It’s easy to believe that something major is wrong when our kids start having trouble in school: It’s possible that the advanced classes they’re taking aren’t for them. It’s possible that their grades are being negatively impacted by their friends.
It’s possible that we need to give up everything and increase our study time.
However, the narrative is frequently less dramatic.
When we work with children, we frequently discover that it is not because they dislike learning, do not want to try something new because it is not “cool,” or lack fundamental knowledge of a particular subject. Instead, the majority of the time, it is a few minor errors that have begun to accumulate over time. items like:
- In geometry class, they fail to grasp a crucial idea, which makes it difficult for them to grasp the next idea, putting them further and further behind.
- They don’t use their agenda book to keep track of their assignments because they forget to bring it to class or take it out of their backpacks when they get home.
- Failing their exams because they don’t think ahead and plan to study a little each day rather than cramming everything in at the last minute.
In this post, we’ll talk about 22 habits of successful students and show you how you can use these small, manageable steps to win big for yourself and your child.
Why is it important to develop habits to be successful?
We’ve all looked for ways to become a successful student, characteristics of a good student, how to be a good student, and other information at some point. The response is to form healthy routines, which raises another query: Why are routines so crucial to success?
From this rabbit hole of questions, we can understand that habits help with:
- Spending less time making big decisions and more time doing small things like eating, sleeping, etc.
- Having more time and room to think creatively.
- Putting important activities first.
- Supplanting motivation on challenging days.
12 good work habits for students
These aren’t the extravagant commitments that most people will make as part of their New Year’s resolutions this year, which in their wild ambition almost always fail. Instead, there are reasonable adjustments you can make to your family’s routines and strategies to begin turning things around.
Here is a quick reference table of contents that will take you to the section you want to tackle first:
- The basics of time management and planning ahead
- Don’t just get organized, they stay organized
- Distribute your practice
- Taking notes in class
- Study using active recall
- Approach your mistakes correctly
- Make friends you can study with
- Rock solid morning and evening routines
- Parents: Give them the tools but don’t do it for them
- Know how to ask for help, but try to find the answer first
- Parents: Don’t focus on motivation, focus on behavior
- School isn’t everything
1. The basics of time management and planning ahead
Many students struggle with time management, particularly as assignments become more complex. However, success does not require them to be planning experts. If we take the simplest time management practices of successful students and break them down, there are a few things that almost all do:
- They use a planner
- They set small goals
- They learn to pay attention to a watch or clock
They use a planner:
The most important part of staying on top of their schoolwork, knowing when things need to be done, and making the most of their time after school is simply writing down their assignments.
The simple act of writing something down or entering an assignment into a digital calendar can frequently initiate a series of actions that result in assignments being started earlier than the due date and homework being completed on time.
They set small goals:
They utilize an organizer or learning the executive’s framework (like Schoology or Material) to work out the thing they will do, yet not in huge general terms like “review for math test.” Instead, they divide it into smaller objectives like: complete the worksheet on fractions in 15 minutes. This makes it simpler to begin, and more straightforward to see improvement.
They learn to pay attention to a watch or clock:
This is one of those “duh” habits, but many children don’t develop it. Many students have trouble estimating how long things will take and how much time they are spending on activities that are not productive because they do not acquire a sense of time by paying attention to how time actually passes. They should be encouraged to regularly check the time or wear a watch.
2. Don’t just get organized, they stay organized
It should come as no surprise that at Educational Connections, we place a high value on organization because it is one of the best methods for assisting students in improving their academic performance. Academic or behavioral issues are frequently merely signs of disorder and lack of routine.
The top organizational practices of successful students include the following:
- Establish a daily homework routine at the same time.
- The night before, pack the backpack with everything you need.
- Label and color code binders and folders.
- To prepare for the week ahead of time, schedule a weekly “Clean Sweep” for the family.
It’s all well and good to start new habits, but keeping them going is the hard part. How many times have you told your child to write down their homework, only to find out a week later that they didn’t?
