Tip of the Week

May 14, 2018

The Smartest Place to Start

End-of-semester projects and papers can feel overwhelming, especially if your child has a hard time getting started. The best place to start is with the directions. Simple, indeed. Yet most of us (students and adults alike) don’t do it as regularly as we should. Taking a few minutes to read the directions will accomplish three things:

  1. It will ensure that your child clearly understands the goal(s) of the assignment.
  2. It will help your child gain control of the assignment by understanding what’s involved. (He can’t know how long it’s going to take or how challenging it really is until he reads the directions!)
  3. It will help him identify a starting point. And if the starting point isn’t clear after reading the directions, hopefully it will raise a question or two that he can pose to his teacher the next day to help get some direction.

We all have a natural inclination to rush to the “solve” step (or the panic step) before really understanding what’s involved. For clarity and sanity sake, start with the directions.