that your support plays in your child's education, but let's delve deeper into why this specific period is so significant. As students transition into the final stretch of their high school journey (also known as swotvac), they will find themselves more independent than ever before. No longer attending school as regularly, they will have an increased amount of time on their hands, much of which they will be expected to dedicate to self-guided study. It's during this critical time they can either flourish by capitalizing on the newfound freedom and independence or falter significantly as they face minimal accountability and fewer individuals checking up on their progress.
This blog will explore the key factors that can make or break your child's success during this pivotal time. We'll provide insights, strategies, and tips to help you, as parents, guide your child toward academic excellence in their upcoming final IB exams.
Distractions: How to avoid them
Now more than ever, students are constantly attacked by distractions from every angle which nudge them away from effective study. Instagram, TikTok, Discord, Snapchat… the list goes on. Students nowadays have an arsenal of distractions that are to the detriment of their productivity.
Note that, I am not advocating for students to cut off social media fully as it can be used productively for discussing content with peers, and also for socialising which is key to having a balanced study experience. Rather, I would highly recommend parents encourage their children to minimise these apps while studying. The strategy is simple:
Strategy 1: Work hard, play harder.
Your child needs to enter the elusive state of mind known as the 'flow state' to truly absorb and retain information. This state is characterized by deep concentration, heightened focus, and optimal productivity. However, one of the biggest distractions that prevent the flow state is the omnipresent smartphone.
Phone notifications, with their constant pings and buzzes, can be the most devastating interruptions during study sessions. They have the power to pull students out of their concentrated efforts and disrupt the natural flow of learning. To combat this, encourage your children to take a proactive approach.
The first step is to turn off notifications and, if possible, place the phone in a different room while studying. This might seem like a drastic measure, but it is precisely the level of commitment needed to deter distractions. By removing the temptation of reaching for the phone at the slightest ding, your child can fully immerse themselves in their studies.
Strategy 2: Reward effective studying.
A common pitfall for many students is to wake up in the morning and go straight on YouTube or TikTok. This is devastating not only as it wastes time but also gives students a hit of dopamine which makes students demotivated to study.
Instead of banning these stimuli completely, which is often impossible for some students, we can use them to our advantage. Encourage your child to employ these stimuli as a form of positive reinforcement at the end of productive study sessions. Through this, they can cultivate a powerful motivator to sustain their focus and deter the encroaching burnout that often accompanies prolonged study hours.
Motivation: How to keep morale high and avoid burnout
Strategy 1: Don't JUST Study
For most schools, SWOTVC is 6-8 weeks. This is plenty of time to create an effective study plan and cover the entire IB syllabus for all 6 subjects WHILE maintaining balance in your life through extracurricular activities. Staying locked in one's room, hunched over, studying for 5 hours straight is a one-way ticket to getting burnout.
Most students who performed well (44’s and 45’s), maintained balanced social and physical activities during SWOTVC. Some have even told me that SWOTVC was the most physically active period in their life.
Maintaining this balance of social and physical life does 2 things. Firstly, reduces the impact of the immense stress and anxiety that students are going through. Secondly, it improves the studying efficiency of students (more on this later).
Ultimately, I would recommend at least 45 minutes of exercise daily.
Strategy 2: Don't study where you sleep.
Again and again, research has shown us that locations act as triggers for behaviours. You may have experienced this, e.g. when you enter the gym, you experience an urge to exercise, in contrast when you are lying down in bed you inherently feel lazy.
In the context of the current grade 12’s, many of them study in their bedroom, which results in either inadequate sleep or inefficient studying.
By reserving the bedroom solely for rest, students can improve their sleep quality, ensuring they are well-rested and prepared for their studying. As a bare minimum, I would recommend studying in a dedicated study space in the house, which is distraction-free.
An even better alternative would be to travel to a local library to study. Libraries provide a distraction-free and quiet place to study are are perfect locations for habitual triggers. In particular, university libraries are great as they are often open 24/7 and are not crowded by high school students.
Libraries are also great places to meet up with friends to conduct group study, also allowing students to socialise. For most year 12’s, SWOTVC will consist of mundane studying and anxiety, a perfect recipe for burnout. Having a consistent change in scenery and regularly gathering with peers may not seem like much, but goes a long way in keeping students motivated.
Study: What effective studying looks like.
Particularly within paternal groups, I have noticed the misconception that students should be studying “all day” or “12 hours a day”. This mentality is incorrect, not only as it is not progressive towards the student’s well-being, but it also quantifies studying success through an effort-based metric.
We need to shift our criteria for success to one that is outcome-based rather than effort-based. Ultimately, if in the final exam, a student performs poorly despite studying 12 hours a day, it would still be considered a failure. This truly goes to show that the number of hours you put into your studies is not a great indication of your preparation success, rather output is.
Strategy 1: Learning is not studying
Learning is often mistaken as studying by most students, while they are opposites. Learning is an outcome-based metric. It is difficult to quantify learning; however, it is best described as mastery over a subject/topic. In contrast, studying can often be quantified by hours and refers to the amount of time you spend attempting to learn.
A student studying for 1 hour can learn the same amount of content as a student studying for 4 hours. As a result, using the number of hours we study as a measure of our success is inherently flawed.
As parents, it is important to promote effective and impactful learning over disorganized and inefficient studying. One way to accomplish this is by encouraging students to dedicate shorter periods of time to studying. Instead of giving your child 4 hours to study chemistry, allow them to have 1-2 hours. The shorter deadline will encourage them to work more efficiently and without distractions and procrastination.
Just as a rule of thumb, I and many other students who received 44s and 45s studied on average 4 hours a day.
Strategy 2: Keep students accountable
As mentioned previously, SWOTVC offers newfound independence to many students, enabling them to thrive. Conversely, some students may succumb to laziness and complacency due to the lack of accountability, causing them to fall behind and procrastinate until the week before their final exams.
Parents can play a crucial role in maintaining accountability for their children. Each day of SWOTVC, parents can ask their students to take a picture of their daily work and send it to them. This simple step ensures that students accomplish something each day, keeping them on track. Similarly, a similar strategy can be employed among peers to help friends stay accountable.
Parents, you play a pivotal role in your child's academic journey, and with the November 2023 IB exams on the horizon, the support and guidance you provide during this time are more critical than ever. Through implementing these strategies, we hope that all IB students can exceed their expectations in the upcoming exams.
As always, thank you for reading. If you have any questions, please feel free to email us at myibtutorau@gmail.com
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