One highly effective and relaxing teaching and learning method you should use with your child is to high five them when a test shows they don’t know something.
Let me explain.
They sit a Maths paper and it shows they don’t know co-ordinates, or have forgotten how to do long division, or they come across a topic they haven’t covered yet. This is absolutely brilliant. Why? Because you have both just identified the next thing they’re going to be brilliant at. When you know you don’t know, you can then sit with them for a session or two dedicated to this unknown area.
Do this enough times and you come close to running out of things you don’t know in time for any real test.
If you’re critical of something they don’t know, they may be less likely to want to learn it, in case they get it wrong and disappoint you again. But if you frame learning as an adventure to actively seek out the unknowns and see it as finding treasure, it becomes less worrying and you make faster progress. Faster progress is what we want!
So celebrate what your child doesn’t know. You’ve found the valuable next step on their learning path. Yey!
Enjoy your back to school moment. Give them extra hugs and handshakes, it doesn’t last forever. Here’s to the preciousness of education and the preciousness of another chance to start again and move forward.
Best, Lee
