Techniques of Effective Learning

“Staircase” technique. How to set an attainable goal

Now we will move on to discussing quick results and attainable goals.

At this stage it does not matter at all what kind of learner you or your child is. The most important thing is to set attainable goals for your child which they can understand.

Essentially, the learning process in the eyes of a child is like an endless staircase, leading to an unknown place. The result of learning lies in a horizonless future and cannot be seen.

You tell them, “Study hard, sweetie! Then you’ll get into a prestigious university, get a high-paying job, and everything in your life will be just great!”

These words are white noise to a child. They cannot see past one or two steps of the learning staircase, let alone the fifth, sixth, or further steps.

Children like to get fast results. Subconsciously, your child will not take far-off goals seriously. While you are drawing out a happy future for your child, their brain will simply not take it in. These goals will be like white noise for them.

The subconscious of an adult works in a similar way. Do you remember which plans you set for yourself a few years ago? Have you reached them all? Learn a language to a conversational level, exercise regularly, lead a healthy lifestyle, visit all the countries of Europe…

There are goals which are not quickly reached for a number of reasons. Slowly, they begin to turn into dreams, unfulfillable desires, thoughts of which no longer cause you to feel any emotions.

For this very reason, it is very important to set goals for your child which they can achieve in the near future so they will not turn into unfulfillable dreams.

How is this done? We will make a checklist of how attainable the goal is:

The goal should be close and tangible for the child

It is important to mark the achievement of goals in learning, i.e., another step in the staircase of learning (your child finished another year at school, did homework on their own, woke up without an alarm clock, got three A’s in school, etc.)

Encouragement. Reaching the next step of the academic ladder, (and not only) should give your child positive emotions. Imagine monotonously climbing a long staircase, you would very quickly become tired and stop enjoying the process, just like your child. However, if they find a small “prize” at each new step, then climbing becomes that much easier. There should be emotional “goodies”: kindness, extended praise, going somewhere your child has long wanted to go (the movies, water park, circus, children events), etc.

This will be motivation to move forward.

Praise can come in different forms. You could find the negative in everything and say things like, “If you want it, you can do it!” or “Couldn’t you have done that earlier? You must have been too lazy!”

This is similar to if someone said to you after you had climbed up a long staircase, “Why did you sit on the step? Couldn’t you have gone up more?” I assume you would not like it very much. It is hardly going to help you achieve your goal.

It is better to tell your child something like:

“Good job! I am proud of you, you finished your lesson in twenty minutes and freed up your evening!”

“Well done! Come here, I want to give you a hug!”

“Thank you for putting your dirty underwear in the washing machine and for picking them up yourself instead of throwing them about.”

Compliment your child for their accomplishments and for each step towards independence. Otherwise, they might not notice it themselves. It is important that you notice it and encourage your child. That way, next time they will consciously clean up after themselves, do their lesson more quickly, get their backpack ready on their own, and so on.

“I’m proud of you!”, “You did a great job!”, “I’m really happy”, these phrases truly help goals be reached.

Of course, we should remember fast results.

“Learn well and someday you will be successful” is not a good method.

“Learn now and tomorrow you will already be able to use this and see results” works much better.

The next stage is to motivate your child to learn certain subjects.

Nowadays not every class is told when or why certain school subjects might be needed. That is why it is important for you to do so. Have you and your child find the advantages of learning the subjects and what value your child will get when they apply this new knowledge. In this way they will start to understand why they are doing it. This helps reach attainable goals, for example, doing homework on their own.

It is not uncommon for someone to want their son or daughter to reach a specific goal, without realizing that it is in fact their own goal and not their child’s. For example, wanting them to get up easily in the mornings for school.

I will give an example from one of our students, Tatiana. She talks about how it bothered her that her child could not wake up in the mornings on time.

“My daughter doesn’t want to get out of bed at all! I have to go to her half an hour early, nag her for five minutes to get up, to get dressed. This happens no matter when she goes to bed. We argue every time. I get worried and tell her that she’ll sleep through her entire life and all the important events!” says Tatiana.

In other words, she set goals for her daughter which were very far from her.

After discussing the main principles of goal setting, Tatiana changed her tactic. She broke up her goal (of her child waking up to the alarm clock and getting ready for school on her own) into shorter, easily attainable steps for her and her daughter.

The first step was to get up in the morning from the very beginning. Look at how the goal transformed from “always and immediately” to “one time tomorrow”.

Tatiana then did the following: she bought a lot of small trinkets and sweets ahead of time. When she went to wake up her daughter the next morning she told her, “If you get out of bed right now, you will find a surprise which I’ve prepared for you! I won’t tell you what it is, you should find it yourself.”

Her daughter understood that if she got up right away, made the next step, then she would get a surprise. Her daughter liked it, “Mom, will you wake me up the same way tomorrow?”

They played this game together for a while.

The next goal Tatiana set for herself was for her daughter to get up in the mornings on her own, without having to go to her and wake her up. They agreed that a surprise would be waiting if she woke up to her alarm clock on her own. After two weeks, her daughter learned to do this.

Next, the mother changed her system of encouragement. For the prize, she offed walks together or an event her daughter wanted to attend. They made their way like this to their bigger goal, with small steps which were tangible for her child.

Any goal should be gone after in a similar fashion. Break it down into steps and take your time making them, getting satisfaction from each step. After all, an endless tiring journey with an unknown end is unlikely to lead anywhere.

What you can do to help your child learn

– Set attainable goals which are tangible for your child.

