The third stage of the SQ4R reading comprehension strategy is the ‘Reading’ stage.  Make no mistake about it, reading text material is tough stuff.   It commands intense concentration and focus and it demands a level of commitment that students need to develop.  For the most part, students read very passively.  They fail to see just how much mental effort is required and how much they have to ‘want’ to learn the material.  Are you reading your textbook while sitting on your bed?  That’s passive.  Are you reading your research articles while thinking about the NHL playoffs?  That’s passive.  Are you reading your texts while listening to music (or Tweeting, or checking Facebook)?  That’s REALLY passive.  In fact, are you reading while using a highlighter?  That’s probably passive too.

So how can students learn to read actively?  Shifting from passive to active reading is difficult, but possible for students who give themselves a fighting chance.  First, students need to read while sitting at a well-lit desk.  They need to turn off the music and television and shut off the distractions.  Then, they need to grab a pencil and get ready to think.  To help with reading comprehension, students should use a pencil to track their thoughts.  They can summarize main points in the margin and identify places where the author shifts the argument.  Further, they can use the pencil like a highlighter and underline parts of the textbook that are important, or interesting, or unexpected.   Students should also write question marks beside sections that are not clear and which require later follow-up.  It’s also a good idea to pay close attention to material that ‘answers’ the questions raised in the Q-stage of SQ4R.  Using a pencil in this fashion will likely feel strange at the beginning. Students usually don’t know what to write and they probably won’t see immediate payoff.  However, using a pencil as an active-reading tool will become second nature and will help students remain focused throughout the reading assignment.

Here is a presentation we held at St. Clements Catholic School for students and parents discussing the transition to high school. For a transcript please read here

The importance of being a good student okay. What does it men to be smart? I will tell you a story of my daughter, now think it out. My daughter is in grade three and they do spelling tests, I’m sure you all remember doing spelling tests there. They introduced a bunch of words at the beginning of the week on Monday, and then they have a whole bunch of worksheets that they work through, through the week using the words and puzzles and different exercises and so on. And they get to Friday and they have a spelling test. My daughter, what they have control of, because of these sheets, they have control of what grade level they are doing and so on. So my, if they’re doing really well they pump it up to keep the challenge right to sort of pump it out.

My daughter in grade 3 does the spelling work of the grade 5 students, in fact my daughter who is in grade 4 also is doing grade 5 and my younger was a week ahead [indiscernible] [00:00:50]. So she’s done these worksheets now, what am I to assume that wow, you got a smart daughter. And you might go and, you might qualify and say well you know what maybe your daughter is just really good at spelling, and natural spelling. And would certainly the evidence like, who said, I like to think of it that way but certainly think of now it’s must become a natural ability sort of genetic a Jean Paul, I don’t mind, I don’t mind taking entirely credit for that, but the challenge that the reality is this, my daughter she does her worksheets through the week.

On Thursday, Thursday night I’ll say you get that assessment report she said yes and so prepare this, this test, so I’ll take her list of words, there are 18 of them, and I’ll read them to her and she will write out her best, and first try she usually gets six. What I do is I don’t correct it for her, I give her the words back to her, she then corrects her own work, she goes through finds out what she gets right and writes down the ones that she gets wrong.

She then reviews that, gives it back to me and we do it again and again, and we do it usually three times on a Thursday night and maybe Friday morning we’ll do it one more time, and she will walk into class with a 16, 17 or 18. Now my daughter is a brilliant speller okay. There are some weeks, I’m busy I am not home and not around we forget or whatever and we don’t do that exercise, and that’s the week my daughter comes home and says, I got eight, right, which is, and I almost feel as good about the eight, as I do about the 17, because I know there is a direct correlation, she knows, she is learning that there is a correlation between what she does and the results that she gets.

Well what about that, what about the students who, and so I know they are in their class who don’t do the study on Thursday night okay, they’ll look it over and they [indiscernible] [00:02:42] are those students smart? Well the idea of smart, there’s lots of definitions to it and one of the best definitions I’ve come across or whatever are also definition for kids in this class. But the idea that, really what it is, is a bunch of natural abilities, they are very specific to the task at a particular time, right. At that particular moment, at that particular time, my daughter or this student here, the student who just breezes through it, there’s a lots of reasons for that they probably got a good memory and maybe have done lots of reading and they words they use are pretty common words, which become of us quite often.

