Help Your Child


Help Your Child to Become a Successful Learner

Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency (QCDA) describe successful learners as:

  • having the essential learning skills of literacy, numeracy and information and communication technology.

  • creative, resourceful and able to identify and solve problems.


  • having enquiring minds and think for themselves to process information, eason, question and evaluate.


  • being able to communicate well in a range of ways.


  • being able to understand how they learn and learn from their mistakes.


  • being able to learn independently and with others.


  • knowing about big ideas and events that shape our world.


  • enjoying learning and are motivated to achieve the best they can now and in the future.

Research (DCFS, Research Report RR433, 2003) shows that having an interest and being involved in your child’s learning has a greater impact than anything else in helping your child achieve their full potential. By working in partnership with the college you can help your child become a successful learner.

Methods to help your child

  1. Focus on the value of learning. Take some time each day to ask what your child learned in school. Don’t focus just on lessons but also ask how your child gets along with other students and how he or she feels about school. Talk about what you yourself may have learned in the course of a day.

  2. Focus on creating a positive learning environment at home. Encourage your child to design their own working area for homework. Decide with your child about rules for dealing with interruptions such as phone calls or visitors.

  3. Set up a school bulletin board at home. Display the school calendar and other flyers from the school. Decide as a family which school events you will attend. Help your child get involved in interesting and worthwhile school activities.

  4. Listen when your child talks about school. Pay attention to what your child says about school.

  5. Help your child with homework. Don’t ever do homework for your child. But do help. Assist your child in setting priorities for schoolwork. For example, you can encourage your child to tackle the difficult assignments first while he or she has the most energy.

  6. Focus on strengths. When your child brings home a test, talk first about what he or she did well. Then talk about what can be improved.

  7. Give children choices. When children have a chance to make choices, they learn how to solve problems.

  8. Ask questions that help children solve problems on their own. When parents hear their child has a problem, it’s tempting to step in and take over. But this can harm a child’s ability to find solutions on his or her own. A helpful approach is to ask good questions. Examples include, “What do you think you can do in this situation?” and “If you choose a particular solution, what will be the consequences of that choice?”

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Manor College of Technolocy