Should My Child Study During The Summer Holidays?

As a parent it can be difficult to know whether to allow your child to simply enjoy the summer holiday break or encourage them to keep a regular academic routine.

It's natural for most children to want to play, have fun and sit in front of the TV all day. However, doing these things can also negatively affect their academic progress.

So how do you as a parent strike the balance between allowing your child to have fun whilst also encouraging them to study?

Here are a few quick tips to help.

#1. Treat the summer as a time for progress and rejuvenation. 

The summer is a time for you and your child to recharge and unwind and it's therefore essential that you give your child at least some time to have a break. Do your best to have a positive mindset about the summer months and think of it as being a time for progress and rejuvenation. 

#2. Schedule fun time and work time.

One of my favourite quotes is, "if it's not scheduled, it's not real." This simply means that if you don't schedule things then they're never going to happen. To maximise your child's progress during the summer months it's pivotal that you carve out specific times for work and for play. You could for instance have study time from 11am-2pm and then fun time from 2pm-7pm. This will help your child to follow a routine and it will ensure that they study without feeling over worked. It'll also ensure that they wake up at a decent time each morning as many children have the habit of waking up in the late afternoon when they're not at school.

#3. Create a curriculum.

Which subjects or topics is your child struggling with? Is it 11-plus verbal reasoning, trigonometry or writing compositions? Make a note of the areas that they need to work on and create a curriculum that will cover all of the key areas that they need to study in more depth. Use the summer as a period where they can make progress in areas that they were previously struggling with.

If your child is struggling with English you can enrol them in an online course such as The Clever Comprehension Academy so that they can go through subjects like reading, inference and vocabulary in a way that is convenient. Furthermore, the course can be accessed 24/7 so your child can study in their own time. Click here to learn more about it.

Important things to know before starting a dissertation

During the dissertation hand-in day, all students feel stressed out about the achievement of these important papers that have resulted from an exhausting crusade of researching, structuring and writing. For me, more than one year has passed after my fist encounter with the Undergraduate Dissertation Handbook and I still remember how I felt my heart trembling with the thought of the massive amount of work that was in front of me. Now that that stressful episode of my life has passed, I am beginning to identify the things that would be very beneficial for me if I was aware of them back then.

This article will provide useful tips to those who are currently working on their dissertations or will start working on them soon.

You need the best supervisor!

If you have been assigned to work with a supervisor who doesn’t provide effective recommendations or is unresponsive, you need to make a change. Don’t be afraid to ask for a change because if you don’t get the right advice, you won’t use your best potential and you will deliver mediocre work.

There should be a valid reason for making a switch and the request should be made early in the process. You don’t have to look for the best expert on the topic you are developing. What you need is a supervisor who will always be reassuring, reliable, approachable and detailed in their feedback. During the process of developing your dissertation, you will have some weird questions that will require email correspondence. Your supervisor should always be there for you, no matter how important those questions are.

Prepare for an unimpressed environment

When you start preparing yourself for the dissertation, your friends, family and all known and unknown people will start asking what you will be writing about. When it comes to dissertations, people always expect for impressive answers and you won’t be able to impress the environment in the early stage of the process. You should be prepared for some discouraging looks of disappointment and confusion, but you must not be affected by that kind of feedback. You should be aware that most people expect some dramatic answers when they ask about the topic of your dissertation, such as genocide, war and revolutionary ideas. After all, they are not the ones working on the dissertation and if you feel confident about your topic and you are interested in developing it further, make sure to stay positive about it.

Never ask your friends about the amount of work they have done. This would only stress you out and make you paranoid, or it would make them paranoid. Arrange your time effectively according to your own research and writing abilities, not according to others’ schedules.

Prepare for the freak out phase

During the dissertation development process, you will certainly experience a phase during which you will doubt the entire thesis and you will wish to leave everything behind and start from zero point. This usually occurs a couple of months before the ultimate deadline. The decision to start over is justified only if your mentor recommends you to do so because of some serious flaws in your work (which is a highly improbable scenario). You have to be aware that it is normal to panic, but you must keep focused and that stage of insecurity will pass.

Staying focused: Final tips

Don’t be disappointed by the fact that a lot of the early material will have to be edited out from the final version of the dissertation. Don’t be inclined into including all possible ideas that you have, because that would disturb the flow of the dissertation and make it look pointless.

Be prepared for a lot of printing! This may take a large portion of your weekly budget, so make sure to print only the necessary files and try using the free services of your friends and relatives during this process.

Writing a dissertation is a serious process that requires an immense amount of work and devotion, which means that you will have to put it on the first place, in front of other essay demands, sport commitments and social life in general. Even if you are extremely organized, you will have to go a step further and make more detailed plans of your time, without leaving any space for deadline panicking attacks!

Don’t be afraid of all the work in front of you because finishing your dissertation will definitely be one of the best experiences in your life. Every single atom of effort is worth for this important piece of work, so make sure to do everything in order to make yourself proud at the end of the process.