May be phonetically they got a really good detection of the word sound and how they would put that together, whatever it is they have some sort of natural strengths which allows them to be successful at that particular task at this particular level. Difficulty, what happens, and I think we all agree that being an exceptional speller in grade 3 is not really a strong indicator to how well or how strong a speller you are going to be in grade 10 or grade 11 chemistry, this is a little bit different right. But what we have happening here is that the seeds are being planted for the student, I am smart, I’m a grate scholar, knowing how to study. So we are supposed to have studied, not me because I’m smart, the dumb ones they have to study really hard, right.

And this is where those kind of, the ideas start to be implanted, any idea that being a good speller in grade 3 the words will get heard, by the time of the transition to high school grade 9 is going to be harder than grade 10 or grade 8 and grade 9 and grade 8, grade 10 is harder than grade 9 but 11 is harder than grade 10, grade 12 is way harder than grade 11 and university it’s again. So this idea of smart becomes less and less relevant as time goes on, it becomes more and more important to being a good student and that’s it.

When we talk about where the marks go, who gets the good marks, probably your experience so far with the students has been, sort of gets good marks alright. And that might be to a point it might be some natural abilities they have, you got a good memory you can stay focused in class, you’re going to kick a K through six. Just about to it, not a lot of detail right, still not mentally right there with them, it changes when you get to high school right. In high school the marks don’t go to the smart kids, the marks go to the good students alright. Two students sitting beside each other, similar to my daughters experience, but fast-forward, one student who has studied and one student who has not, one of those student is going to do well at the tests and one of them is not, and has nothing to do with her natural ability, it will be entirely a do with who put the time in effectively to attain those marks.

And students get stuck in the idea and parents also guilty, get stuck in the idea that I’m smart, what smart gets good marks and in the high school they don’t reward smart they reward good students, they reward organized student, they reward those who study, who take notes, who know how to read effectively these areas. When universities look for students they are not looking for smart kids, they are looking for good students, the amount of information that you have to absorb or meant at the time get the managing university. Your own schedule your own courses, the amount of information that you have to, the copious amounts of reading and digesting it and to set up notes and understanding, writing these huge essays and expressing yourself in complex ideas and writing these big exams where 60% of your marks.

Till they do that, it doesn’t matter how old you are when you start to read, I was traveling and working [indiscernible] [00:06:43] all these things. To accomplish those things you have to be a good student, and so that’s what we’re looking for, they don’t, they look at a student he’s got a grade 12, he’s got an average of 85% they know that kid must have done his work, he had to. To get 85% in high school you know, they need to have developed skills. You’re getting 65 or 70 and they’ll be saying 65 or 70 at high school what do you have, what are doing? You didn’t work and do what you’re supposed to do, and you shouldn’t have marks like that. And so that’s why where the top marks go, they don’t go to smart but they go to the good students….

Here is a presentation we held at St. Clements Catholic School for students and parents discussing the transition to high school. For a transcript please read here

Managing expectations, let’s move to the conversations that take place at home. The first thing is setting goals, obviously your son or daughter has probably a pretty good perception of what they like as student. You as a mom or dad probably have a pretty good perception of what they are supposed to be like a student. And so sometimes they are close together and sometimes they’re far apart. But regardless, the main point here is communication, right. Whatever perception your son or daughter has about themselves as a student they have lots and lots and lots of evidence that supports it.

They maybe interpreting that evidence incorrectly, but they’ve got lots of evidence that supports that. So we set goals, we want to make sure that we’re focusing on things that your son or daughter can control alright. You know in our work environment it would be very much, very frustrating if we set goals, that we actually don’t have much control over, alright. And so we want to make sure academically we are not setting those same kinds of goals, I need eighties in all my courses, your son or daughter can’t control that.

If I’m a teacher, on any given test, I got a classroom of the students, we’ve all learned the same material, I can create a test as a teacher that all those kids will fail. I can take the same material and create a test; all these kids will ace it. So if that’s the case, then much of the burden of those actual marks can possibly all lie on a student right? They have some control but not entire control and so if you get caught up on the marks the number, it’s difficult for them to actually tangibly control it. I get 78 not 80, what can I do differently next time, well it’s difficult to put your hands on what it actually is that I can do better. There’s a million reasons why that might have been.

