Blog

Starting a new school year can be daunting for both parents and children. Feelings of anxiety and nervousness about what is to come ahead are all normal for a returning student. That is why it’s better to prepare before the beginning of the school year, addressing your child’s concerns and minimising their fear of the unknown. Whether your child is beginning school or starting a new grade, preparing is the best way to transition into the school year smoothly! Here are some back-to-school prep tips you can do with your child to set them up for a successful school year ahead.

Sign them up on engaging digital activities

We know that students can lose interest or are generally just distracted over the holidays. They may become less keen on learning when they aren’t in a classroom setting. One of the ways your child can gain back their love for studying and learning is to maintain engagement throughout their holidays. Sign them up for online lessons or tutoring in NZ over the summer. Personalised and engaging digital activities can help them maintain momentum during school holidays and become more participative in the school year ahead.

Set intentions for the school year ahead

Just as adults make intentions for the new year, students can do the same when they begin a new school year. Start a conversation with your child and ask them what they would like to achieve in the new school year. Whether they want to meet new friends, learn a new skill, or perform better at their subjects, setting intentions or academic goals can help them attain positive feelings about school.

Establish new routines

It’s vital to establish routines that help your child finish school work. For example, your child may have been accustomed to sleeping late throughout the holidays. Encourage a schedule that allows them to sleep earlier. This way, they can go to school with a well-rested and active mind. All these seemingly minute habits can significantly affect how they will adjust to the new school year. Establishing a daily routine and good habits will help them perform better in school and have a better year ahead.

Start early on challenging reading materials

Before the new school year starts, encourage your child to use their spare time to review challenging materials. Schedule some time when they can read up on materials before their teacher covers them in class. This way, they have more time to understand concepts in greater depth. Help them create summaries and guide notes – this is a good starting point to strengthen their knowledge. You can also enrol them in Academic Support Programs that offer remedial help, continuity, or reinforcement so that they can prepare academically for the new school year.

Ease your child back to school with digital learning

Incorporating technology into your child’s back-to-school prep is an excellent practice to help them get the support they need before starting school. Whether that’s in the form of hiring an online tutor or enrolling them in an online curriculum, it’s always a good idea to mentally prepare your kids for the new and exciting school year. With advanced learning tools, they can embrace the new school year much more positively.

At 123 Tuition, we offer personalised online tutoring services that are fully aligned with the New Zealand Curriculum. Our qualified teachers can help your child thrive in school with our online study programme and help them begin the new school year with greater confidence. Book a free assessment today.

There are a lot of tutoring services out there, and this can make it hard to find the right one for your family. While different methods of learning work well for different students, there are some things that can be helpful no matter what your child’s learning style is. These are some of the qualities you should be looking out for when deciding which tutoring service will be best for your family. To learn more about them, read on.

Focuses on Your Childs Particular Needs

A good tutoring service will understand that not every student’s learning needs are the same. Some students may learn best by asking questions, some by working through examples. If there is no initial assessment of your child’s learning time may be wasted covering topics they already understand.

When students are learning with 123 Tuition, an initial assessment will be undertaken at the beginning of each scheme of work or each School-Year, which ever comes first, so as to benchmark the students’ specific ability-level and create a personalised study plan that concentrates on the individual child’s specific requirements. Our maths and English tuition programme along with access to qualified teachers six days a week can help any family, at a fraction of the cost of a Private Tutor or conventional Tutor Centres.

Clear and straightforward lessons

Students need consistency in their learning. That’s why at 123 Tuition all of our courses are aligned with the New Zealand school curriculum, to ensure there is no confusions and no conflict with how your child is being taught in school; regardless of whether they are in Primary, Intermediate or High School. We use short, clear lessons written and presented by highly qualified teachers to teach the perfect lesson each and every time; and all available when you need or want it, not when it suits a tutor or tuition centre.

Feedback

Learning can only truly happen when a student is getting good feedback, so that they know what they are doing right, and what they need to put a little more work into. A large part of the 123 Tuition programme is focused on providing the student with a sense of empowerment and ownership over their learning. For the student to feel in control is an important factor in building confidence, and this isn’t something that all children feel in the classroom.

