Working Harder During the Holidays

Ever tell your child, “Work harder okay?” As a teacher, I heard parents tell their child that in front of me countless times. It’s a nice sentiment, but it does absolutely nothing.

It’s not that your child isn’t working hard, or going to work harder, it’s that your child may not know how to. In fact, ask them how they think they can improve. They will probably say that they will work harder. But if you ask them how they would do that exactly, you’d more likely get a blank stare.

The term breaks in March, June, September and December are a perfect time for students to “work harder”, and more specifically, work harder at their weaknesses.

Take Inventory

Exams are not a bad thing. They are an invaluable source of feedback. Unfortunately, most students only focus on the numbers on the cover page. Most parents mistakenly do that too. What’s important is on the inside.

A score of 150/200 for English doesn’t say much. Out of that 150, 56/95 for Paper 2 is more information, but still not useful. 4/10 in the Synthesis and Transformation component tells us that more drill is needed.

Analysing the actual question that was answered wrongly reveals the question type that needs to be drilled. Taking the time to analyse all the mistakes for each component of each subject with rigour will help you and your child draft out an action plan to maximise the holidays to efficiently tackle the weak areas.

Hopefully, you got to attend the recent Teacher-Parent Meeting and got some actionable feedback. Your child’s teacher can tell you what might not show on an exam paper.

For instance, it was from that meeting that one of my student’s parent found out something that his total score did not show. According to his teacher, he did not speak a work beyond “Don’t know.” for his English oral exam, even with prompting from the examiner. He had also written all his answers in the Comprehension component in Chinese.

It was clear, after that meeting, that the issue was his attitude, not his aptitude.

Hence, the starting point is to take inventory of your child’s strengths and areas of needed improvement.

Chunk the Problems

Take all those areas of needed improvement and group them into 3 broad categories: Knowledge, skill and attitude.

• Knowledge

Is it a matter of a lack of understanding of some concepts? Assign some time each day for your child to brush up on them. It could be re-reading the textbook, revisiting some extra notes, researching online, watching some YouTube videos, or even conducting some simple experiments.

• Skill

Skill is developed through practice. It’s like developing muscle memory – a mechanical repetition of steps until one achieves a level of intuitive aptitude when performing a task. It could be mental sums, guess and check, converting mixed numbers to improper fractions and vice versa, drawing food webs or circuit diagrams, grammar MCQ, synthesis and transformation, etc. Rote learning will never be obsolete, because mastery comes from repetition.

• Attitude

Some attitude issues simply require a realigning of understanding, or simply, an encouraging word. Others may require more time and energy, especially on your part as a parent. Confidence issues may take months or even years to overcome. Pain from relational complications between parents may need time to heal. Your child may be a victim of bullying. Your child may not feel that you love him or her because of bad performance. Your child may be paralysed under your extreme expectations. Maybe your child failed on purpose to spite a hated teacher.

These all need time to process together with your child. That’s the key: You have to help them process those issues. Don’t brush them aside, and don’t rush them. Bad results are not always an academic issue but may be a red flag of something more deep-seated.

Plan to Succeed

As the saying goes, “Fail to plan and plan to fail”. While chunking problems will make them more manageable, it must lead to an effective plan to address them, especially for knowledge and skill gaps. Otherwise, it’ll be back to square one when the new term starts, and the cycle continues.

What’s more effective than a to-do list, is to map out a timetable for each week with your child and assign slots to each problem area. Be realistic. Don’t expect to bridge every single gap during the holidays. It’s more important to address them well than to address them all. Slow is fast. Given time and practice, your child will develop independence and work on those issues on his or her own.

The holidays are a great time, without the burdens of going to school, learning new content and homework, to help your child realign his or her heart and the mind. The June and December holidays, in particular, are long, and could be much better spent improving oneself than just getting lost in front of the TV, computer or mobile phone. Set a target and challenge your child, “How will you be a better ‘you’ at the end of this June holidays? Now go work hard at it.”

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