Therefore, successful students not only work on developing organizational habits but also collaborate with their families to monitor and revisit these habits to ensure that they are effective. Some ways to accomplish that include:
- Discuss their responsibilities with them at dinnertime
- Set aside time on Sundays to check-in
- Lead by example
Discuss their responsibilities with them at dinnertime:
Be careful not to nag, but just check in: Hey, I know you liked the way we set up your classes’ homework folders. How goes that? Is it assisting you with assignment organization?”
Set aside time on Sundays to check-in:
You can even combine this with your Clean Sweep to find all of the “mess” that may have built up due to bad organizational habits.
Lead by example:
Organize your closet. Prepare your workout gear the night before. Spend some time clearly planning out your week so your child can see you at work. This is the most effective method for teaching your children the value of good organizational habits.
3. Distribute your practice
If you’re lucky, maybe your child learns to study like a pro: they plan ahead, set aside time each day, and breeze through their quizzes and tests without missing a beat before bedtime.
Well, I can say with assurance: The majority of us lack luck.
Instead, most of us have children who, despite the fact that they might not be “crammers” on a regular basis, do study for tests at the last minute at times.
Here is how they do:
- Why cramming doesn’t work
- Why distributed practice is so effective
- Okay, so how do we get our child to study in this way?
Why cramming doesn’t work?
If they have a test on Thursday, they start getting ready on Wednesday night because they don’t usually feel a strong sense of urgency until they are right up against a deadline. In the short term, cramming can pay off, but when they need to learn more in-depth information, it backfires.
Cramming only stores information in short-term memory, whereas learning it over a number of nights and sleeping on it (sleep is a great study tool, by the way) stores it in long-term memory.
This is due to a notion known as distributed practice.
Why distributed practice is so effective?
A fancy way of saying: Distributed practice, also known as “spaced repetition.” concentrate on somewhat every day as opposed to packing everything in the night prior to the test.
According to research, students are significantly more likely to improve their test scores when they employ the concept of distributed practice. For instance, if your child has a test on Friday, he could study for an hour on Thursday night.
However, he would actually receive a higher grade if he divided the same amount of time into multiple days, spending 20 minutes on Tuesday, 20 minutes on Wednesday, and 20 minutes on Thursday. He won’t get a better grade because he studied the material more than once; It’s because he slept on it.
You are consolidating information into long-term memory when you learn something and then sleep on it. However, when you cram for a test, you only absorb superficial information that can be recited the following day. It will be stored in short-term memory. When you have a test later, say a month later, you are much more likely to be able to retrieve it, so long-term memory is more beneficial.
Okay, so how do we get our child to study in this way?
They must first be willing to change. He or she must be aware of the issue and willing to adapt for a different approach to learning to work. Any parenting advice will be useless if it is not viewed as a problem.
Therefore, speak with them. Even if a child claims that they perform better under pressure (a “tell” that they are justifying their behavior), you can bet that they don’t like staying up late with them as much as it is difficult and exhausting.
I’ve found that kids who like to cram are willing to make plans if they don’t feel like they have to do more work than they need to and if they can see that making the changes will help them get better grades (which they almost always do). The good news is that they rarely need to put in more time; rather, they just need to make better use of it.
Crammers also like the idea of using “weird windows” well. Students sometimes believe that they need a lot of time to study. And they won’t do it if they don’t have the right time or are not in the right mood.
In point of fact, they can complete their studies at any time. The 15 minutes he or she spends waiting at the doctor’s office or the 20 minutes just before lacrosse practice starts are examples of “weird windows.” Those are odd windows, and you can divide up your study time by accomplishing a lot in short bursts.
4. Taking notes in class
There are certain students who enter the classroom, take out their notebooks and a pencil, and begin dictating the instructor’s instructions like an efficient robot.
Some students will sit comfortably at their desks and listen to the teacher—whether they like it or not—until the teacher notices that the student is doing nothing and tells them to take a piece of paper and write down what they are saying.
