27 Tips On How To Do Good In School
Sep 22, 2024
YouLearn Team
As a new school year approaches, students everywhere brace for what's to come. Whether you're entering high school or starting at a new college, there's bound to be some uncertainty and maybe even a little anxiety as you think about what lies ahead. How to Be a Better Student? Will you make new friends? Will your teachers be friendly? What will your classes be like? And how will you manage all the homework? Adjusting to a new school can be challenging.
But the sooner you figure out how to do well, the better. This article will help you with tips and tricks on doing well in school so you can get back to enjoying your education and not stressing out. You'd be surprised by how many people you meet and how much easier school gets once you get good grades.
Table of Contents
Why Am I Not Doing Well In School?
A child struggles academically because of a lack of interest in the material. If students don’t engage with their studies, they will have difficulty performing well, and this lack of engagement can stem from various factors. For instance, there could be a disconnect between their interests and the subjects being taught. Alternatively, the child may not understand the importance of education or be in a demotivating learning environment.
Engaging children in the classroom environment can help their performance. However, they may find the material uninteresting or challenging to comprehend. It’s crucial to identify the areas where the child is struggling and explore ways to make learning more engaging, such as incorporating interactive activities or using multimedia resources.
Learning Style Mismatch: Finding the Right Approach to Learning
Every child has a different learning style, and if the teaching methods in the classroom do not align with their preferred style, it can impede their progress. Some children may be visual learners, while others are more auditory or kinesthetic. Identifying the child’s learning style and adapting teaching strategies can significantly enhance their understanding and performance.
Some children may have undiagnosed learning disabilities or learning differences that make it challenging for them to process and retain information. Conditions such as dyslexia, ADHD, or auditory processing disorder can significantly impact a child’s academic performance and require tailored support to address their specific needs.
Weak Foundation: The Importance of Academic Basics
A child’s academic performance may suffer if they have a weak foundation in certain subjects. For example, if they struggle with basic math concepts, it can make advanced math topics overwhelming. Assessing the child’s understanding of fundamental concepts and providing additional support or remedial classes can help them build a stronger foundation and improve their performance.
A supportive home environment is crucial to a child’s academic success. If a child lacks parental involvement, assistance with homework, or a conducive study environment at home, their performance in class may be affected.
The quality of a teacher's teaching and support can significantly impact a child’s academic performance. If students do not receive sufficient guidance, personalized attention, or encouragement from their teacher, they may struggle to grasp concepts and perform well in class.
Lack of Organization and Time Management Skills: Getting Ahead of the Game
Poor organizational skills and time management can result in missed assignments, incomplete projects, and difficulty meeting class requirements. Teaching children effective organizational strategies, such as using planners or creating schedules, can help them stay on top of their tasks and improve their overall performance.
Students who lack practical study skills or need help with time management may find it challenging to keep up with assignments, complete homework, or adequately prepare for exams. Without proper organization and planning, their performance in class may suffer.
Emotional and Physical Health Issues: The Impact of Wellbeing on Learning
Emotional and behavioral challenges can significantly impact a child’s academic performance. They may be dealing with stress, anxiety, or other personal issues that affect their ability to focus and learn. Identifying and addressing these underlying issues through counseling, support from school resources, or involving parents in the process can help create a more conducive learning environment for the child.
Undiagnosed or chronic physical health issues can significantly impact a child’s ability to concentrate, attend school regularly, and perform academically. Conditions like chronic pain, allergies, or sleep disorders can have a detrimental effect on their classroom performance.
Related Reading
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Importance of Doing Well In School
1. Learning is Good for You
Learning improves our lives. Developing our intellect is a joy that adds quality to our existence. Learning is also exciting and fun. Students who work hard in school gain knowledge and develop skills that boost confidence and self-esteem.
2. Academic Success Prepares Students for the Future
Doing well in school opens doors to future academic opportunities. For example, excelling in elementary school leads to good grades in middle and high school. This consistent academic success increases the likelihood of earning admission into selective colleges and universities.
3. Hard Work Builds Good Habits
Working hard in school helps children develop lasting habits. In my classroom, I emphasize two important sets: “habits of mind” that predispose us to think and act in specific ways and “habits of character” that focus on study habits, social skills, and attitudes about our work.
4. School Helps Kids Discover Their Passions
Working hard can help children find their passion. Many well-known individuals discovered their future careers and areas of intense interest in school. Books, videos, and other curricular material expose kids to people, music, languages, endeavors, and ideas they might not have encountered otherwise.
5. Doing Well in School Helps Build Character
Doing well in school helps people establish themselves as individuals. The classroom is one of the primary places where we determine our quality standards. Students who work hard and do well in school learn to establish high expectations and expect great things from themselves.
