End to End Practice based learning

The most common excuse among students after a test is “I knew the concept/formula, butforgotit during the exam”? Why does this happen so often? Is there something wrong with the wayweperceive tests and exams?

In India, most of us believe that “concepts are not taught properly in schools, hence,studentshave very poor conceptual clarity”. To overcome this lack, we expose our kids to videos,animations and multimedia tools that explain concepts and theories.

However, we mistake ‘clarity of concepts’ for ‘application of concepts’. A student mighthaveclarity about the concept, but lack of practice might lead to the poor application ofconceptsduring a test.

Therefore, we often come across students confirming they have finished studying the chaptersbut end up performing poorly, during a test. This scenario occurs primarily because of thelackof practice.

Hence, the main problem that needs to be addressed is the lack of practice.

75-80% of the students don’t like studying the topics again and again. To do away withreiterating the same ole’ boring topics, they end up with reading the concept withoutpractising it. The praxis doesn’t take place because kids feel that-

• Practicing questions is time-consuming.
• Practicing questions repeatedly is boring.

There are many limitations to the pedagogical method followed in schools like -

• The core belief that kids do not understand concepts (and once they understand concepts, everything will be fine).
• An unscientific way of judging topic specific weakness
• Kids are prone to make silly mistakes.
• Kids grow apprehensive of tests instead of perceiving them as a tool to help them gainacompetitive edge against their peers.

• Repeated practice of concepts by the child.
• Make learning fun.
• Make testing challenging, yet entertaining.
• Improve the test-taking temperament of the child.

• Short duration Tests that are just 1 minute long.
• By focusing only on the core concepts it’s easier for kids to deal with the pressure to study everything before they give a test as they become well-versed through constant revision.
• Friendly challenges.
• Motivation through endorsements/leaderboards.
• Benchmarking your kid’s performance against those from kids his age, from all of India.
• Reports that track the shortcomings and weak areas by studying a child’s performance intests to help gouge the areas that need improvement, and make them his/her strength throughconstant tests and practice.