The appropriate equilibrium is some place in the center, and there are quite a few different note-taking strategies fruitful understudies use. If your child does not already have a good habit of taking notes, the following are a few that you can introduce them to:
- The outline method
- The free-form method
- The Cornell method
The outline method:
The outline approach is probably the simplest, despite its name. If the teacher is organized, they probably already present the material in an outline format. Although this is not an exact science, it is the responsibility of the student to recognize when the instructor has moved on to a new topic and to keep their notes relatively organized under each topic.
The free-form method:
By taking notes as they see fit, you can let your child express their inner creativity. The risk here is that they will miss important information if they take too many liberties when drawing diagrams or connecting notes using a mind map. However, if your child is more “outside the box,” this could be something to look into.
The Cornell method:
A more sophisticated approach, the Cornell Method, is probably best left for high school students. During class, you record your notes in the right column, and as soon as possible after class, you write down questions and terms on the left. After that, you can use these notes as a study guide, trying to remember what each question or term means on the right side.
However, at the end of the day, even merely copying the teacher’s notes is a good place to start, and you can build from there.
5. Study using active recall
Students who practice recalling important information from memory almost always perform better on tests and quizzes, whether they do so using physical note cards or an app like Quizlet.
The authority name for this training is Dynamic Review, and the technique is really direct.
Step 1: Make a note of the term, idea, or issue to be resolved.
Step 2: Without looking at any notes or information, write down or recite the definition, explanation, or response.
Step 3: Make any necessary corrections after comparing your response to your notes.
This method has been shown by research to dramatically improve exam performance, and it is one of the less well-known habits of successful students that people talk about. It is in stark contrast to passively reading the textbook or leafing through notes.
6. Approach your mistakes correctly
When it comes to mistakes, the most successful students neither dwell on them nor avoid them. I’ve seen students often get down on themselves after failing an exam question. Unfortunately, they almost always guarantee that they will not learn from their mistakes and improve the next time.
Therefore, fostering a growth mindset is essential: the possibility that your kid’s abilities and capacities aren’t fixed (for example they’re not “brilliant”) however can be worked on over the long haul with training and exertion (for example they’re diligent employees and can turn into “more intelligent”).
Kids are much more likely to look at their mistakes and work hard to fix them if they hear this kind of positive self-talk and are encouraged to do so by their parents.
7. Make friends you can study with
Some kids are outgoing and have a large number of friends they can call at any time. Making friends in school can be like scaling Mount Everest for others.
It is essential to have at least a few other classmates with whom your child can communicate in each class, regardless of their temperament.
Your child can quickly clarify assignments, ask questions if they are unsure about something from class, or schedule a meeting time to study for an upcoming test even if they only have one or two friends in class to text. All of these will protect them from forgetting to write something down, missing a class because they were absent, or simply not understanding some material.
Even better, scheduling regular FaceTime meetings with each other can be a great way to hold them accountable for completing assignments and exams.
8. Rock solid morning and evening routines
The success or failure of your child’s subsequent school day is frequently determined by the routines that frame the beginning and end of each day. This is due to a number of factors, including:
- A solid morning routine reduces stress
- A solid evening routine ensures organization and rest
- Both in combination, provide a consistent sleep schedule
A solid morning routine reduces stress:
First, establishing a solid morning routine for your entire family ensures that when your child wakes up, they are aware of exactly what they need to do to get ready for school. They don’t have to negotiate as much (well, let’s say less), and it’s less likely that they’ll forget something important like their lunch or an instrument.
Additionally, the beginning of the day often determines the remainder of the day’s success: Therefore, if your child has a calm and low-stress start to the school day, they have the best chance of learning successfully for the approximately six hours they are at school.
A solid evening routine ensures organization and rest:
Second, being organized, getting a good night’s sleep, and ready for the next day are all made easier by having a clear and on time routine at night. It can be tempting to let TV, the computer, or last-minute assignments disrupt your plans, but the bedtime routine should rarely be altered unless your child is in a critical situation.