Many of the lessons have a practice option which provides the student and parent with the opportunity to ‘try out the lesson’ – to help build confidence in a safe space, without it affecting their mark. It can give them the feedback they need to be confident going into the lesson assessment, or alternatively shows them they need to watch the tutorial to get full understanding.

Help Where You Need It

While self-directed learning can help in preparing students for life, they will still need help from a teacher if they have any questions or concerns about what they are learning. A good tutoring service will have someone available to chat to your child when they need it, so they can straighten out any problems and get back to learning ASAP. When you choose 123 Tuition as your tuition service, we give your family access to qualified teachers, available 6 days a week, 52 weeks a year, and supported by an online interactive whiteboard.

Talk to 123 Tuition Today!

The most important quality that a tutoring service can offer is a solid system to support your child in their learning, no matter how they learn best. 123 Tuition will assess your children’s current educational ability level and review the goals you have for them, using technology to provide high quality learning tools for families, but at prices that are a fraction of the cost of Private Tutors or tuition centres, with the added convenience of being home-based. If you want to learn more about our services, get in touch here.

It is great having the kids home for the summer holidays, but we know that it can be difficult to come up with new and engaging activities to keep them from boredom every day. We have compiled a list of some awesome activities that you can do with your primary aged kids at home, keeping them entertained and educating them at the same time.

Fraction Pizzas

As part of the New Zealand school curriculum, your child will begin learning the basics of fractions in year two and building on this knowledge in the years following.

A visual aid can really help your child to grasp the concept of fractions, and a fun and interactive way to do this is with pizza! If you have the time, you can make the pizzas from scratch for extra fun, but store-bought is fine. Once the pizzas are cooked, sit down with your child and cut the pizza into slices. Explain how cutting it into two produces halves, four produces quarters, and so on. This will teach them equivalents: Two 1/8 pieces will be the same size as a 1/4 piece, for example.

Word Fishing

From the time they start school, your child will be learning how to read and write and expanding their vocabulary.

Word fishing is a fun and interactive activity that can be adapted to reflect your child’s reading and writing level. For this activity, you will need paper, paper clips, a string, a magnet, and a stick. Start by cutting the paper into fish shapes and writing a different letter on each. Attach a paperclip to the nose of each fish, and then mix them in an empty bath or paddling pool. Attach the magnet to the string, and then tie the loose end onto the stick. Your child is now ready to go fishing!

As they catch each fish, ask them to identify the letter that is written on it, and give examples of words that start with that letter. For older children, give them more challenging words to spell by catching the corresponding fish letters.

Butterfly Lifecycle

As part of the New Zealand curriculum, students begin learning about science in year 1. The different sciences are split into different strands to make them easier to teach and understand. The living world strand is about living things and how they interact with each other and the environment. Students develop an understanding of the diversity of life and life processes, of where and how life has evolved, and of evolution as the link between life processes and ecology.

New Zealand summer is the perfect time to explore these ideas with your children. If you plant a swan plant in your garden, You will likely soon find some monarch butterfly eggs on it! Over the next month, your child will be able to observe as the full lifecycle of a butterfly plays out in front of their eyes. Ask them to report on the changes that they see every day and help them to research the different stages of life.

Secret Codes

If you have older children who need something a bit more challenging, secret codes can be a very fun activity; they can even involve their friends outside of the household! Get your child to develop their own secret code by assigning each letter in the alphabet to another letter, a number, or symbol (don’t forget to write down the key so it can be decoded!) Now you can write each other secret notes! Your child can even send coded letters in the post to their friends to make things more exciting.

Keep your child learning over summer

One way that you can beat the summer boredom and keep the cogs turning is to hire a tutor for your child. 123 Tuition offers maths and English tutoring in NZ, bringing a virtual private tutor into your home seven days a week. Our tutors are real teachers who will explain each step of the learning process.

