Motivating your children is difficult. This is because real, lasting motivation must come from within the child. That is to say, a child must be internally motivated to achieve a certain goal or outcome, rather than being pushed or motivated externally. 

Therefore, the best way to motivate your child is to equip them to motivate themselves. Research shows that motivation is most sustianable and realistic when an individual has a compelling vision or goal to work toward. They also need to see meaninful, consistent progress toward this goal.

Our study coaches work with students over a number of weeks to develop compelling goals around university courses, vocations and jobs. It's a gradual process, but we find that the best place to start is to ask your child what they are passionate about. From there you can begin to explore options that suit their interests and strengths. 

This is a very common issue; you’re not alone! The solution is actually not in ‘getting them off Social Media’ but rather in showing them how to take responsibility over their studying and study breaks. A good way to do this is to create a distraction free study environment, that still allows them to use social media - just not while they’re doing high powered work such as memorising information or doing a practise exam. For more info on distractions, make sure you read the article “Attention, study and the Facebook effect” here.

There is no magic number. We recommend that students define their productivity by 'tasks rather than time'. This means that a student must identify:

1. What is my required homework?

2. What extra revision should I be doing?

3. How long will this take?

4. What task is priority?

We continuously survey and interview students about their current study habits to identify their prioritisation and time management approach. Routinely, we find that students might be willing to sit down for a period, but rarely do they have a clear system for answering questions 3 and 4. This is what our study coaches focus on developing in a 1 on 1 context with students. Our experience has shown that once students know how to prioritise their work, the 'time' issue takes care of itself as students don't stop until the (top priority) work is done. 

It is important for parents and children to be on the same page regarding expectations of time inputs. We recommend that parents sit with their child and make a study timetable together. The parent then has a copy of their own so that each person is aware of the expectations surrounding study load as well as the balancing of extra-curricular activities. For more information on this, have a look at our article on “Creating a study timetable with your child”. Alternatively, you can give us a call on 1300 667 945 to discuss how our study coaches can help your child with this in the comfort of your own home. 

At Elevate, we emphasise the importance of feedback. Practise papers are only useful if a student can use them to identify areas requiring improvement. Depending on where the paper has been sourced from, there are often worked solutions available. Even then, we encourage students to submit their papers to teachers for grading or the procurement of oral feedback if written answers are unavailable. Additionally, we encourage students to form study groups so that they can mark one another’s work and critique that work, as this prompts further discussion and consolidation of the material.  

Yes, with over 350 social media sites out there, countless TV streaming sites and the most random of distractions out there on the internet, this is the biggest problem faced by students today.  For Apple users, Self Control is a brilliant place to start.  For Windows, it is Cold Turkey.  These are anti procrastination sites that allow students to block websites for a predetermined period of time.  When a block is put in place, it cannot be bypassed until the specified time period is up.  It’s important to not go too crazy and block everything for days because that then will cause demotivation.  If used as a reward program when studying, it is a fantastic way for students to treat the Internet as a luxury during their well-deserved study breaks.  It is much easier said than done, but will have a huge impact on attention and therefore memory creation and retention during study sessions. Also, make sure you check out our list of the top 18 apps a student shouldn't live without here. 

Revision notes can be made periodically throughout the year, particularly on weekends or during holiday breaks. That said, if students adopt the ‘trigger word’ approach to making their notes at the initial stage, it may render ‘revision notes’ unnecessary. Instead of rewriting notes for revision purposes, we recommend that students restructure their notes in the form of mind maps so that they can understand the concepts studied and how they interrelate.

In our Time Management seminar, we recommend that students do 1 non-required task per subject, per week. This means that, rather than simply focusing solely on homework, students should spend 15-30 minutes per week (per subject) doing tasks such as making revision notes, doing practice questions, or memorizing the information for a test. This work is most often not set by a teacher, however it is the type of study that best prepares students for exams.

The earlier the better! If a student is testing themselves across the year, they are far less likely to forget the information come exam time. But for many students, doing a practise paper before the end of the year is impossible because "I haven't been taught everything yet!" This is partly true. A student will not be able to do a practise exam in the first few weeks of the year, as they will not have been taught enough content. However, by 4-7 weeks before the end of year exams, this excuse becomes a little less convincing! Whilst they may not be able to do a full practise paper yet, they will be able to do a significant part of it. 

So, if a student has not finished learning Topic 5, then they can still do a paper but only answer questions on Topics 1-4. After they have completed all classes for the course, they will be able to do full practise papers. For an outline of the most important aspects of completing Practise Papers, see the article entitled “Practice does NOT make perfect" here.

Stress around exams is unfortunately an inevitable part of the process. The question is the extent to which they are stressed, because a little bit of stress is actually quite useful at this time of the year. The best way to help your child manage stress is to identify the reason they are stressed so that you can tailor your response. For example, if you child is overwhelmed by sheer volume of study and workload, you can help by reducing chores that they do at home. If they have a part time job, perhaps they can take a break from it during the exam period. You can also help them by assisting them in creating a study planner where they can break down their subjects into a series of specific tasks that can be ticked off a list and provide them with a clear sense of progress. It is also worth enquiring about our stress reduction sessions that our private study coaches run with students. A private study coach can sit with your child and identify the specific triggers that lead to stress and in turn, give them a suite of options they can use to tackle that stress and keep it at bay. 

Previous research has found numerous benefits to listening to music before performing a task – it improves attention, memory, and even mental math ability. It has also been found to alleviate depression and anxiety. However, the more realistic scenario is that students will study or do homework while playing “background music.” Research from the University of Dayton found that students performed better at spatial and linguistic processing if Mozart was playing in the background. So maybe having instrumental music can help performance, since it doesn’t have any distracting vocals.