Both in combination, provide a consistent sleep schedule:
Thirdly, having a regular nighttime and morning routine helps keep your sleep schedule the same. A student’s ability to learn, their ability to control their emotions, and the quality of their daily interactions with you, teachers, and other students can all be negatively impacted by a lack of sleep or even an inconsistent sleep schedule. They are significantly more likely to get the rest they need when they have a set bedtime and wakeup time each morning.
9. Parents: Give them the tools but don’t do it for them
I know how difficult it is to watch your child struggle. especially when you are aware of exactly what they are doing wrong and are able to intervene immediately to assist them in rectifying the situation.
Sadly, even though loving and supporting your child is absolutely essential, assisting them with their studies or homework when they could do it on their own is a huge disservice to them.
Not only does it set the stage for success in higher level classes in high school and college when mom and dad aren’t around (or don’t understand what they’re learning!), but the more a student can expand their abilities and level of competence independently, the better. but for success in life when it comes time for them to face the challenges of real-world navigating.
However, this does not obligate us to observe from a distance. In point of fact, how you speak to your child as a parent to direct and encourage them can actually determine whether or not they succeed academically.
Above, we talked about how important it is to cultivate a “growth mindset,” but you can also use questions to make thinking and planning ahead easier. These are our Powerful Questions.
You could, for instance, ask questions like:
- What are your priorities today?
- What’s the one thing you might do to study for your science test?
- Going forward, what’s the one thing you might do differently?
By framing your conversations with your child about school in this manner, you encourage them to think rather than instruct them. You provide them with the resources they need to decide what to do, but you don’t actually do it for them.
The parents of the most successful students achieve this equilibrium. Furthermore, critical thinking is an essential part of education. These activities and concepts for learning are taught in numerous schools worldwide. For this, you can contact any reputable company that writes essays on critical thinking.
10. Know how to ask for help, but try to find the answer first
On the other hand, one of the most enduring characteristics of successful students that we observe is their confidence and capacity to seek assistance when they require it.
Due in large part to the distinction between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset that we discussed earlier, these students are significantly less concerned with what their teachers and classmates will think when they ask a question about something that they do not comprehend. Because they aren’t expected to know everything right away, they are aware that asking questions when they don’t understand something is necessary for learning.
Having said that, these students are aware that they must first attempt to discover the answer for themselves. Whether that means going back through their class notes, looking at the textbook for examples and explanations, or trying to find what they need by using Google. They don’t hesitate to ask the teacher, their parents, or a friend for assistance if they have tried their best to figure it out but are still stumped.
Note: Age plays a role in this. Students in elementary school won’t be able to find the answer on their own as easily as students in middle or high school, so they’ll need a little more assistance. However, as a parent, you should encourage them to work independently as much as possible as soon as possible to develop independent learning skills.
11. Parents: Don’t focus on motivation, focus on behavior
It will be difficult for your son or daughter to make consistent progress if they depend on these waves of motivation to complete their work.
As a result, it is your responsibility as a parent to help your child realize that they can complete their work even if they are tired or down, even if they have to go back and fix it later. It’s better to have something written down than nothing, and when students start to make some headway on an assignment, the motivation to keep working on it comes back to them.
Behaviors should take precedence over motivation to achieve this. We are all familiar with the cliché of “going through the motions,” but this is actually preferable for developing habits. Adapt your language to reflect this idea:
You don’t have to be happy to finish your work; all you have to do is try. In point of fact, when parents stop emphasizing motivation (for instance, “You need to care more about school!”), Students frequently have ample time to cultivate their own motivation to learn and succeed.
12. School isn’t everything
Additionally, their parents are not only concerned with their children’s academic success.
Because that is an easy measurement to look at and keep track of, it can be easy to focus on the marks that appear on a graded exam or on report cards. However, our children can develop and succeed in a variety of other ways, and recognizing those successes outside of school actually contributes significantly to their academic success.
The best students, contrary to popular belief, do not entirely depend on how well they do in school. Because it is only one aspect of who they are, it relieves the pressure to succeed in one area, which can frequently be devastating when they fail.
