The BIGGEST mistake I've seen parents make when preparing their child for their 7+ Assessments.
/I had a fascinating conversation yesterday with one of my new clients. She is currently preparing her son for his 7+ Assessments at a top London Boys’ School. My new student is currently in Year 1 at another top London Boys’ School. She was concerned about how much she had to support her son with his home learning. When I told her that the home learning was for him and not for her, she fell silent.
I am not interested in how my students’ parents answer the questions that I set them for their home learning. The only person I’m interested in is my student. How THEY answer the questions. What THEY struggle with. What THEY understand well. What THEY don’t understand well.
Only in that way, am I fully able to customise and tailor the curriculum that I create for them and have the best results in terms of the progress that they ultimately will make working with me.
When you help your child too much it is simply not helpful.
If you tell your child the answer, it is simply not helpful. I have sat and observed parents literally telling their child the answer to a question that they didn’t understand. Ok, great. So they got it right. Who cares?
I do not.
Do you know what I care about?
I care about whether they’ve understood the concepts or not. I care about whether or not they can apply their understanding to a new/different question involving the same/similar concepts.
When I explained to my client that my expectation is for my student to sit independently and complete the home learning alone, she breathed a sigh of relief. Not because she doesn’t want to help him. Believe me, she does. But because it took away that pressure from her.
When your child goes into their 7+ Assessment, will you be there to ‘help’ them to answer the questions? No.
When your child goes into their 7+ Assessment, will you be there to ‘help’ them to understand the questions? No.
When your child goes into their 7+ Assessment, will you be there to ‘help’ them to know how much time they have to spend on each question? No.
So, please think about this before you offer far too much help to your child than is even needed.
In our lessons, we expect our students to do 80% of the talking in the lesson. The 20% that our teachers talk is only to explain a concept to our students or to guide our students to be able to try to answer the questions being asked of them.
You will NEVER see one of our teachers telling one of our students the answers to questions. This is NOT learning. This is spoon feeding.
And it will not be helpful to your child when they go into their 7+ Assessments.
