"Teacher, the child has been in a very poor state of learning lately. Asked nothing to say, the attitude is still very disgusting. I am about to pass the entrance examination, what should I do? ”
That's the question I get asked a lot, I'm a fifth-grade Chinese teacher, and fifth grade is a very critical year in elementary school. If a child has such a problem, you can imagine how anxious the parents are.
I usually reply like, "You don't have to worry too much, a lot of kids have problems at this stage." On the one hand, children's physical and psychological development and maturity are further developed and have more autonomy; on the other hand, the upper grade coursework is complex, which puts forward higher requirements for children's imagination, independent thinking, and conscious learning ability. We must be patient and accompany our children through this turning point smoothly. ”
In fact, parents understand the truth, but how to do it specifically? I recently found a more professional and nuanced answer in the book Infinite Possibilities: Quickly Awakening Your Learning Brain.
The author, Jim Quake, was once a brain-damaged child with poor learning ability, but instead of giving up on himself, he created a series of learning methods and counterattacked to become a brain coach that swept the United States. The methods in the book are very suitable for children in the school stage, simple to use, easy to implement, and very effective.
01 Don't love to learn? Three aspects stimulate the child's internal drive
Every time a new semester starts, I ask my children, "What are you studying for?" ”
"Mom asked me to learn"
"The law says I have to learn"
Almost no child says it is learning for themselves.
Driven by external forces, children will feel the pressure, learning has become a task that must be completed, and the most important thing for senior children is to establish the initiative of learning.
Parents can no longer order their children as when they were young, but to find ways to stimulate their children's internal drive, they can start from the following three aspects.
First, let children understand the importance of learning.
I used to ask my kids, "What do you want to do when you grow up?" ”
"Doing Business"
"Sitting in the office"
"Full-time playing games"
I asked again, "Then if you want to do these things, do you need to study hard now?" ”
"Teacher, doing business has nothing to do with what you are learning now"
"Teacher, a lot of people who do esports don't go to school"
This is the truest thought in the hearts of many children, children's cognition of the world is narrow, and the first thing adults have to do is to let children understand the importance of learning.
For children who want to play games, I will tell him: "Designing a game is more fulfilling than playing it yourself, but it is very demanding for your profession, and if you don't study well now, you may not have the opportunity to further study in the future." ”
For children who want to start a business, I will say: "Economics and management can help you understand the laws of economic development and the operation methods of companies, master this knowledge, and you will do better business in the future." ”
Let the child understand that what he is doing now is to lay the foundation for the ultimate goal. The vision is a small flame in the child's heart, and we must tell the child that only through learning can this fire really burn.
Second, cultivate the love in children's hearts.
Love is not choosing the most suitable path, not choosing a perfect life, and not choosing a decent job in the eyes of the world.
For children, love is dancing on stage, freely reciting poetry, and perhaps even an addictive game.
Many parents think that these have nothing to do with learning and let their children give up temporarily, but this undoubtedly deepens the pain of children's learning. A better approach than to give up is to connect.
In the case of playing games, children will spontaneously study strategies, find teammates, and even summarize their own experience and constantly hone their skills.
What parents have to do is to guide their children to transfer the experience gained in the game to learning, so that children can feel the same sense of satisfaction and achievement in learning.
Third, give positive feedback in a timely manner.
After each lesson, I would praise the child who studied hard by name, whether the child scored well or badly on the test. The child who receives praise is usually more willing to invest time and energy in learning and make greater progress.
Give positive feedback in a timely manner so that children know that if they put in enough effort, they will be able to succeed. Children will gradually gain a sense of autonomy and control over learning, and will be more willing to engage in learning.
Promote children through vision, strengthen children through love, and motivate children through positive feedback, three-pronged approach, so that children can develop a love of learning. Only when the child sincerely wants to devote himself to learning and acquiring knowledge can he have an inexhaustible motivation.
02 Can't stop studying? Three ways to improve your child's concentration
In class, I often see classmates who are dazed and distracted, ask them why, and the answer they give is usually: the short video, TV series or game I watched last night made me remember it.
Electronic products are probably the "number one killer" on the road to children's learning, and many parents are also anxious.
In order to let the child study with peace of mind, the whole family does not watch TV or play mobile phones, but the child is still absent-minded and looks left and right;
Stipulate the use time of electronic products, originally thought that children can learn well after playing, but children still can't calm down;
Try to let go, don't limit, let the child arrange his own time, and as a result, the child does five minutes of homework and picks up the phone.
The ubiquitous electronics and network environment make "concentration" a luxury, and children's concentration and self-control are not enough to resist such a powerful temptation.
