Seven Tips to Help Your Child Have a Successful School Year

Chyten Educational Services, a premier provider of test preparation and college counseling services, offers seven strategies to help children have a successful school year.

“As families transition from summer to a school year routine, many parents want to know how to best prepare their children so that they are school-ready on day one,” said Neil Chyten, founder and president of Chyten Educational Services. “Adequate preparation involves more than a shopping trip for school supplies. It takes a combination of attitude, environment, and support.”

1. Read ahead. Stay ahead.

There is an easy strategy can provide your child with an important advantage: Read one chapter ahead- every class, every time. Reading ahead can help your child understand the organization of a lecture, take better notes, and differentiate between important material and less-important details. It will also undoubtedly give your child additional confidence to speak up in class, which is a critical grading factor.

2. Understand your child’s “study zone.”

A study zone is the time at which your child’s brain is most actively open to receiving, sharing, and processing new information. Is your child an early bird or a midnight owl? Understanding your child’s study zone can help her make the best use most of her time.

3. Dedicate a “study space.”

Create a quiet study space free from distraction that features at least two light sources coming from different directions, such as an overhead light and a desk lamp. This will help minimize eyestrain, reduce shadows and provide maximum contrast of letters to the background of a page.

4. Understand good reading and bad reading.

Textbooks do not present information the same ways novels do. Students must read each very differently. Textbooks generally do not have characters, plots, rising and falling action, or settings. Novels typically lack subchapter endings, graphs, charts, or study questions at the end of each chapter. For textbooks, read the study questions first. For novels, conduct a chapter survey prior to reading it through.

5. Get ready for good notetaking.

There is evidence that some students forget as much as 95 percent of what is said in class only 24 hours after that class occurs. While listening in class is critical, students gain when they can write down as much as possible before the spoken information disappears. Good classroom notes can become good study sheets.

6. Give study habits a tune-up.

Just as you change your car’s oil on a regular basis, do the same for your child’s study skills and give them a tune-up. There no substitute for hard work, but it’s equally important to be smart with work. As students move to a new grade, take up a new assignment, or deal with curriculum changes, so must your child’s approach to that work.

7. Encourage your child to be curious, to read widely and broadly, and to follow her interests.

Feed your child’s mind with the right ingredients—whether it’s an engaging summer novel appropriate to his or her reading level, topical stories from the daily newspaper, or a couple pages from a science or nature magazine explaining a commonly misunderstood phenomena. A varied diet of high-quality reading materials will uncage your child’s creativity.

ABOUT CHYTEN

Chyten Educational Services was founded in 1984 by Neil Chyten, a well-known tutor with a belief that private education firms should never sacrifice educational excellence. Chyten hires only real teachers with master’s degrees and outstanding communication and pedagogical skills, setting the bar higher than any other firm in the country. Services offered include: standardized test preparation, college counseling, academic tutoring, RANDD Reading and Study Skills, remediation and credit recovery, and AP preparation.

To enroll in Chyten’s free ACT vs. SAT Comparison Tests, tutoring and other programs, visit www.chyten.com or call 800-428-TEST (8378).