We provide personalised programmes and student learning support for all your children based on each child’s strengths and weaknesses, with courses that are fully mapped and aligned to the New Zealand Curriculum. With staff located across New Zealand, our expert course advisors are available to meet with you and your children online at a time that works for you, to fully explain the benefits of our programme.

Book a free assessment and an advisor will contact you to arrange a suitable time to demonstrate our programme for you, all online in the comfort of your home.

Summer is generally the longest period when a child is free from academic responsibility. However, dedicating just a small amount of time to summer holiday learning can have huge benefits that will help your child going into the school year. Keep reading to learn more about why you should consider some form of education for your child during the summer break.

Avoid summer learning loss

Each year, students experience a noticeable decline in the knowledge they had learned before the summer break. Their scores are lower when they return to school, which means that teachers must spend time re-teaching subjects before moving on. This is time that could have been spent learning about new topics. This dip in retention is known as “summer learning loss” or, sometimes, “summer slide”.

123 Tuition’s tutoring service can be the perfect solution to minimise summer learning loss, with straightforward lessons that can be easily slotted into your busy family life. We can provide student learning support all through summer, putting your children in the best possible position to start the new school year.

Maintain Learning Routines

One of the advantages school offers is stability and routine, and that structure is sometimes lost during the summer. Summer tutoring can help bring stability by giving kids something to focus on, work to complete and goals for their holiday.

If time management and organisation is something that your student is struggling with, summer tutoring can help to create a consistent timeline and structure for studying. Your tutor can work with you to put in place a routine for studying regularly. This will help your student avoid procrastinating and become more accustomed to studying regularly. A tutor can also help with tips to make sure good study habits stick.

Consolidate learning and fill in any gaps

The extra attention and training of summer tutoring can be just the support a student needs to understand parts of schoolwork where they have been struggling. During the academic year, there is a difficult balance to maintain between covering the entirety of the curriculum as well as revisiting and consolidating previous topics. During the summer holidays, however, tutors can find, cover, and consolidate these gaps in knowledge and continue to go over concepts that students may find more challenging.

123 Tuition offer maths and English tutors that can help to create a personalised study plan that concentrates on your child’s specific requirements.

Build Learning Confidence

Low self-esteem can lower a student’s drive to learn and make it difficult to focus on studies. During the summer, a tutor can work with a student on the concepts he or she doesn’t understand and celebrate their achievements without the added pressure of grades. Tutoring is an awesome way to help build happy, confident children. Summer tutoring does this by continuing to build up foundational skills and knowledge, and by reminding kids that they can learn almost anything they put their time and energy into.

Ready to get started with Summer Learning?

The young students in your family may benefit from keeping up their learning over the holidays.

With so many options to choose from, finding the right tutor can be confusing for many parents. 123 Tuition could be the perfect choice for your child if you want them to have a little extra help, and you want to prepare them for the challenging next stages of school. 123 Tuition offers maths and English tutoring in NZ, bringing a virtual private tutor into your home seven days a week. Our tutors are real teachers who will explain each step of the learning process. Get in touch with us today to learn more about summer holiday learning.

Exam season is here! Before they can relax for the year, students have to pass their tests to see how much they have retained from the academic year. And while exams can be nerve-wracking, there are ways you can help your child tackle them with confidence. Whether by enrolling them to an academic support program or helping them study at home, preparation can help deal with exam stress and improve their chances of success. From creating practice exams down to getting help from English and maths tutors in Auckland, we have some tips to share with you below, to help your child ace their upcoming exams! Read on to learn more.

Know the exam format ahead of time

The more you familiarise your child with the format and details of an upcoming exam, the more prepared they can be on their exam day. It helps to know the format of the exam (multiple-choice, essay, or a combination) so they know what to expect and how to prepare answers. It also helps to know what specific topics are covered by the exam and which ones were emphasised during lectures as they may appear on the test. A good way to find out this information is by reviewing past exams from previous years.

