A new year and a new term are about to begin, and it’s the perfect time to make some positive changes and set some educational New Year’s resolutions. Not only is helping your child set goals a great way to jumpstart success, they can also learn a lot about self-discipline and begin to see the value in setting resolutions and goals. Here are some ways you can help your child set educational New Year’s resolutions to help them achieve everything they want, and more, next year!
What Questions Should My Kids Be Asking?
A great place to start setting educational New Year’s resolutions is to ask some important questions. They’ll make it much easier when it comes to your kids deciding on their goals and ambitions for next year. We recommend discussing the following together or writing down some notes.
- “How do I want to improve this year?”
- “Is there anything specific I want to achieve academically?”
- “What do I need to do to help me reach my goal?”
- “Are there any areas I need to improve on?”
- “What can I do to get back on track?”
Focus On Learning, As Well As Grades
Firstly, when helping your children decide on some educational resolutions for the new school term, make sure they focus on their learning, as well as grades. Even though lots of high grades are great, it’s also important your kids are able to actively apply their learning outside of school and demonstrate their knowledge in the real world. Perhaps ask them to come up with a maximum of two grade specific goals and two learning goals too- this way they are more likely to stay motivated for everyday lessons as well as for exams and tests.
Be Specific
When helping your child set educational goals, it’s really important that they are specific. This is because goals that include precise performance standards are usually much more effective as children know exactly what they’re working towards. Do this by getting your kids to ask themselves slightly harder questions. For example, instead of knowing they want to improve in maths, perhaps ask them to think of a grade they want to achieve or maybe they want to be able to complete maths equations without any help. Having this measurable target will also improve their motivation and productivity levels as your kids will be able to easily monitor their progress.
Encourage Both Short And Long-Term Resolutions
When it comes to educational resolutions for the New Year, we recommend encouraging your kids to set both long-term and short-term goals. Even though New Year’s resolutions have a habit of only lasting a few weeks, when setting them, it’s usually more effective to set short-term, manageable tasks that actively build-up towards a long-term goal. This way if your child has a longer goal in mind, the actionable steps they take within the first few weeks will actually have a bigger purpose. So, once they’ve chosen a few educational resolutions, help them break each one down into smaller sections, and set small deadlines for each individual task. These smaller goals hold them accountable and help them believe they’ll actually be able to achieve the educational resolution- which hopefully means they won’t give up easily!
Be Realistic
Finally, when setting educational New Year’s resolutions, try to make sure your child is realistic about what can actually be accomplished in their near future. There is nothing more de-motivating than setting completely unrealistic goals, which will be sure to make your kids feel overwhelmed and set them up for disappointment. However, it’s also important that these educational goals aren’t super easy too, especially as this won’t pose much of a challenge for your child. We recommend encouraging a moderate difficulty that will put their abilities to the test, but not be so easy that they don’t have to try.