This is a guest post by Lois Weldon. Louis is a writer at uk.bestdissertation.com. She lives happily in London with her husband and daughter. She adores writing tips for students and is passionate about Star Wars and yoga.

Our First Ever Video!

As you probably know, we're gearing up for the launch of our intensive 11 plus summer course. It's an incredibly exciting time and we're super excited to be working on the curriculum and content. I also wanted to share that a video that explains more about the course and gives you a bit of insight into what it offers.

We really believe in providing our customers with the best and we know how important the 11+ exams are. They change lives. They nourish minds. They open doors.

If you're a parent who's thinking about preparing their child for the 11 plus, please watch our video and feel free to share it with friends and family who might also be interested.

Here it is!

Ps. If you'd like to book a place for your child click here. Spaces are filling up fast and it looks like we'll be fully booked within the next few weeks! If you don't want your child to miss out, I highly recommend signing up today!

On The Green Eyed Monster

The green eyed monster.

No, it's not just something we read about in Shakespeare or see in nightmares. It's real and it's inside most if not all of us.

We look at others and think: How comes they can do XYZ and I can't? How comes their child is topic of the class and mine's last? How comes I'm not the super parent or super tutor that I'd dreamed of being?

When the green eyed monster rears it's ugly head, we feel his presence and it's usually so overbearing that it takes over us!

So what do you do when you're hit by jealousy, envy or the feeling of malice towards others?

You inhale. Take a deep breath and tell yourself that yes, other people might seem like perfect achievers with perfect children or perfect lesson plans but they're not you! You have your own unique gifts and talents that make you special and those are the gifts that you need to leverage.

There will always be people who are smarter, better educated, more skilled etc, but that doesn't mean that you're not a good enough parent, teacher or tutor.

Write down 5 skills that you have and take time to think about how you can accentuate those skills. How can you turn your good gifts into great ones?

Now it's over to you. Have you ever felt jealous of another person's success? Have you ever felt as if you weren't doing things the 'right way'? How did you handle it? Leave a comment below. Don't forget to subscribe to my newsletter for free education and tutoring resources.

The Tutoress

Are Tutors Appreciated?

The American Thanksgiving celebration had a big impact on me this year. Perhaps it's because I have a lot of American family members or because I read a lot of articles from American writers, either way, the idea of gratitude has been particularly prominent to me over the past few days.

During Thanksgiving, Americans take time out of their bustling lives to spend time with family and celebrate what they're grateful for. It's sort of like a mini-Christmas! In many American households, Thanksgiving is a time to pontificate upon the meaning of gratitude and show gratitude and appreciation to those around them.

As a Tutor, gratitude is such an important part of my life! I didn't realise it until a few days ago when I was listening to someone talk about the art of saying thank you.

As a Tutor, I spend hours and hours planning lessons, marking homework, liaising with parents and doing so much work that goes unrecognised and sadly, there are a lot of people who never thank me for what I do. It's quite sad when I think about it. It seems that many of us are just too busy to say thank you to those around us. I know I've done it too and I see people everyday who just don't bother to show or feel appreciative for what they have.

I spoke to a parent recently, I've worked with her daughter for over a year but unfortunately we don't be having lessons any more. The parent didn't once thank me for the hard-work and dedication that I'd put into teaching her daughter. Whilst it did upset me slightly, it brought gratitude forward in my list of personal priorities.

In fact, this week I'm writing a list of things that I'm grateful for. I'm also planning on creating a thank you journal where I collect all of my gratuitous memories and write down all of the things that I'm grateful for.

Here are 5 of the things that I appreciate:

1. My friends and family who motivate me to be a trailblazer. 2. My clients! I love them! Seeing parents who've sacrificed so much for their children is so unbelievably inspiring. I'll NEVER forget the memories that I have of many of my students and their families. I've met so many people during this wonderful journey and am so grateful for the lessons I've learnt and the people I've met. 3. My career. I love teaching and I think that teaching will always be a part of my life in some shape or form. 4. My life. It's so easy to forget that being alive is a blessing! Some people didn't get the chance to wake up this morning but I did, I'm grateful for that.5. My wisdom. Of course I'm not perfect but I love learning new things and have learnt so much over the past few years.

Finally, a HUGE thank you to the dozens of parents, teachers and students that I've worked with over the years.

I've met such incrediblepeople and despite the ups and downs, I have been blessed to have worked with so many incredible families. I'm grateful to those who have shown such gratitude for what I do, the cards, the chocolates that you send always put a smile on my face and motivate me to give to others endlessly. Being a tutor isn't just about teaching, it's about serving and making a difference to the lives of people.

What are you grateful for? Leave a comment below with a list of at least 5 things you're grateful for!

Wishing you a great Thanksgiving weekend.

The Tutoress.