Ask The Expert: What Goals Should I Encourage My Child To Make For The New School Year?

Time is slowly but surely moving forward and while the long summer days feel as though they might last forever, the truth is a brand new school year is right around the corner. It's important to prepare kids for the upcoming academic year before the first day of school, and Eileen Huntington, founder of Huntington Learning Center, has some advice for parents about what goals you should encourage your child to make for the new school year and how to facilitate your child achieving those goals as the year progresses.

What goals should I encourage my child to make for the upcoming school year?

When we talk about goals for students, it has to be broken down by grade level.

A kindergartner is making the transition into school, so the goal for the child for the first week or two of school is adjusting to what’s going on in the classroom, and your goal as a parent is to help your child with that adjustment. You can help with this goal by saying to your child, listen to what’s going on in the classroom. Participate.

I collected first, second, and third grade together. The first goal for the child should be to bring your homework home. Sit down and do it in a timely fashion. As for parents, you should offer support – if you’re there when the child is doing the homework and they’re stuck on something, give them support – but don’t do the homework. Also in grades one, two, and three a goal should be for the child to be organized. Is his or her backpack ready to go to school in the morning? That should not be a fire drill every morning. At night, get the backpack organized. At first the parent can help with this, but then they should transition it over to the child. By third grade the child  should know how to organize his or her backpack. Have your child be responsible for laying his or her clothes out at night. This shows them organization which will eventually build to study skills. All these things that don’t even relate to school eventually come back and they do relate to school.

Fourth grade is when a really big transition happens, and that’s when, in looking at goals, a child has to realize that they’ll be doing a lot more independent work at school. A lot more projects. This starts in third grade, but by fourth grade there are higher expectations, and your child has to be planning on a daily basis. The foundation you’ve set up is important here, because if your child has become organized and they’ve sat down and brought their homework home and you know that they’re doing it, then that all helps.

Usually by fifth grade kids start getting actual letter grades, so a goal a child can make for themselves in fifth grade is, “I got a B last year in math, how am I going to improve upon that? If that’s my goal, what do I have to do?” Your child may have to spend more time reviewing my homework, or go to the teacher for extra help. The goal should really be taking responsibility for that. As a parent, you should encourage your child to go to the teacher for extra help, rather than calling the teacher yourself and saying your child needs extra help. That step of responsibility of the child going to the teacher and saying, “I would like to review some problems in math today, do you have time after school?” is really key. A lot of schools do have time set aside after school for the teachers to offer extra help and that really is a key goal for students because that means they’re really taking responsibility for their learning, and by fifth grade you really want that responsibility being taken by the child.

If my child had a hard time at school last year, how can I make sure s/he has a fresh start to the new year and how can I make sure s/he feels comfortable in a school environment?

Back to school is a hard transition for students. Before school starts, whether your child is going into kindergarten or into tenth grade, reestablish routines. For example, bedtime. In the summer it’s more relaxed, kids schedules are not as tight, so one or two weeks before school starts, start going to bed around the bedtime. Cut a half hour off each night and gradually get it down. Bedtime is key.

Over the summer kids get rusty and they lose a lot of their academic skills. You need to prime them before they go into school. If your child hasn’t been doing any academic work over the summer, start doing some with them. Set aside some time each night for them to start doing ten minutes or twenty minutes of reading. Go over some of the math they had last year and review it. It doesn’t have to be at night; you can do it in the morning or whenever. When they get into school, the teacher will check and see how much they retained over the summer and it will determine what group they’ll be put into, so it’s important for them to get into a routine.