Make a study aid

Gather all the relevant notes, assignments, quizzes, and handouts and make a study aid with your child. This will help to highlight important details and refresh information from their previous notes. There are a variety of notetaking and diagramming methods your child can try to help them review notes better, including:

• Bullet points – useful for memorising important points related to the subject
• Flow charts – beneficial for learning procedures and processes
• Comparison charts – ideal for comparing similarities and differences between concepts
• Mind mapping – a technique used to summarise a chapter and help get an overview of a concept

Focus on difficult subjects

While it’s important to review all subjects, it’s also beneficial to allow extra time for more challenging topics. Prioritise subjects your child has difficulty with to help alleviate some of their stress. If your child is intimidated by a specific material, try to develop a study plan that helps improve their skills and learning ability. If you find that they need extra guidance in a particular area, hiring a tutor may aid in their learning. There are English and Math tutors who can assist students with their questions and provide effective one-on-one instruction.

Don’t neglect the easy ones

Remember to go over the easy subjects as well! Even if your child has competence in a subject, it’s still important to run over the basics to avoid losing points for careless errors.

Create a practice exam

Assist your child and help them replicate a practice exam that will enable them to answer practice questions and work under timed conditions. Create questions that are most likely to appear on their tests, or use past exams. This will help them become more comfortable with the format when they start taking actual exams. One of the few ways you can do this is to create questions from a textbook study guide, write sample essay questions, or use flashcards with questions on one side and answer on another.

Become better prepared for exam day with 123 Tuition!

Want your child to gain confidence for exam day? We can help. We offer professional virtual tutoring services that are fully aligned with the New Zealand curriculum. We offer Math and English courses to help your child, using tools tailored to their specific needs. Make learning as easy as 1, 2, 3 with 123 Tuition! Book a free assessment today to find out how we can best help you.

At the beginning of each year when students are returning to school, there is a noticeable decline in students’ knowledge of what they were learning before the summer break. Students’ scores are lower when they return to school, which means that teachers have to spend time re-teaching areas before they can move on — time which could be spent learning about new topics. This decline in learning is known as ‘summer learning loss’ or ‘summer slide.’ Keep reading to learn more about summer learning loss, and what parents can do to minimise it for their children.

Why Does Summer Learning Loss Happen?

Just like other parts of the body, the brain needs to be exercised to keep it performing at its best. If you play a sport and take a six-week break, chances are you won’t be performing at quite the same level as you were before the break. The same can be said of the brain. While it can be tempting, if a student spends all summer avoiding any academic or creative pursuits, they will see a decline in their knowledge when they return to school the following year, and substantial revision study needs to be done to get back to the required level.

How Does it Affect Students?

Studies have shown that typically, students will lose up to 2 months of learning around English based subjects, and up to 3 months of mathematic subjects over the summer holidays. This can have a detrimental impact on their academic performance at school, which can in turn affect their confidence in learning.  When students lose confidence in their abilities, they become more hesitant to take advantage of learning opportunities.

What Can be Done to Minimise it?

The good news is you won’t have to spend your summer playing teacher to your children. Preventing learning loss can take up as little as one or two, 20-to-30-minute sessions per week. When people think study, they often think of sitting at a desk reading or writing but learning over summer doesn’t have to be this way. Get creative with it! Take the whole family to the zoo and read about all the different animals, find some educational apps that your kids can play during screen time, or start a summer reading challenge with rewards. The possibilities are endless.

123 Tuition Can Help You Avoid the Summer Slide

123 Tuition’s tutoring service is the perfect solution to minimise summer learning loss, with straight forward lessons that can be easily slotted into a busy family life; just once or twice a week for 20 to 30 minutes. Adopting new technology as it has developed over more than 35 years has allowed us to provide high quality learning tools for families, but at prices that are a fraction of the cost of a private tutor or tutor centres, with the added convenience of being home-based. Our unique, cloud-based, personalised online learning system puts us at the forefront of the home-learning market for maths, English & literacy. We can provide student learning support all through summer, with access to tailored programmes and teachers when you need them, putting your children in the best possible position to start the new school year. Get in touch with us today!