Since the external environment cannot be changed, we can only find ways to help children find their attention and let children establish focused and efficient learning habits.
In Infinite Possibilities, we are provided with three simple and effective methods:
First, make sure your child's learning environment is clean and tidy.
Research from Princeton University found that at the same time, if there are multiple debris in a person's field of vision, attention will be greatly distracted.
Therefore, it is particularly important to create a clean learning environment for children, remove unnecessary items on the desk, including electronic products, decorations, dolls, etc., to avoid cluttered objects occupying the child's brain space.
Second, figurative attention.
Think of brain consciousness as a glowing ball that travels through different parts of our brain. While learning, let the child move this luminous ball in a fixed position in the brain.
When the child is found to be distracted, remind the child in time to pull the glowing ball in his mind back and refocus on learning.
Attention is like muscle, the more you exercise, the stronger you will get. With this kind of training every day, the child's concentration will become stronger and stronger.
Third, do only one thing at a time.
Jim Quake warns us that no matter what we do, multitasking at the same time is not only an extremely inefficient way, it can also destroy a person's concentration.
Therefore, do not let your child memorize words when eating, and count while building blocks. Make sure your child is doing only one thing at a time to get better and better.
Training concentration is an important part of developing good study habits, and attentive children are able to concentrate on everything, complete tasks quickly and with high quality, and strengthen their ability to think independently and deeply.
03 Can't remember after learning? There are three ways to strengthen your child's memory
In class, I often ask the children what they have learned before, hoping that they will integrate the knowledge points before and after. But I found that every time I asked a question, the children's brains were like "short-circuited", and I could see that they were trying hard to recall, but they just couldn't remember anything.
Most of our methods of memory are rote memorization, but in this way, not only is the retention rate low, but children do not feel the joy of learning.
Infinite Possibilities provides us with some simple, fun, and especially child-friendly methods of memory.
First, strengthen children's confidence.
Many parents like to use the radical method to say to their children: "Others will, you will not" "I know you can't", want to stimulate the child's morale, but often no effect is not said, but also very destructive parent-child relationship.
I once did an experiment in which I said to the children in class, "This text is very difficult, you can't memorize it", and at least 1/2 of the children in the class really can't memorize it.
Next time, I said to them, "This one is easy, you'll memorize it when you're done with class," and the kids actually memorized it before class.
Are the two texts very different in difficulty? No, it was the first time my words made the children doubt themselves and did not think that they could make a breakthrough; the last time my words gave the children enough confidence.
Therefore, an indispensable step in strengthening memory is to give children enough confidence to believe that they can learn knowledge through hard work and remember knowledge through skills.
Second, combine pictures to strengthen memory.
Every time I give a lecture, I use pictures as much as possible:
When I study "Watching the Tide", I will show the children pictures of the Qiantang River and mark the characteristics of the high tide and low tide next to it.
When studying "Jingyang Gang" and introducing Wu Song, I would use a picture of Wu Song fighting a tiger, next to which I would mark the character characteristics of Wu Song.
When it comes time to review, just mention the picture and the children will be able to remember what they are learning.
People's visual memory is much stronger than language and text memory, using pictures as a bridge, linking the content of books with life, and noting knowledge points next to pictures, not only increasing learning fun, but also helping children to quickly and long-term memory, that is, "a picture is better than a thousand words".
Third, associate the story and build the scene.
I once used the associative method to take the children to recite "Birdsong":
People idle osmanthus flowers fall, and the night is quiet in the spring mountain sky. The moonrise frightens the mountain birds, and when the song is in the spring stream.
I imagined with the children that in the silent spring night, we stood next to the osmanthus tree and watched the osmanthus blossom fall. The moon came out of the clouds, and the moonlight shone on the trees next to it, scaring the birds hiding in the trees and chirping.
When ancient poems become pictures, children can easily and quickly recite them. And association is easy to mobilize children's emotions, combining knowledge and emotions, is the best way to remember for a long time.
For example, "Birdsong" can make children feel the comfort of spring nights, and when children have similar feelings in real life, they may remember this poem that they have memorized in class.
Give children confidence, coupled with the blessing of pictures, the construction of scenes, and the emotional investment, children's memory will definitely improve by leaps and bounds.
Write at the end
Every child has unlimited potential, and the key is that we find ways to unleash it.
In "Infinite Possibilities", author Jim Quake uses his own personal experience to let us know that as long as we master the scientific method, children can solve one problem after another on the road to learning.
There are also training methods for reading, creativity, insight, and learning thinking that parents can learn with their children. You can also be like Jim Quake, helping children find their own "infinite possibilities".