And so we want to focus on habits, good habits you can control, how organized you are. Your study habits, having a routine, investing the proper time. How you read from your text book? How you study for tests, not study hard or study longer but what do you actually do when you study, there’s a better ways, and there’s lots of better ways. These are things, these are habits, these are behaviors and skills that your son or daughter can have complete control over. The day to day marks, quizzes, pop quizzes, tests, exams, essays, the amount of control they have is not equal to the amount of emphasis that is placed upon them.

So we want to make sure that we’re going to set goals, and you should communicate these goals especially when you first start as to what those goals are. What’s your grade in terms of flags, road block, you know, little markers along the way saying hey, maybe things aren’t going as they should, were you not thinking seeing people pretty well, but they can be the end point. I am going to talk to you results, results need context. What does that mean? Is it means quarter, I have asked lots of students this, who thinks that 72 is a good mark? Who thinks [indiscernible] [00:03:09] how about; who thinks 80 is a good mark? Alright, how about, that’s a lot of hope, 76 yeah, or 77 5, 72, 76 can you see the difficulty I’m having, I know out there I could sound good and I sound bad, but as soon as you start throwing all the numbers around it becomes difficult to pinpoint what actually is a good mark. What would you support; there’s a lot of other quest I need to know. No what went into it, well what did they do to earn that mark, was on the test, how did others do how did….

What did I do in the process to achieve that, there are so many other factors that go into it that we can’t possibly know specifically what the value of that number is until we know context. We have [indiscernible] [00:04:02] that idea, I know I had on students a society of self fulfilling, probably a self fulfilling idea, and you may have not as a student. As long as, no I’ll start it off, I wasn’t a fantastic student, I was smart, we’ll walk about the difference but not to say a fantastic student. And I had marks like 70s, and I think I kind of placed myself kind of in that 70s mark. If I got a 72, 74 the world is kind of okay. If I got an 80 or an 82 or 85 or something like that wow this is fantastic, this course is easy, now they are doing that, people who spend time on that is ultimately born to be able to that subject.

I had marks that sort of had fallen to 60s and so on, I felt uncomfortable, you kind of wasn’t been sit well and little embarrassed about it and I find my efforts focused working little harder. So you have this two kind of pressures from below and from above, kind of push that student it’s a kind of self fulfilling idea, and some students might have this idea that I’m kind of a 60s person, and when you know they kind of get marks kind of 60s or in their 70s or 80s and these kind of self fulfilling things are dangerous in that the students have [indiscernible] [00:05:16] and what we want to try and do is we want to see if we can raise those goal minutes, change the perception of ourselves as a student, and there’s many ways of doing it and one thing, the challenge is that they have lots and lots of evidence that supports this.

Lots of it, they’ll be sitting in a classroom with peers, they have some tests, they can quiz, and they’ve been tested over and over, over years. They’ve got a pretty good idea if that’s what it tells me about myself. Right, so changes is challenging, the first mark it’s going to be so to change expectations, change the focus away from those marks, change the focuses on behaviors, because marks aren’t something you are born with, you’re not born a 72 student, you’re not born a 64 or a 98. These just aren’t true, it will be all those things, some variations thereof, you know, under the right circumstances with the right approach to school.

So what can we do? We can help students focus in the things that they can control; we can focus how they study and what they study in terms of what the process is. Focusing on how much time they spend supporting the routine, supporting the process but I know that’s an examples I will illustrate it, the process of studying alright. The idea of how they go about doing it, focusing on questions and answers as opposed to trying to memorize bunches of the information. It’s too big a topic to touch on but, help focusing on what they study, what’s important, what’s not important, how to help them determine what is important information, what is not important information. Generalize it so much, don’t tell them how to study for their science test, tell them how to study in general, that can be applied to science, geography and all the other different subjects.

Connect effort with results right, that’s ultimately what you want, you want to connect that they invest time in it, they get results. And if they don’t get the results in a matter of time then talk about it in terms of what can we do to change the process and what’s not working or when you do see that connection, that it might turn better bit clearly, the approach isn’t there either. It’s these kinds of connections they start to make the biggest frustrations students have when they get to high school is this, there is not a lot of correlation between effort and results.

