On Learning
An article by Mark Darling initially published in a local magazine

When I started tutoring I very quickly learnt that my job was not just a matter of explaining the maths or science but also included helping the children how to go about learning the subject matter.

It comes as a shock to some of them when they realise that to do well at school they have to do quite a bit of work both on their own initiative and at home. While teaching may happen at school, learning certainly happens mainly at home.

It is one of the reasons why people go to school: To learn how to go about learning. Someone armed with the skill to learn things, the self-discipline to make the effort and the confidence that it is worth doing has a major advantage in life.

Sadly there is no one way to learn that works for everyone; if there was then everybody would be taught it at school. Instead students are left to discover what works for them best from a whole range of ideas. Here are some suggestions.

There is little point in children making the effort to do well at school if they do not receive the encouragement and support of their families. This means that sometimes family members have to inconvenience themselves to help their children concentrate with no distractions (e.g. by not watching television while their children are studying.).

It helps if there is a regular time set aside every day of the week when the child does school work. Without a set time to start, the work may never get started. With a fixed start time, this activity should become part of the daily routine. Children are happier knowing they only have to work up to a certain time and then the rest of the night is for them.

Within their set time, the children should review what they have done at school that day and what homework they have to do. The review shows them what they do not understand and need to ask their teacher (or tutor) about when they next meet. It allows them to make their own notes what they have been taught, in their own words and style.

Having done their homework, the rest of the time is spent reviewing their notes from topics covered earlier. It is such a shame that children take so much effort to learn something, to then ignore it and forget all about it until a burst of desperate revision just before the exam, Instead by regularly reviewing past topics they keep the information fresh in their memory. They are doing their revision in many little bites rather than all at one burst. No child can say they have nothing to do – there is always revision.

My final suggestion is about how to get them to do the work they want not to do. Faced with an unpleasant task, most children will find ways to avoid doing the work. A solution is to break the job up into bursts of 20 minutes hard work followed by 10 minutes of a reward. By using the kitchen timer, the child can be confident that there is only 20 minutes of work to do and clock-watching can be avoided.

Once children have got used to spending some time after school reviewing what they have done and keeping what they need to know fresh in their memory, this activity will become second nature, their confidence in what they are doing improves and they make better use of their time at school.