Next week will be my daughters’ final exams. As a work-at-home mom, it’s a given that my schedule is full but with the exams next week, my top priority is clearing up my weekends to give way to our review sessions. I heard of some parents who let their kids do their studying and their reviews on their own but for me, it’s a must that I see what they are learning from school and since I don’t have time to check their works daily, our review sessions before exams will be my chance to know if they learned from their lessons or not.
I’m happy with my daughters’ grades from previous semesters and I’m proud to say that I see them being more independent when it comes to studying. But for me, reviewing your children before the exams helps them not only to get higher examination grades in the end but also for your kids to be comfortable during the exams itself. That’s what I always notice from my girls. They are more relaxed and confident before going to school during exam weeks when we had reviewed their subjects the day before. Seeing them this way makes me happy as I know I’ve done my part and that my kids are enjoying their school days even during these stressful examination days.
Here are my personal tips if you want to make your review sessions a bit easier and more successful:
- Set your review sessions with your kids ahead of time. Let your kids be involved with the planning so they can also learn to commit and prepare themselves. Check your child’s examination schedule and the order of subjects they will be having so you can prioritize which subjects to review first.
- Prepare your materials (pens, scratch papers, highlighters, points for review given by the school and the teachers) and your location where you will review. Have water bottles and cups within your reach so you can easily take water breaks once in a while.
- If you have multiple kids to review, allocate your time wisely and limit the subjects you’ll review to maximum of 2 per review sessions. Kids easily get bored even the more mature ones.
- Take a 10-15 minute break between reviews to ease out your voice and your mind and to take bladder breaks.
- Teach your children on the use of highlighters (if allowed on their text books) and highlight the crucial points to remember for the exams.
- Teach your child how to remember ideas thru keywords. These are words which are interesting or easy to remember for your child which you can use to relate with the ideas they need to remember for the exams. For example, the first woman history writer Anna Comnena can be related to Princess Anna of their favorite Disney film Frozen.
- Create your own acronyms to easily remember multiple items. One popular example acronym is ROYGBIV for the colors of the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet). You can use this strategy when remembering list of ideas. For example, names of the 12 apostles can be memorized using 5J2PMASTB (2 James, 2Judas, John, Peter, Philip, Matthew, Andrew, Simon, Thomas & Bartholomew)
After review, make sure to praise your child for being good and behaved on your review session. Make the rest of the day or of the night relaxed and assure your child that their good grades from the exams will make you happy but it’s actually for their own good in the future if they do good in school now. If your budget will allow it, plan a treat for your kids at the end of the examination week so they will have something to look forward to. Your kids will also be encouraged to do better on their exams so they can have their stories to tell on your treat day!
Tutorial and Review Schools – personally reviewing kids before exams or tutoring them throughout the year can be impossible for some parents. Fortunately, there are many reputable review and tutorial schools in the Philippines who are offering their services. Here are some of the schools worth mentioning. They also offer summer tutorial programs which you may check out if you are considering lessons for your kids this summer 🙂
Ahead Tutorial and Review Center
Academic Edge Tutorial And Review Center
Kumon – Kumon though is not an actual tutorial school but as I heard from good-feedbacks from co-mommies, they provide complementary education to kids and teach them independently especially in the field of math. I am very interested in trying out their programs and will give you a separate entry for this in the near future 🙂
Do you have other review tips you want to share? Feel free to share them in your comments ♥