Sometimes they try really hard and you don’t get a regular mark, other times they don’t try at all and they get a good mark. That disconnect there, and there’s lots of reasons for this disconnect, but that disconnect there is damaging. It tells me that it’s random. How many times [indiscernible] [00:07:56] who has used the word random before. Random, I don’t remember that word being like it is now, that’s unbelievable, how uncomfortable must like to go through, to have so much random. We just did this on random, cheat in class, random. We watched some random movie, random that’s very specifically, it’s exact opposite of random, you know everything you’re doing is exactly the opposite of random and for very specific purpose, but they have this disconnect, this disconnect between what’s happening in the results, and so that’s what I am talking about the importance of having discussions about expectations [indiscernible] [00:08:33]

Here is a presentation we held at St. Clements Catholic School for students and parents discussing the transition to high school. For a transcript please read here

I guess I will begin, I’ve never used one of these so I’m not too sure how that’s going to, it’s going to take a little bit to get used to yes.

Well, thank you for coming out, it’s a large crowd it’s in the numbers and it’s not too surprising when you’re talking about high school around the corner. The transition to high school for students but it may not be as obvious jumping up and down enthusiastically, it’s something that’s on their mind whereas I know parents for sure, it’s on their mind. And what I though was brilliant when I had the, when we had the additional conversation about the topic of you know getting ready and transitioning into high school. The topics you got always to do hope you were in high school, I thought it was brilliant primarily because this, we hear the word we obviously your son or daughter and or daughter at some point, they are going to make the transition into high school.

There’s going to be great big changes for that, but the change is also you know, household why, they say it is a family change obviously as parents you can involve in their education, very much so, certainly through the early years and probably continue so, and probably in your mind continue to plan on giving them proper education for the foreseeable future. And I know many people had, they have older children who have made the transition and it’s for you, you probably already been through the experience, but many of you I’m sure coming to this you probably it’s you’re your childhood you go through and so what we’re going to do this evening is I’m going to talk to you about some of these changes.

And maybe about the kind of change you were expecting when you came in terms of talking about it and some of these underlying themes that I’d study spot to do the quick background we do academic coaching, it’s one on one with primarily high school some middle school and then high school students and university students are in scope on. My theory being that when students underachieve at school very rarely is because the content is too hard. The reason those students underachieve isn’t a lousy students, they lack skills or that their skills aren’t developing at the same pace, and school is changing.

And there is under achievement, there is disconnect between the results they get and what they are capable of causes frustration to the students and obviously in the household as well. And so it’s, anytime I have these kinds of talks about school and skill development and so it’s important that it’s family wide, because it’s a conversation that the teachers have with the students, but then you’re also going to be having with your sons or daughters. So start off with changes at school, and I will do it too as well you tell them like a power and many other, most of the high schools in the city are of this kind. They are huge, they are big right, and this is not a dramatic change, it seems like the ceilings are higher and they will be likely the [indiscernible] [00:02:44] are taller right, if they weren’t following the classes, but the bigger issue is going to come for you is they kind of lost and no one is watching out for you. In school like this, everybody knows each other, you’ve been here for a long time, teachers know who you are, the principal knows who you are, you’ve known these kids around for a long period of time.

There’s someone who is kind keeping an eye out for you, not a lot of happens that everybody knows in these smaller schools and this idea of being a big fish in a little pond, any students know the expression, big fish little pond. Yes, maybe no, the idea when you are a small group and if you are the best of the best in a small group that’s fantastic when you are in a small pond, but when you get to the big pond, the big ocean, there’s a lot of depth. And so your first experience with an increasing competition is to be much more difficult to be one of the best. This can be much more difficult to keep pace right, to keep up and so this transition, this kind of stress I think that someone had mentioned as well is going to be part of it, is that you are little bit out of place, little bit out of the way that way.

Independent schedule, that was mentioned as well, how your day your structure is going to be different, you’ll have different teachers for different courses, and what is also different is that you’ll have different classes, you’ll have your own schedule that could be rather unique, and you’re not going to have the same group of kids in each of your classes. And with that comes some challenges, you know, you have to kind of organize yourself, you have this independent kind of schedule that you have to manage and follow along with. Not only that, you have different teachers for each course, which is going to be different, different teachers, different ways at which they, different styles and expectations, some students, some teachers will use their text book religiously, some will give you hand notes every week, piles of hand notes. Some will write stuff on the board and expect you to kind of copy it off the board, some will just talk and a whole period will go by, and you say wow, you didn’t even write any notes of any sort.

