Dear friends, you often ask me how to make my children fall in love with reading, be good at reading, and excel in their studies. As an educator, I would like to share my teaching experience and provide you with a systematic answer. Of course, this is a large and complex issue, and each child's situation is different, so please follow your needs.
Adopt. A child's excellent grades are due to his outstanding talent in the three elements of reading, and a harmonious and unified linkage is formed between the three. The three elements are: interest, method, and knowledge, and linkage means that the three are in the same direction and promote each other. In my opinion, the order in which the three elements are arranged is how much they play in our learning process. Interest undoubtedly comes first. If we are not interested in what we are learning, then no amount of good methods can inspire us to go deeper, let alone allow us to gain a solid knowledge base. So, how is interest built? In my opinion, discovering, channeling, and nurturing are key steps in building interest.
In order to discover children's interests, we must observe them carefully, communicate with them and encourage them to express themselves freely. At the same time, it is also very important to be actively involved in your child's activities. When interacting with children, we can consciously channel their interests, which often leads to good results. But remember, we can't impose our interests on our children. Forcing them to accept their wishes is often counterproductive, and may even lead to school boredom in children, ultimately leading to them achieving nothing. Many parents have tried to find compensation for their children's regrets in their own lives, so they blindly sign up their children for various training courses regardless of their interests. This practice is undoubtedly stifling children's interest in learning, and is extremely detrimental to children's growth and development.
Guiding interests is an art that requires skill, which requires careful planning by the child's parents. In my daily life, I have found that a sense of accomplishment plays an important role in guiding and nurturing children's interests. For example, in the process of guiding my granddaughter to recite ancient poems, I deliberately showed that I had forgotten or misremembered, so that she could correct me and give her a sense of accomplishment from them, thus stimulating her interest in reciting ancient poems. In this way, she not only developed a keen interest in ancient poems, but also memorized them faster and more accurately. Therefore, parents can guide and nurture their interests by creating opportunities for their children to gain a sense of accomplishment.
Of course, such an approach works for younger children. However, I also often use this strategy when tutoring middle and high school children's essays. For example, in the process of grading an essay, I will try to discover the potential of a certain work, and when I encounter such an essay, I will have in-depth discussions and repeated revisions with the children until it is perfect. Then, I will recommend it to the right magazine or publish it on the right platform. This sense of accomplishment not only stimulates a child's passion for writing, but sometimes even takes a well-crafted piece of work to make a leap forward in writing. I do come across quite a few such examples.
In fact, every subject can enhance students' sense of achievement, stimulate their interest, and then improve their grades. For example, when I grow vegetables, I sometimes invite my granddaughter to help. I would ask her to measure the length and width of the vegetable patch, and then give her a brick as a sample, and ask her to calculate how many of these bricks would need to be purchased to fence off the vegetable patch. This not only strengthened her interest in geometry, but also exercised her mathematical calculation skills. Every child's living environment is different, but as long as parents look for it carefully, they will be able to find the interests and improvement paths of each subject.
Learning methods and knowledge reserves, like the sculls of a sailing ship, complement each other and are indispensable. However, if you dig deeper into its inner logic, I firmly believe that method is more important than knowledge. With a good approach, the boat of learning can ride the wind and waves and sail to the ocean of knowledge.
A good method is like a *** that can open the door to knowledge in various fields. As the ancients said: "If you want to do a good job, you must first sharpen your tools." With a handy approach, learning is naturally more effective with less. This is not true, but the crystallization of the wisdom of countless sages and practical experience.
So, where do good methods come from? The answer may vary, but I believe that self-discovery and self-cultivation are the main pathways, and external guidance is the auxiliary means. It is true that there is value in learning from the experience and methods of others, but the final learning effect still depends on the individual's own practice and perception.
Why is there no learning method that works for everyone? Because everyone is a unique individual, with different personalities, habits, and cognitive patterns. Just as the ruler is short and the inch is long, a method is effective in Zhang San, but it may not be suitable for Li Si and Wang Wu. Learning is like a treasure hunt, everyone needs to find the right key for themselves and open the door to the treasure of knowledge.
Learning methods are just as important as knowledge, but if you really want to divide them, I still firmly believe that method is king. With the right method for us, we can swim in the ocean of knowledge and absorb the nourishment of endless wisdom.
Modern parents are mostly well-educated, and they have a wealth of knowledge and a variety of methods to be competent enough to lead their children. However, it is important that parents should not try to give answers directly when their children are confused. Because doing so may make the child develop the habit of lazy thinking and hinder their progress.
For example, if a child encounters a word they don't recognize, parents should encourage them to look up the dictionary or other information. For topics that children do not understand, parents can work with their children to provide a variety of ideas and guide them to find solutions to problems. Let children solve problems on their own under the guidance of a variety of ideas and methods. While this approach may seem time-consuming and laborious in solving a specific problem, it helps develop children's ability to think and solve problems independently in the long run.
More importantly, in the process of self-solving, children can gradually find their own learning methods. This approach also has an unexpected effect: the sense of accomplishment that children gain in solving problems can continue to stimulate and enhance their interest in learning, enthusiasm and hobbies, and become their motivation for continuous learning. In this way, the child's learning enters a virtuous circle.