Consider it this way: If your son believes that his worth as a person is largely determined by how well he does at the end of the quarter in his biology class, then if he has a bad day and does poorly on an exam, it can have serious psychological consequences. Because it is more difficult to overcome and learn from an inevitable “loss,” placing such a high priority on academic success actually prevents him from continuing to learn.
If, on the other hand, he is aware that he is valued for his sportsmanship on the basketball court, his success in building his own gaming computer, and his capacity to make his siblings and sisters laugh at the dinner table, then the bio exam failure will be less of a blow and will be easier to overlook and attempt again.
10 habits of successful students
Your formative years as a young adult are during college. In all major areas of your life, you now have newfound independence and responsibility, which can frequently become overwhelming and stressful.
As a result, it is essential to cultivate productive routines that will enable you to keep up with everything and get the most out of the once-in-a-lifetime experience. We have compiled a list of habits that all successful students swear by in this article. We hope that these habits will assist you in making the necessary adjustments to your routine.
The majority of self-help books stress the importance of developing routines for a healthier and more organized life. College students should develop healthy habits that will benefit them throughout their lives as young adults. For a more fulfilling college experience, you’ll find twelve habits taken from successful students’ and educators’ experiences below.
Here are 10 best habits of successful students:
- Get Organized
- Don’t multitask
- Divide it up
- Sleep
- Set a schedule
- Take notes
- Study
- Manage your study space
- Find a study group
- Ask questions
1. Get Organized
You’ll always be ahead of the curve, literally, if you make a plan for what you’ll do and when you’ll do it.
2. Don’t multitask
Multitasking is physically impossible, according to studies.
3. Divide it up
To begin with, studying is not enjoyable, and putting yourself through a study marathon will only make the problem worse. Studying will be (more) enjoyable if you break up your work into manageable chunks and reward yourself for completing each one.
4. Sleep
The importance of getting eight hours of sleep each night cannot be overstated! You will have better working memory and sharper focus if you get enough sleep.
5. Set a schedule
Do you do your best work right after school or after dinner? Are half-hour bursts or 90-minute blocks more productive for you? Follow through with a schedule that works for you.
6. Take notes
Not only will taking notes help you focus on what you need to study when the time comes for the exam, but it will also keep you more engaged in the classroom. Rereading your notes is much simpler than rereading the entire textbook!
7. Study
Although it may seem obvious, did you know that there are two ways to study? Write flashcards one day and take practice tests the next to review your material several days in advance, breaking it up into manageable chunks. That is to say, don’t cram.
8. Manage your study space
Find a location where you can work at your best. Find a location away from the television and other sources of distraction. Set aside a study area where you’ll want to spend time, whether it’s your neighborhood library or just your bedroom desk.
9. Find a study group
A great way to go over difficult class material or get ready for a big test is to sit down with a group of people who are learning the same things as you. To ensure that everyone is on the same page, you can quiz each other and re-learn the material. After all, the best way to learn is to teach other people.
10. Ask questions
Don’t be afraid to learn because you’re in school to learn! A surefire method for ensuring that you truly comprehend the material is to ask for assistance, whether from a teacher, a tutor, or your friends.
Habits of successful students you can implement today
Now, as we stated at the beginning of this post: Changes in behavior that are only a few steps away can have big effects over time. Therefore, attempting to assist your child in completely changing their academic routines is doomed to failure.
Read the list above and select 1-3 changes that you can put into action this week to get the most out of the changes you could make this year.
- How will you introduce those changes to your family or child?
- What steps will you take to ensure success?
- And how will you determine whether or not they are fruitful using your criteria for success?
Give it a shot after selecting the behaviors you want to change and responding to the questions.
Hey, I am Sachin Ramdurg. I run and manage futuredecider.com website that helps students, graduates, and professionals, to find and decide on their future career with ultimate future career advices and future career guides. I have an overall 12+ years of career guidance experience in multiple domains which has helped multiple students, graduates, and professionals to find the best career path for their future.