Seeking Ideas on Study Skills

Hi L.,

I am a 15 year veteran kindergarten teacher with national board certification in the area of early childhood education. Your little one's story of attention and focus to task is something I think I can offer advice toward.

Several reasons for this behavior may be:
1. Overstimulation in the environment which make it hard to focus and attend to a task. Some examples would be... cluttered walls or too many things hanging from the ceiling, messy desk or table environment and good friends in close proximity. Your child's teacher has dealt with the last piece by moving her.

2. She could be bored by the assignment, does not understand or "buy into" the PURPOSE of the assignment or she may be frustrated by the assignment. This type of behavior is usually the result of frustration. Seven year old's usually try to please (especially, teachers) so behaviors such as these may be a cry for more individualized attention and support.

3. Her ability to organize her thoughts and time need more development. You can teach organization in a variety of ways beginning in her bedroom. Are her clothes organized into pants? shoes? underwear? shirts? etc... The more she has to categorize and pay attention to details, space and order... the better she will perform in mathematics and other subjects. Teach her to read through an entire worksheet and make a plan of how she will accomplish the paper. Show her how the paper has 3 or 4 sections and teach her to check off each section after she RECHECKS to make sure she answered everything.

4. What is most important here is this... she must understand that she is RESPONSIBLE for her own learning. The teacher, nor you, can open her head and pour in knowledge. Therefore, help her be proud. Reward her with an allowance for good organization and responsibility at school and during homework time. She will eventually work hard for the instrinsic feeling of success, but for now... work up the allowance plan. After all, you are rewarded with a paycheck for hard work - aren't you?

Feel free to contact me via email at ____@____.com if you need any further advice or support. I would love to help you more.

My son has ADHD and rushes everything....funny some of the things the teacher is using is what is used for many situations even ADHD. I cannot control what happens at school however when my son brings home 3 days of work that is neat he gets pizza or McD's at the end of the week. We sit down every night a few hours after school I let him run off his steam as much as possible then it's homework I sit with him if he get sloppy I have an eraser and it gets done over...period. I have from the schoolbox a book that you write in with those eraser markers you wipe off and we do letters and words on the weekends as well as his homework if he does his extra letters from me and words with out complaints and neat we got somewhere like a really neat park or we get a clearance toy at walmart or ice cream. I make these things rewards instead of his having access to these things like some children have them at a whim he works for it and he's rewarded. A really good month we got to one of those jumpy places. I've also had bought a gamecube for hand eye cordination he use to have O.T. and they suggested it, it worked or it has helped. We also work with noddles cooked and make letters out of them. Writing and having O.T. they use many of them same things to improve writing. Writing in sand sidewalk chalk on the drive way...there's many things you can do that if you had her in O.T. like I had to for a while with my son that they do you can do somehow it helps. All kids rush I remind my son when he gets out in the morn be like a growing flower slow and steady not a train. He laughs and many times shows me his work "look my I was being like a flower growing slow and steady I stayed in the lines" so what you say can make a difference and learning to write neat can be fun. Best of luck I hope some ideas help and you try them.

I have a 6 year old daughter who is left handed,has ADD and dyslexia. So needless to say we have many problems with messy work. Several things I do are: Give homework in my bedroom (less distractions), We have a set amount of time for hw. Right now I know that her homework should take about 45 mins, so I give her an hour (study/hw time) she gets a 10 min break at 30 mins. This way it doesn't matter if she rushes through homework she still has to stay in the room and recheck her work, or study a story they are doing, or practice spelling words. (I make her study out loud also so I can hear her). The reward thing that so many have talked about does help, I told her that if she did her spelling words for me real slow and neat one day that we would add 5 mins to her break time and she only had to write them twice each instead of 5 times...worked like a charm! After she showed me she could do it and seen me make such a big deal over how beautiful her writing was it was much easier to get her to do it again. Of course these are small examples of what we do here and I am a stay at home mom so I have the benefit of being here when they get home from school everyday. If you have anymore questions or need some more suggestions feel free to pm me. Hope this helps. Have patience, and good luck!

Hi L.:

You daughter is probably competitive and at this age they are not thinking about the fact that who makes the best grade is the winner not who finishes first. She probably wants to be the first one to turn in her paper at all costs. You need to start emphasizing the importance of getting all or most of the answers correct and not who is the first to turn in the paper.
It will require talking to her and reminding her daily of the importance of getting the work right and not being the first to finish.
This phase will eventually pass.

I'm not a seasoned teacher, but I am a seasoned mom of five children. I think the best consequence for sloppy work is having to redo it. She will get the idea that it is much faster in the long run to do it right the first time. In fact, the teacher can even make her re-do tests; she just can't change the original grade. Emphasize to your daughter the importance of doing her best and be sure that you and the teacher communicate daily through notes, signed agendas, etc. The teacher could require you to sign each homework and classwork assignment so she knows you see them. Perhaps you could do a reward system at home for quality work.
Whatever you do, please be sure it is not anything more than early spring fever. My 9 year old son is very intelligent and also rushes through his work. I found out through my own research (www.brightsolutions.us) that he consistently exhibits classic dyslexia symptoms. His teacher and the school administration are about 20 years behind in their understanding of dyslexia, so they insist he does not have it. They say he is just rushing or not trying his best. You may be exactly right about your daughter, but you may want to check out the website I noted above just in case. Good luck.

I am the mother of 5 and a special education teacher. I would suggest you try to get your daughter on the same page as you. Tell her how much better it is to get all (or most) of the problems correct than it is to be one of the first students finished. Also, check with the teacher, see what she gets to do when she finishes her work. Your daughter may be rushing to get to a great center, draw or even to read a favorite book. If the reward for finishing fast outweighs the value of doing work well, students will finish the work quickly. If the problem is running rampant, there is a good chance the students want to finish quickly because the teacher has inadvertently set up a reward for finishing quickly. Of course, another option is to reward the better grades and have those messy pages re-written. But I see you are a working mother. That time asking your child to redo the work is time you aren't spending doing fun things, and of course, your schedule is full already.

this may sound a bit crazy....but mart. arts class is a great way for a child to learn good focus tec........i would suggest looking for a good school to enroll her in...also if she sits up front in class, this will sometimes help.

I'm a third grade teacher and study skills are just beginning to emerge at this point. I don't expect my students to be "studying" for tests or class at this age. We practice it, though. As far as rushing through HW, have her work 3 problems and then check them and give her a reward for them if they are done correctly...or give her permission to jump on her chair and sing like a rock star every 3 problems, or something that she really likes to do. Kids need physical movement to aid in their cognition and unfortunately, they don't get that opportunity as frequently as we did when we were in school. The avg recess time has decreased by half in the last 30 years.

Sounds just like my daughter!!! She is in 2nd grande this year and I've seen her worse with that this year than last. I sat her down and explained to her why it is important to slow down when doing her work-neatness, understanding, less mistakes, etc. Then, if it is a work sheet, I copy it on our printer. If she rushes though it, I hand her the other copy and make her do it over and I tear up the first one (so she can't copy her answers) and toss it. If it is on note book paper, I'll make her get a clean sheet and do it over as well!! She hates it!! She has rewritten her spelling word scentences 3 times in one day!! I also let her have snack and relax for a bit before we go into homework and then she can play outside for a while.

I really think it is just one of those things they all go though and we just have to trudge along with them and get them to understand why it is important to do a good job the first time!

Good luck!!
~S.