The issue of children's knowledge reserve is undoubtedly the top priority that parents are deeply concerned about. Just like building a grand palace of knowledge, we need to carefully build a complete knowledge system around children's learning interests and aspirations. In this way, they can forge ahead on the road of the future and strive for their ideal goals for a long time. This is undoubtedly the dream of every parent. However, while ideals are beautiful, practice is particularly difficult. I may have had a bumpy journey on this issue, and I have few successful experiences to speak of.
As a parent, the first thing to establish is the premise that no matter what book the child reads, as long as it is a book that will not lead him to the wrong path, parents generally should not stop it. Because it is possible that it is because of his extensive reading that he has found a path that is more suitable for his future development. The rapid development of modern society has far exceeded the knowledge and judgment of parents. Don't let yourself be an obstacle to your child's progress and development, it's important to be a wise parent.
Children in middle and high school naturally aspire to excel in their courses. However, how to achieve this goal varies from person to person. It's like someone who gets lost in the forest, some rely on intuition, some rely on maps, and others rely on others for guidance. For children, if they want to get good grades, they also need to choose a learning method that suits them according to their own situation.
Give an example of yourself. In 1977, the year the college entrance examination resumed, I served in the army. In order to participate in this fateful college entrance examination, I racked my brains to find review materials. Luckily, I had a high school classmate in the local education administration who secretly sent me one of the three sets of mathematics, physics and chemistry self-study books that he had sent to the county. This set of books is a priceless treasure in Hubei Province, and money cannot buy it.
In the army, I didn't have a teacher to guide me, so I had to rely on myself. I have adopted a unique approach to learning: I read the knowledge explained at the beginning of each unit first, and then complete the exercises that follow. If I get the wrong question, I don't look at the answer right away, but I re-read the previous explanation and do the wrong question again. This process may be repeated many times until I fully grasp it. Sometimes I find that my approach to solving a problem is different from what is explained in the book, but the result is correct. This inspired me to think about the problem from multiple angles and form a basic idea of solving the same problem in multiple ways.
This experience has made me deeply realize that the accumulation of knowledge should follow the direction of one's own development. In this process, I will gradually broaden the channels of learning, accelerate the accumulation of knowledge, and form a situation of benign interaction and mutual promotion. For today's parents and students, I would like to share that a sense of accomplishment is the initial motivation for learning. If I keep getting the wrong questions and can't find a solution, I might choose to give up. It was this process of finding the right answer in the midst of a mistake that boosted my interest and confidence. This interest in turn pushes me to explore more ways to solve problems, which in turn broadens my access to knowledge. The chain of this virtuous circle is: a sense of achievement, interest, the broadening of knowledge channels and the accumulation of knowledge.
In addition to the points mentioned above, I would like to delve into some other topics that are closely related to learning.
First, whether you need to sign up for a cram school. Based on what I've observed about cram schools, I don't recommend that parents enroll their children in cram schools. There are usually two modes of teaching in cram schools: one is to systematically explain the knowledge, and the other is to provide tutoring on difficult problems. This is basically the case with all kinds of cram schools, which is much the same. First of all, let's talk about cram schools that systematically explain knowledge. According to people's thinking habits, if a set of knowledge systems is explained repeatedly, students will inevitably have some of their energy in a state of abandonment or distraction. In the long run, students will inevitably lose their attention in class. Some parents may say that their children's grades are good when they don't go to cram school, but why do they get worse and worse when they go to cram school? In fact, this is not because the cram school did not explain it well, but because you yourself choose this unnecessary repetition, which leads to the child becoming lazy and distracted in learning, which in turn leads to a decline in grades. Let's talk about cram school for problem tutoring. I advocate that difficult problems should be solved by oneself or discussed with others. If you wait, rely on, or seek help from others when you encounter a problem, what kind of study habits will students develop? When they encounter a problem, they will first think of seeking help from others, and they will even neglect their own abilities more and more. You know, students are the main body of learning. Second, how to deal with the relationship between interest classes and school homework. In the current market of flowery interest classes, how to balance children's interests and schoolwork has become a difficult problem for many parents. It's like finding a hidden trail that not only pampers your child's interests, but also ensures that they are on track on their academic journey. First of all, we need to make it clear that interest classes should be based on children's interests, not parents' wishful thinking. When children show unique interests and talents in a certain area, we can choose the appropriate interest class for them. However, this does not mean that we can impose our dreams on them. Secondly, for the selection of children's interest classes, we need to distinguish priorities. If a child has a special talent in a particular area and is interested in pursuing a professional career in the future, then we can prioritize interest classes. However, if the child is just an ordinary interest, then we should put schoolwork first and use interest classes as an spice to embellish life. Furthermore, regardless of whether children take a professional path in the future, we cannot ignore the learning of cultural classes. Taking ** college or art college as an example, the results of cultural courses occupy a considerable proportion. Therefore, we should treat the study of professional courses and cultural courses equally, and we should not favor one over the other. For sports interest classes, we need to be more cautious. If the child does not have special sports talents and has no intention of pursuing a professional path, then we can consider this type of interest class as a general hobby, or even do not need to participate in an interest class. In short, in the face of a dazzling array of interest classes, parents need to keep a clear head and do not blindly follow the trend. We need to clarify children's interests and future directions, and properly arrange their learning and life. Only in this way can we light the light for our children on the road to growth and guide them to the other side of success.