With the term holidays upon us, both parents and students face the question – should the holidays be used for revision or should it be a time to relax, enjoy the sleepins and recharge before the start of a new term?
Like always, there isn’t one answer that applies to everyone. It depends on the different situations of each student. Below is some of our general comments that parents and students use to help make the best decision.
For our primary students: Primary school is a fantastic time to work on friendships, enjoy the outdoors and spend time doing activities of leisure. What we do recommend is keeping up the little things that make a huge difference such as reading for 20 minutes each night. Make it a book of leisure and the apparent task of doing ‘school work’ during the holidays will suddenly be masked by the enjoyment of a story.
For our high school students: Depending on the year in which the student is, our advice is often based on their abilities and progress. For example, Maths during Years 9-10 may be difficult and there are always topics which are challenging. Without having to spend every single day doing revision, we would aim for perhaps 3-4 times a week doing 30 minutes of revision. This could being revising notes, completing the topic review test or making study notes of rules and formulas to be used for exam time.
For our senior high school students: This is little bit of a different ball game. Senior years are full of assessments, in class tasks and learning new content at a very fast pace. This means that during the term, it is easy to fall behind and feel overwhelmed about the amount of work that needs to be done. We therefore recommend putting together a study plan for the holiday period. This will ensure that you cover the most important tasks but also allows you to visualise your time to see how you can also spend your down time catching up with friends, taking time to do the things you enjoy and know how you can fit in a part time job. This way you will feel ahead once term starts back rather than play catch up game.
Our comments are very general and may apply different to various situations. We would love to chat to you further to see how we can help with a personalised recommendation.