The friend of mine told me about a problem with her daughter. She said that it takes like forever for her daughter to finish her homework. She tries to do everything perfectly without any errors, and she spends almost all the time studying. It might seem like a good feature of a student to always be busy with studying. Hard-working and persistent students have the best grades. However, when the student spends days and nights only studying it is not good for their health, social life etc.
Studying is an important part of every student, but when you limit your life only by learning you won’t be a happy person. You need to relax sometimes, have fun with your friends, socialize, meet new people, play games and read for pleasure. Students who can’t combine those things and devote all of their time studying have slow-working issues. When your classmates do their homework within 3-4 hours and it takes 8-9 for you, it means that you need to read about the techniques that will help you learn faster. It is important for students to be at the same pace with their classmates. Imagine the situation when the teacher gives an assignment for 5 minutes and everybody is ready except for one student. That student will find themselves in an uncomfortable situation as everyone will be waiting. And the teacher has the challenge to change the pattern of the lesson in order to make it effective for all students.
A lot of parents also care about this problem as they want their child to have an interesting and diverse life. We gathered the most effective strategies developed by the teachers who had the slow-working students. Their pieces of advice can change the life of people who face this issue every day.
Define the Root of the Problem
Try to define the MAIN problem that can be the reason of the slow-working. Is this an anxiety that holds back the student? Maybe it is something caused by a learning disability which results in a dysgraphia, problem with handwriting, or in auditory issues that don’t allow the student to concentrate in a noisy class, or eyesight difficulty that creates obstacles in reading the papers or a blackboard.
If you have discovered one or more of those issues don’t worry, you can find ways to help such students. It can be voice-to-text support, the tasks that don’t require to show competence or the additional time after classes.
Show that You Understand Their Concerns
Very often when students have the problem with slow-working studying they want to make it perfect. The typical mistake of the teachers and patents is saying that perfection is not important or that the goals the student goes after are too high and there is no need to pursue them.
In this case, it is important to validate their feelings. In The Power of Validation, Karyn Hall and Melissa Cook reveals what is validation and how to apply it to our life. We need to show that we recognize the feeling and ideas our child has. The simple agreeing with the child’s feeling is not enough, it is important to demonstrate your support and understanding. You can say something like ‘You’re doing great with reaching a high-quality work’. Once you establish the connection with the student you can start helping them to deal with the problems.
Help the student to understand what holds them back
Sometimes students spend a lot of time trying to solve the task when they simply haven’t understood the question. In this case, you need to ask them to read the question again out loud. They will hate it, but that’s how they will definitely get what they should do.
Set a timer
Time limits are very motivational things for some students. They start to work very quickly and forget about slow-pacing issues. However, be careful, as some students may feel presser and anxiety once the timer is set. Test this technique to figure out what kind of student you have in your class.
Break the assignment into pieces
It happens to be hard for students to deal with the huge assignments when they have no idea where to start from. You need to show them how to break the assignment into smaller pieces and to deal with them one after another to complete the whole picture.
Combine these techniques to find the most appropriate that works for you and you forget about the students with slow-working issues.
