- First-quarter grades are not recorded in the permanent record.
- Use this moment to help your student plan a specific strategy to improve. To get better, students need to find one study habit to change and focus there.
- There’s still time to make a positive impact on the semester grade in January, which is recorded in the permanent record.
Here’s how to help your student:
- Help your student examine habits around the class where they get the best grade. Phones and off and Teams CHAT off so that they focus on the work at hand while in class. Ask them to consider a positive skill they are using in a class where they feel successful and consider leveraging in one where they are struggling.
- Use our website lists of study habits and tactics to improve skills if you don’t find anything with step one.
- Focus on one tactic for several weeks until the habit starts to stick, and then give it another week to firm up. But don’t move on until the habit feels solid.
- Then pick another skill and focus on improving and building a habit there.
Here’s a few habits for which we have specific instruction:
- organization and time management;
- reading and note taking;
- Tutorial and how to use it;
- asking questions in class;
- shutting down phones during study and sleep;
- taking brain and exercise breaks because we retain more learning if we give our brain a chance to build the physical connections to store learning.
We also recommend looking on YouTube or Khan Academy for short videos. Limit your YouTube picks to well-known universities and other institutions as sources of video help.