You have this one just talks about stories, doesn’t give you any point, other ones will stand there very monotonous and talk to you like this and you’ll go through, you’ll have different styles, and so you’ll soon figure out that how I need to be organized and managed myself in this class is a little bit different than I have to be managing myself in that class. And so once again your experience is now being different, it’s now individualized; it’s now upon yourself to take control of those things. And I think control will touch on it, you need to be organized, and so the biggest difficulty students have, the students will be working on a regular basis that are under-achieving high school, the primary reason, disorganized, right.

And so you’ll need to work hard to become organized, you’ll have to seek help when it comes to organization. And it will be the biggest challenge you have to transition. And this one is here, it’s for everybody actually, parents as well, teachers would want to back off, it’s part of becoming independent, becoming an independent learner, you know, we hear most is from parents. You know, I just don’t know what’s going on at school. I used to know all the time, the teachers used to send home notes and agenda for me. I used to be able to call them on the phone, they would tell me what’s going on and things were great. I just don’t know what’s going on, I’m lost.

It’s supposed to be that way right to a certain degree, and their role has changed and your role as parents is going to change as well, it’s not about you and the teacher working together to make sure my son kind of gets through school, it’s now more and more your son or daughters opportunity to chance such time to make sure they get through school. There’s a role for you to play, but it’s not going to be that, knowing all that kind of cotton touch. The other area they are going to back off on is how guided the teachers are for you as a student. The student will assign homework to you sometimes right, teacher gives the homework, you better get it done because, you know, when you are going to go into school tomorrow morning the teacher is going to check it. High school they might not, instead that people thinking yes, I don’t have to do homework, I’ll get that class in working with students, do you think, did you get that done? No she never checks it, no they don’t even look at it, as if that equates not important.

All that equated was that, she is not going to take the time to do that, she’s got other things to do. It’s your responsibility to have done it, that handholding, making sure you do each and every step along the way is slowly going to dissipate. And it’s giving more and more your responsibility of students to take on that, you are responsible for learning, I use inspection a lot. When you are younger grades the teacher is responsible for teaching your son or daughter right. By the time you get to university the student in the university no one is going to know whether you go to class or not or who is who or what you are doing, your doing work or not doing work or whatever. You are entirely responsible form a learning process, high school is going to be the transition from one to the other. But the teachers are slowly being less and less responsible for your ultimate academic outcome, and you as a student are becoming more and more responsible for that academic outcome.

It’s a subtle change, you’ll walk through the door and that your role changes overnight, but it does start to change, for those students who don’t adapt change to change well struggle. And those who can see it coming you know, it would be just fine. This leads you to the next, changes at home. How to support this change? What you have to follow at home is different; you’re going to have more homework, every night. Now once again, that might not mean it’s been assigned every night, but you have to start to build into your expectation that you’ll be doing work every night. Certainly in the primary years as expected, you are expected to reach to your child as much as possible, the projects, the projects are clearly for me, there’s no way, there isn’t any way that as an expectation my son, my daughters are going to build this car they can roll down a ramp in front of it, it’s just there’s going to be some friends involved and it’s built that way. They want you to be involved; there are lots of studies that show that friends are involved that is very important.

And so as parents we get used to helping, we make it part of what we do, and we make it part of our routine, it’s going to change. The student needs to become more and more independent in the work that takes place when he comes home. And so how can parents help, what is the way, what are the ways that you can help? Focusing on process and not the content, and for students their idea is that I’m not emphasizing this to both groups because you want to understand the word parents role is going to be going forward and I can talk about parents as to why you should focus this way.

One thing is the content is getting hard, many times they can point out already separated out, we’ll give the maths and science as you go to dad, the English isn’t good then you go to your mom, you’ve already started to build this up because the content is moving beyond you, I’m not saying you couldn’t handle, you have to go back, I’m saying just in such a long time since you’ve been there and it really takes some time. What I’m saying is that the content may have moved beyond you. The other problem is that in trying your efforts to show them how to do it, it might be a different message to what you are getting in the classroom, and it can provide confusion. And if we want students to become independent, your experiences in the classroom with the teachers and that’s where you need to take instruction from, to come home and get instruction that is kind of slightly different or completely different from mom and dad is not useful.

