Exam time: Many parents may be wondering what they can do to assist their child in preparing for the Junior or Leaving Certificate. Here are a few tips.
1 Provide as positive and supportive an environment as possible at home. This should involve ensuring a quiet, warm, well-aired room, with a comfortable, but not too comfortable chair, a desk that does not require the student to be constantly bending forward and a reading lamp to provide good light onto the books and copies being worked with.
2 Constant re-reading of material is a wasted exercise. Students should now be summarising their answers on index cards in graphic format, which can be revised in a few moments from time to time in the coming months. Remember we forget 90 per cent of what we read within 24 hours of reading it, so writing abbreviated notes and committing points to a visual format greatly increases retention.
3 Long periods of study are not helpful, unless short breaks and a nourishing drink or snack is taken. Forty minutes per subject with a variety of subjects studied during each three- to four-hour session makes for a well-balanced preparation for any examination.
4 Exercise, a good diet of healthy food, time for relaxation with friends and involvement in a favourite sporting activity, are all positive elements in a three-month plan for examination success.
5 People under growing stress hate being lectured. When anyone is experiencing stress the most important support he or she can have is someone who listens without jumping in with advice every 30 seconds. Parents need to understand that their children are secretly terrified of letting them down, whatever they may outwardly indicate. Learn to give your children the space to tell you what they are really feeling. In doing so, you will be giving them huge support.
6 The most important thing to remember about taking examinations is that candidates have 10 times more information in their heads than they can ever use. Between now and the examinations, it is not so much a case of piling on more information, as formatting the information they currently have in a manner which is presentable in 30 to 40 minutes, which is what their time slot per question will be in June.
7 Finally, parents should remember that this examination is simply a step on the road to the development of a set of skills to enable your son or daughter to build a successful career for themselves. Success or failure is not an end in itself, simply a learning experience on the pathway of life. Nothing that happens in the Junior or Leaving Cert is set in stone. Whatever happens, your son or daughter can build on it to achieve their life goals.
