- Goal setting: work with your daughter or son to set expectations in terms of grades by each subject. Do not just wait and see: aim for what is reasonable.
- Plan: Have a plan in place if tests, quizzes, or papers are not meeting expectations.
- If this then that: Follow up and follow through: students should check in with their teacher if grades are below expectation. Try to find a pattern.
- Tests: Plan out study habits for tests: tests require three days of study, and typically 90-120 minutes per day. Spend one day studying with a friend, one to review, and one with the teacher to make sure there are no surprises on test day.
- Papers: Start your papers 5 days ahead of time: start with an outline, and after the draft is complete, read it aloud to yourself.
- Where to study: make sure the room in which the student studies at home allows for focus, but a little freedom too. Restrict Hulu, Netflix, texting, and other social media to be used as an incentive to complete work.
- Order: students should think about the order of how they study: start with what you want to do the least, and save your favorite subjects for last to get the best results.
- ROI: Plan to spend 75% of class time doing homework. For every 6 hours of class time, plan on 4.5 hours of homework from 10th grade through 12th. Earlier grades may be at 30-50% of class time.
- What to do: if the teacher and student are not able to stop a sliding grade, or of there are too many questions, seek out expert help. Companies like Novella Prep are well suited to help identify what is happening and how to solve the problem.
- Study skills: instead of presuming tutoring alone will solve a sliding grade, make sure you have had an academic audit to ensure study skills are well-honed, and after that, tutoring can help improve performance.