Supporting parents will help to aid exam success

As exam season approaches, Lisa Salmon talks to teacher April Miller about her new book How To Help Your Teenager Achieve Exam Success.

ALL parents want their children to achieve their full potential, and one key way of doing that is through performing well in exams. This desire to pass with flying colours means that as testing time approaches, it’s not only students who are getting anxious. Parents are often equally stressed and want to do everything in their power to help them succeed.

But most simply don’t know the best way to do that – and that’s where teacher April Miller hopes she can lend a hand. Miller has written How To Help Your Teenager Achieve Exam Success in a bid to guide parents, looking at not only revision and motivation, but also at how a wide variety of other factors including food, exercise, thinking and emotions can affect exam success.

But while it’s crucial for parents to help, Miller stresses that helping is different from pushing.

“Concerned parents should be involved, but that’s not about pushing teenagers. It’s about releasing their natural abilities, and freeing them from societal influences in order to achieve their full potential.

“Research shows that parents are the biggest influence on their teenagers’ academic success and career choice. Being involved shows you’re interested — they may protest when parents get involved, but underneath they appreciate it.”

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Miller suggests parents should let their child decide when to study but insist that they do; look at their diaries and books; encourage them to invite friends for group study and provide snacks and drinks; and also keep a line of communication with their teachers. She says parental influence on academic success runs through every aspect of their lives, but summarises the key points as:

• Teenagers still need parental help and guidance.
• They need to develop critical thinking skills in order to assess their own abilities and develop good study behaviours so encourage them to think for themselves.
• Helping teenagers have a focus raises achievement.
• Encouraging a balanced diet and exercise helps a teenager achieve their best.
• Ensure technology is limited or used positively, to encourage stress reduction and good sleep habits.
• Promote listening.
• Encourage you teenager to produce their own revision resources.

On a practical level, students learn through processing, which involves changing the form of the information they need. “When we process information, we remember it,” explains Miller, who says processing includes using mind maps, producing revision recordings and revision cards.

The use of colour is also helpful, she says, and teenagers should have good resources such as coloured pens and cards, as well as dictionaries, and a quiet place to work. And while it might not help the home decor, displaying revision materials on walls can help the learning process, as teenagers are more likely to absorb information when they see it regularly. She points out that mere reading is the least effective form of revision.

Critical thinking, she says, is an important aspect of academic success, such thinking helps teenagers revise their work as they go along and ask questions that lead to evaluation. A good strategy to help teenagers think critically is to ask them to think of a friend who’s doing well academically and why this is.

“Teenagers often see the success of others as being due to innate ability and fail to analyse behaviours that generate success. If you can help your teenager with this, they will begin to think critically and become more likely to implement some of the behaviours that lead to success.”

But she says the most effective tool for students is to be self-reflective — assessing what did and didn’t go well, and what can be done to improve future performance. Parents can best help their teenagers develop this skill by modelling it themselves, possibly at family mealtimes, by recapping the day and asking teenagers to recap theirs. Plus, encourage your teenager to explain their lessons to you – discussing them aloud will help them order facts in their own mind.

“Teenagers never want to fail, they just lack the skills or mental aptitude to analyse their own behaviour,” says Miller. “They are also poor at putting academically successful behaviours into direct practice.”

How To Help Teenagers Achieve Exam Success by April Miller is published by Bennion Kearny, €12.

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