Introduction
Welcome to ‘Tutor Your Child’. Thank you for subscribing to our Free Content Programme. We hope you find it useful.
You can find free samples of our “Curriculum Steps” programmes here, and our “Refresher Programmes” here.
As a member of our Free Content Programme, you can also access elements of the Wellbeing Zone. We hope you will find helpful advice on supporting your child.
We also regularly update our blog page giving you up-to-date information and ideas on topical themes.
Please note you will need to set up a ‘Free Membership’ account first in order to purchase the ‘Bundles’, ‘Refresher Programmes’ and ‘Curriculum Steps’ to enable account access.
Environment
Choose a quiet space and time which fits in with yourself and the rest of your family. This may be in your house, or some parents find it easier to change the environment completely by maybe going to a relative’s house, a coffee shop or even, in summer, to sit in the garden.
Try and choose a place without interruptions. When you have younger children, this can be difficult, but if you are able to arrange a time when siblings are looked after by someone else, maybe a partner, relative, grandparent or maybe swap childcare with a friend, that is going to provide you with quality time with your child.
Length of Time
Child development experts say that children can typically concentrate for 2-3 minutes per year of their age so an average length of time, for example, for a 7-year-old would be 14-21 minutes.
However, this is dependent on the child and the activity you are doing. Additionally, although many children would find it difficult to focus on a ‘teaching element’ of a lesson for a long period of time, they are used to working on an activity in a classroom environment for at least 30 minutes each lesson.
It is important, however, to judge when your child needs a break for a stretch, drink or refreshments. Continuing when a child is not focused will not achieve the desired outcome and will be stressful for yourself.
Praise effort and small steps!
Children learn best when they feel they have a positive mindset; when they feel they ‘can’ achieve, they are doing well in their work and this is recognised by others.
However, the opposite is also true. They can find it difficult to make mistakes, feel the pressure of colleague comparisons, feel they can’t do something as well as others which can then lower their confidence and self-esteem which in turn puts up barriers to future learning.
The best way to teach your child is to take small steps at their speed with lots of praise, acknowledgement, repetition and securing of concepts before moving on. Praise effort rather than attainment to help them believe in themselves. This will make them feel confident and motivated as well as strengthening solid foundations on which to build future learning.
Mistakes are good!
When your child makes a mistake, emphasise and model how we all make mistakes and mistakes are excellent as they are the ways we all learn.
We want children not to be worried about making mistakes but to recognise them as a positive to improving. This will help them in their future schooling and help protect their self-esteem.
Comparing to others
It is important to focus on your own child and try not to compare your child to siblings or other children.
Every child develops at different speeds and learns in their own time – and if they cannot do something, it is fine because they just “can’t do it yet!”
Children will also pick up on your own anxiety and comparisons. As children go through future schooling, comparisons for all sorts of reasons will increase more and more so it is important we teach children to grow up respecting everyone has different skills and try not to compare themselves to others in a negative way in order to protect their own self-esteem.
Different styles of learners
There are three main types of learner; kinaesthetic, visual and auditory. Most younger children learn first through kinaesthetic methods (using real objects and modelling their learning by ‘doing’) before moving onto visual and auditory methods.
Older children, and even adults, will have their own preferred method of learning new things, with many people needing kinaesthetic methods in order to secure what they are doing rather than just relying on listening to ‘how’ to do something.
Try and recognise what type of a learner you and your child are and see if you can create methods of explaining which support their learning style.
Problem solving and every day learning
Try to build learning opportunities into everyday activities.
Each day, without realising it, we are using English and maths; telling the time, using money, measuring when baking, working out quantities for dinner, writing shopping lists, notes for deliveries, writing cards and emails to name but a few.
Try to involve your children as much as possible in this every day maths and English. This will create a sense of purpose for their learning which will drive them to achieve more and, at the same time, it will develop their problem solving and reasoning skills and language in maths which it is important to develop alongside the learning of their maths skills.
Points to remember
Choose a quiet time and place for you and your child to sit down together to avoid distractions
Put in breaks for you and your child
Praise effort rather than attainment
Show and model to children how mistakes are good and help us all to learn
Praise small steps and progress to help and encourage your child to believe in their ability
All children learn at different speeds so move at your child’s speed and try not to compare to other children
Use lots of ‘real’ objects to model kinaesthetic learning before moving onto visual and then auditory learning
Try and build learning opportunities for problem solving and reasoning into everyday life (e.g. telling the time, working out how many cakes each, writing a shopping list)
Don’t be hard on yourself – if a time isn’t working, just postpone learning and try another time