The second thing is this undermines the learning process, and what I mean by this is this, and maybe you’ve experienced this in your house, homework comes home, son is there for math struggling or I don’t understand this, dad I don’t get it, you know, you think okay I’ll help, so you take his book you are seeing factoring, oh factor, I remember factor, alright okay I got it, okay I got so let me see what you got here, so you take the text book from your son as he sits there and he performs that one, you take the textbook and you start reading the chapter, okay first what you got, we got BODMAS you got to make sure you have the brackets first, you got to find the common denominator I think as I take this out, it’s probably okay I kind of remember that, now it’s united so I do a couple of questions, I do a question, I do another question, I check the back of the book, I said the first right, the second is wrong. Wrong so you quickly pulled back and go back and you try to think yourself as to why that was wrong then you say do you got something else notes from class or something. And he says, oh yeah, I got notes, and he gives it to you, and you looked through the notes and you flip through it and you see alright I can see that done here I come back into another question I go the back of the book, we got it alright I’m ready.

I can now teach this right, so your proud as your son or daughter is long tuned up and the bottom line is, is that the valuable part of that experience was what you just did. You learned that whole concept, taught it to yourself, that’s what they should have done. You have actually taken way an experience for them that were extremely valuable. Giving them an answer is of no use right, the experience of finding the answer, in fact the experience of not knowing the answer, is very valuable. The experience of struggling to come out with an answer is very valuable. When we do academic coaching, we don’t do tutoring and I’ll make some distinctions to it later, but that is, one of the values of coaching is that you, what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to show them the process to finding the answer. Show them how to do what you don’t know so you can teach yourself.

Giving them answers is undermining what the most valuable part of that is. And the other thing that can happen is you can create dependency, I know that if go to dad or I go to mom and I ask a lot of times, this may take a long time, but if I ask enough they will tell me the answer. And they will make it easy, oh it makes sense when my mom does it, oh yeah, yeah, I was just talking about mom yeah I get that alright. And what happens when they went up against the next road block? I could battle or I could ask, alright. It’s one of the traps that families fall into as tutoring. You see tutoring is very valuable to fill gaps, no when you teach is at home have them sit aside your son or daughter right, except that it’s really useful when the full focus is on content and not process, it’s helpful for that test. You took another test two weeks later and two weeks after that and every year of the next nine years, right. You can’t depend on someone else to walk you through that process.

It’s an extremely valuable process for them to learn how to solve problems in life and I get to seeing students in high school and I get them in grade 10 or 11, 12 primarily. We have students who have gotten that far with that kind of environment and it’s because they now are trying to be independent, and they lack skills, they lack confidence, they don’t know the process. And the parents, I mean does all come from a good place, these are not malicious people trying to wreck the academic lives of their son or daughter, in fact they are doing the opposite, right. They are doing it from a good place, they want to be helpful right, and this is what they are doing in terms of being helpful.

I want to talk some more about, more we can….

Of the many changes that take place when students progress through high school and into university, the notable increase in reading and research stands out.  Textbooks become more detailed, more comprehensive, and more advanced.  To handle these changes successfully, students must employ more sophisticated reading comprehension strategies.

One excellent reading comprehension approach that has stood the test of time is SQ4R.  This method is demonstrated on many university websites (search SQ4R for a sample) and in this article, we’re going to focus on the first two steps, S and Q:

S = Survey: Before starting to read, students need to ‘take inventory’ of the chapter or unit they’re dealing with.  Reading without any context makes it difficult to decide if information is important or not, so it’s imperative that students take some time to skim the material and try to establish some expectations about what they will encounter when reading commences.

Q = Question: Once students have surveyed the material, they should be able to anticipate the types of questions the chapter will address.  This requires a bit of thinking of course, but is well worth it.  For instance, surveying a Science chapter might make it clear that the chapter is breaking down and discussing various models of the atom.  Ok, if that’s what my survey reveals, what key questions should the chapter address?  How about these:

1)     What each model says and who came up with it?