– Break goals down into steps in order to accomplish them. Visualize a “staircase”.

– Use constructive praise and track progress.

“Garland” technique. Five ways to boost your child’s self-esteem

Children often loose confidence in themselves when they start school and in the learning process. Parents then face the problem of how to raise their child’s self-esteem.

Children find themselves in an environment of complete evaluation and, consequently, are subjected to being compared not only to themselves but with ideals, standards, and other children.

If something does not work out with a child then he may start to put in half the effort, call themselves names, or avoid any difficulties, become overanxious or unnecessarily emotional, and even cry from not being able to accomplish something.

It can be quite difficult sometimes to help a child gain confidence. However, there is an easy 5-step system which can improve your chid’s self-esteem.

First, though, let’s consider why children get low self-esteem.

Before the frontal lobes and awareness turn on (13—14 years old), children see themselves as individuals through a prism of their surroundings.

If a child is told “you are dense, you are hopeless, you are irresponsible, you are stupid, you are sloppy, you are lazy,” etc., they will start to believe it and become it.

Adults always have an impact on children. If a teacher at school or parents express such judgments towards a child, then it will affect the child’s life and the life of the family as a whole.

There are four ways of raising a child: “you are bad, the world is bad”, “you are bad, the world is good”, “you are good, the world is bad”, “you are good, the world is good”.

Raising a Child with Mindful Communication

Raising a child with the first, second, and third mindset lowers their self-esteem and kills their strive at its root.

Typical phrases of the “you are bad, the world is bad” model are:

– “If you don’t study, no one will hire you.”

– “If you can’t read, you will just become a janitor.”

– “If you don’t write, you won’t even be able to get a passport – they simply won’t give it to you.”

– “If you can’t count, all the stores will rip you off.”

– “If you are illiterate, what will become of you? Life will be very difficult for you.”

– “How long do you have to sit and do those lessons, are you stupid or something?”

– “You read so slow! At this rate, you’ll hardly move on to the next grade.”

Typical phrases of the “you’re good, the world is bad” model are:

– “You confused the syllables? No wonder, look at how it’s written, even adults would struggle with it.”

– “You read unclearly? Well, whoever needs to understand will understand.”

– “Maybe you do it slowly, but at least you do it on your own. Don’t worry, you can listen to stories, how fast you read doesn’t matter.”

– “I’d like to see the authors of the textbooks.”

– “I don’t agree with their methods at all.” (Said in front of the child)

– “Don’t listen to anyone, I know you read better than the rest.”

– “Don’t take it to heart, you’re smart and they are ignorant.”

Typical phrases of the “you’re bad, the world is good” model are:

– “What, you mixed up the syllables again? Dasha read it without any mistakes!”

– “At your age, I could read fast and got all A’s.”

– “Look at you, reading syllable by syllable. Meanwhile, all your classmates are already reading fluently.”

– “You read so badly, everyone will move on to the next class and you’ll stay behind for another year.”

– “What, you can’t even remember the times table for two? Everyone else has already learned it for nine.”

– “What’s with this chicken scratch! All the letters are crooked, mistake after mistake, look at how nicely Peter and Vanya write.”

– “If a person is told 100 times they are a pig, they will start to oink like one.”

For this reason, the first step is to try to create a system of raising children using the fourth model: “the world is good, you are good.”

In this model, phrases like the following are used when talking to the child:

– “Good job, you can do it. If you have questions or problems, someone will help you.”

– “Know that I believe in you! You will have strong opponents at the competition, but I’m sure you can do your best.”

– “Well done! Yesterday you read 30 words/min., and now you read 34. You’re making progress, good job.”

– “You’ve already memorized the times table for two. I’m happy for you. I’m sure you can memorize the rest. But that doesn’t mean it will memorize itself for you.”

– “Look how nice your letters A and O turned out. Let’s try to write the next ones just as nicely.”

– “You mixed up the syllables. Let’s try to find where they belong.”

– “The more you put into something, the bigger result you’ll get.”

The second step is to find your child’s strengths.

A child’s strengths may be obvious or not obvious, big or small.

The best way to do this is to take narrow pieces of paper and list various qualities which could generally be counted as a person’s strength.

Personal qualities, social skills, communication skills, knowledge, math skills.

Next, sit down with your child at a table and ask them to help you choose the qualities your child already possesses. In order to make it easier for you to make a control list, you can use the program “Garland”. You will find there a list of strengths divided into categories. The only thing left to do is to print it out and choose with your child which qualities they have.

The third step is to visualize achievement.

The best way to confirm a child’s success is with a tangible result – a diploma, award, any physical confirmation of words.

For this, you can have a table of accomplishments or records where you mark, for example, their best result in reading.

Likewise you can make a garland of your child’s strength, which you determined previously, and attach ribbons together.

Hang the garland in a visible place in the child’s room (near the bed or above the desk).

Then, every time they walk by the garland, your child will get a visual confirmation (reminder) of your words.

The fourth step is to constantly mark progress.

Have a look once or twice a week at the ribbons you did not choose and see which ones can be added to the garland. You can also add new bits of knowledge which your child gained during this period.

This method of improving self-esteem is not only simple but important.

The fifth step is to pay attention to your child’s interests.

Your child’s self-esteem will increase when they are doing what truly interests them.

Your child may not know right away what they really like. Finding out what it is might take some time, but it is important to do.

It may mean having to put off your own dreams of them loving football or becoming a great artist, but as soon as your child finds their own passion, you will get a happier and more confident child.

What you can do to help your child learn