How to Help Your Child Prepare for Exams

How to Help Your Child Prepare for Exams

Understanding how best to help your child prepare for their exams can be a minefield. Conflicting advice from well meaning family and friends, teachers at your child’s school and even Google can leave you feeling confused. One aspect of exam preparation that there is a consensus on is revision. Revision is vital for your child to achieve the highest grades they possibly can on the Nat 5, Higher or Advanced Higher exams.

As specialists in providing revision courses we understand the importance of ensuring your child is as prepared and as confident as possible prior to sitting their exams.

There are a number of things that you can also do at home in order to get the most out of revision time.

how to help your child prepare for exams

1. Ensure you target your revision effectively.

Ensure that your child becomes familiar with the format of the Nat 5, Higher or Advanced Higher exams that they will be sitting by looking at past papers. This not only gives you a flavour of how the questions are phrased but also the key topic areas that the examinations tend to focus on assessing. Target your child’s revision to these areas to maximise exam success.

2. Don’t cram.

It is vital that your child’s life does not become dominated by revision and that they have plenty of time to enjoy their own interests. Too much revision can cause unnecessary stress. By setting up a structured weekly timetable for revision, you will ensure that your child is retaining the relevant knowledge and information as well as having all important down time.

3. Find a system that works.

Different strokes for different folks has never been a more apt phrase than when talking about revision. Be active and not passive when learning. Some children revise by making small cue cards, some write notes highlighting key words and others are more visual and construct their own mind maps or diagrams. Just looking and trying and memorise from a textbook will not aid the learning process.

4. Encourage mistakes.

In order to maximise learning in the long term, children must explore and experiment when trying to find answers. By encouraging this freedom of learning and making it acceptable to fail, your child will become more resilient and be willing to try again if revision sessions do not always seem successful.

Revision is a highly personal process and the time management and self discipline that it requires will benefit your child beyond their exams. By booking a place on one of our Easter revision courses you are ensuring that your child will receive well structured, expertly delivered teaching that will cater to your child’s revision needs