2)     What research did they use to develop the model?

3)     What was the weakness of the model that led to the development of the next model?

As you can see, the Survey and Question stages of SQ4R involve steps to take BEFORE reading even takes place.  At StudySpot, we refer to these stages together as the Pre-reading stages.  These stages give students a bit of context and allow them to anticipate what they might encounter – excellent first steps toward better reading comprehension.

At our StudySpot offices in Toronto, our academic coaches show students how to organize their notes and encourage them to review their notes on a regular basis throughout the year.  Effective note-taking techniques, can also greatly increase the students ability to understand and remember information.  By developing good organization and note-taking habits, a student can reduce the need for last minute cramming or content tutoring.

Too often, students fail to carefully analyze the results they get in school.  When typical students get their test papers returned, for instance, they quickly scan for the grade, and shove the test to the bottom of their knapsacks.  Big error! Results provide all sorts of wonderful clues about how to improve in school, and using this feedback, students can be shown how to analyze tests and the pattern of strength and weaknesses.  At StudySpot, we’re able to point out some patterns that most students miss.  For example, in looking at a History essay and seeing a 74% grade, students might not notice that they received 2/5 on the bibliography or reference section.  If this paper is out of 30, getting an extra 3 on the bibliography represents a full 10% increase in their grade, instantly turning that 74% into an 84%.  That fact will surprise many students, especially those who don’t envision themselves as 84% students!  Get your child to look carefully at the last couple of math tests he or she has received and figure out just what the mark could have been if he or she reduced careless errors in half, didn’t skip out on homework last weekend, or asked the teacher to clear up that one concept that held them back.   The simple message is this: Students rarely realize just how close they are to dramatically better results.  Once they see this, it might not be such a stretch to see how to get an 88% on the next test instead of the 75% he or she usually gets.

Working with students and seeing them improve has clear rewards.  But nothing is as satisfying as seeing students begin to change the perception of who they are and what they can accomplish.

The problem, of course, is that gulp limits tend to be self-fulfilling. They’re rooted in our personal expectations of achievement, and human nature leads us to put in just enough effort so that we’re over our gulp limit. Very recently, a student came in and said point blank to the coach: “As long as I get a 70% on my math test, I’ll be happy.” Really? Why 70%? Why not 60%, or 80%? Why is 70% the key number? Not surprisingly, the student ended up with a 72%. Because the student needed to get a 70%, he did exactly what was necessary, and nothing more.

This begs the question: If that same student was somehow able to increase his gulp limit, would his actual results eventually improve along with it? We believe the answer is yes, and that’s why we encourage our students to ‘raise the bar’. Before discussing how a coach can try to accomplish this, let’s spend a minute talking about where gulp limits come from in the first place.

For most students, gulp limits stem from their previous educational history. Students who tend to get results in the 80% range normally have gulp limits to match. Students who see a lot of 65% results tend to have gulp limits consistent with those experiences. Students also derive their gulp limits from their parents who will get angry with grades below a certain threshold. Like students, parents have expectations and make those expectations abundantly clear. In truth, many high school students put in exactly the amount of effort required to keep their parents and their teachers (and their coaches!) off their back.

In part 2 of this topic, we’ll explore some ways to help students increase their gulp limits…

Here’s an example: The teacher of a Grade 10 math student assigns a series of questions for homework. Twenty minutes later, the student is “done”. Yes, the student might be done the homework, but did the student do the homework with integrity? A few questions can shed light on this. How did you do? Did you check your answers? Did you correct the ones you got wrong – do you even know how many you got wrong? If you’re stuck or don’t understand something from your homework, do you know what you need to ask your teacher about next class?

Students, in their desire to ‘finish’ their homework, will frequently rush through with little regard to the notion of doing the homework properly. We’ll often ask our students why they think the teacher assigned the homework in the first place. The answer, of course, is so the student learns the underlying concepts. So just finishing the homework doesn’t mean much if you don’t, at the end of it, understand the concepts being taught.

Parents can help shift the focus toward ‘homework with integrity’ by slightly changing the nature of their questions. Next time, don’t ask your children whether they’re finished their homework. Instead, ask them if they finished their homework properly. Ask them if they finished their homework the way their teacher expects them to.