Specific subjects can occasionally be challenging to
otherwise bright children. What must teachers and parents do when they discover
a child beginning to lose interest in a subject? Here are 10 answers from us.
Most
children naturally feel inclined to learn certain subjects and disinclined to
learn certain others. In order to keep the score up and also ensure that
learning occurs in all subjects as far as possible, identify early on, what is
liked and disliked by your child or student. Often simple aptitude tests with
the school psychologist or even online can help you understand this. Just make sure the online ones are authentic. Assuming
you have identified the challenge, here is what you would do next.
2. Break down
problems
No
one said problems could not be solved, but no one said they could all be solved
at once either! Take a challenging subject and locate the exact chapters or
lessons that pose a problem. All too often, children have some understanding.
Some aspects are misunderstood, some only less understood, and others are found
to be confusing. Understand which of these applies. And help the child do
exactly one small task at a time. By breaking down problems into minute steps,
you can always make sure that the final output is a deeper understanding.
3. Re-visit the
Basics
Don’t
just re-visit the exact lesson that has been hard; re-visit related lessons and
basics from earlier years. Children find subjects like Maths very hard, simply
because they got away with not learning the basics or were not taught well in
earlier classes. Re-visiting the basics further helps to see if the child
simply rote-learned or really understood a lesson.
4. Appreciate at
every stage
Since
re-visiting the basics can be very tiring for the child, appreciation is
required. Laud and acknowledge your child every time a step towards the milestone
is achieved. This helps the child move forward with motivation. Creating
incentives for every step gotten right definitely helps. The culture of
appreciation through verbal praise such as ‘good job’ or ‘very good’ is picking
up faster now than ever before for good reasons.
5. Change the
method
Often
the method of teaching matters more than the content taught. Make sure you have
used different media to convey different aspects of your lesson. Invoke cartoon
characters in Maths problems or show a film to convey the story of a prose
piece.
6. A Break is a
must
The
culture of working during the week and taking a definitive break during the
weekend is still new in India. It has many advantages. While some students work
better with a weekend break, others find it difficult to get back to school
work on Mondays and take too much warm-up time. If this is the case, make at
least an hour of work every day mandatory, at least for the challenging
subject. A separate play time from work time does not cause guilt in the child,
which is known to have deep and negative psychological repercussions.
7. Revision again
and again
Once
you have helped the child re-learn aspects earlier missed, do not think that the
job is complete. Often, what has been hard to understand can slip back into
forgetfulness, undoing all that was understood. This is why revisiting lessons
becomes important. Observe how many revisions are needed for your child or
student to master a certain lesson. Make sure revision is done that many times.
Repetition helps in the crystallization of things that may have initially been
vague.
8. Maintain the
process
The
process of breaking down problems, revisiting the basics, appreciating,
changing the method and therefore testing, taking a break and revision should
become a process. The process should get applied to every challenging aspect of
any subject, so that the child understands that this will be continued until
there is mastery. The process should become an unbreakable habit.
9. How to make it
fun?
Once
the process is maintained, introduce small fun things as variations to improve
the understanding in the child. This is what ultimately helps the child
remember better and enjoy learning. Anything drab can be made fun by weaving
the context into a story, introducing possible scenarios and deviating for
short periods into anecdotes.
10. Moderate
Encouragement
Encouragement as well as
mild admonition should be offered moderately. Know when to encourage kids; they
do not respond well to too much or too little. Encouragement should however
never involve comparison with others. Do not mention the process you have
formulated with your child or student to anyone unless necessary. Never discuss
the child’s performance in public with extreme emotions. Just sticking to the
process is meaningful. Seek help from other subject experts only if inevitable.