6. Education Enhances Career Opportunities
Education helps us get the jobs we want. It is a simple fact that people who graduate high school earn more money than those who don’t, and those who graduate college earn even more. Throughout a lifetime, this difference in earning power is significant. Making money is not the only reason to do well in school, but it is essential.
7. School Maximizes Our Options in Life
Doing well in school maximizes our options in life. Education opens doors. Not only does it help us obtain higher-paying jobs, but it enables us to access a wider variety of jobs that offer challenges, interest, and the opportunity to contribute to our communities. Education also opens doors that are unrelated to our careers. For example, a track record of school success can help us earn worthwhile volunteer opportunities.
8. Education Makes Us Better Consumers
Working hard in school empowers us to become more effective consumers. In school, we learn the arithmetic skills that help us make correct changes, balance our checkbooks, and manage a household budget. Beyond that, we also learn the higher-level thinking skills that empower us to be consumers in the larger sense - consumers of news and information who can analyze issues critically and make intelligent judgments.
9. Education Empowers Us to Make a Difference
Education empowers us to make a difference in the world. The more we know, the more we can contribute to the lives of others. Working hard in school enables us to help people through formal roles, such as doctors and nurses, and informal roles, such as tutoring a neighbor or assisting a younger sibling with reading.
10. Education Prepares Us for Civic Life
Education empowers people to participate fully in civic life. Healthy communities need involved citizens. Voting, attending city council meetings, writing letters to the editor, and taking action on critical issues are necessary to preserve and strengthen our democracy. By working hard in school, we learn our country's history and the responsibilities we all have as citizens.
15 Tips On How To Do Good In School
1. Supercharge Your Learning With YouLearn AI
YouLearn AI is your tutor. This artificial intelligence program helps students learn faster and better by transforming YouTube videos, PDFs, and slides into interactive learning experiences. YouLearn AI chats with you about the content, provides quick summaries, breaks the information into digestible chapters, and helps you grasp material more effectively. Just upload your content and get started.
2. Cultivate a Positive Mental Attitude
When grades fall below expectations, it’s easy to feel disappointed and defeated. A negative mindset can worsen academic performance, leading to a downward spiral. The first step toward improving grades is flipping this negativity on its head. Acknowledge that your grades aren’t what you want them to be, but believe you can do something about it. Start by taking mental control of the situation; instead of thinking, “I’m a failure,” think, “I can and will do better than this.” Don’t give up—take positive steps toward achieving the improvement you’re more than capable of achieving.
3. Identify Where You’re Falling Short
You need to identify the areas where you’re underperforming before you can draw up a plan of action. Take a look at your grades over the last few months and look for patterns. Has there been a general decline in academic achievement, or have your grades in certain areas always been lower than you’d hoped? Are your grades consistently low in the same places, such as one problem subject?
You’ll probably already have a vague idea of the answers to these questions, but seeing your grades written down on paper—perhaps even in graph format—can help you see things more clearly. Next, consider why you’re not achieving your full academic potential in the identified areas. Are there external factors that may negatively affect your grades, such as a family problem or worrying about a social situation at school? Are you struggling with any particular academic skills that might be dragging you down, such as essay writing or note-taking? Are you studying in a way that works for you?
These factors could affect your academic performance, so once you’ve isolated what the problem is—you may find it’s a combination of more than one of these issues—you can start tackling it. If the problems are external, you’ll need to take steps towards getting them to a point where they no longer adversely affect your studies; seeing a counselor might help, for instance. If they’re academic, read the rest of this article for suggestions on improving.
4. Consult Your Teachers
Your teachers know you best, so it’s worth talking to them when you’re drawing up a plan for improving your grades. Ask them where they think you need to improve, and they’ll probably have some advice on how to do it. Coupled with the advice in the rest of this article, this should allow you to tailor an action plan to your situation.
5. Pay Attention in Class and Ask Questions
If you’re prone to daydreaming in class, it’s time to focus on the here and now. Listen to the teacher's words rather than talking with friends or letting your mind wander. Don’t simply copy down what’s on the board without thinking about it; make sure you’ve understood it, make neat notes so that you can appreciate them when you come back to them (more on that later), and don’t be afraid to speak up if there’s something you don’t understand or want to clarify. It’s much easier to ask a teacher to explain something differently than to trawl through books to find a more precise explanation for myself, and they won’t think less of you for asking.
6. Get Organized
Clutter of any kind inhibits our ability to operate efficiently, so another way of improving our academic performance is to get organized. Keep your workspace tidy and all your notes and textbooks organized so you know where everything is. Start thinking more about your time management, as this will allow you to prioritize your time effectively, freeing time for problem subjects.
Write a daily timetable incorporating your school schedule, dividing your day into slots, and fitting in plenty of study time. Allocate extra time to subjects or topics you’ve identified as being ones you’re struggling with; it could be that the reason for your underperformance in these subjects is that you’re simply not devoting enough time to them.
7. Improve Your Note-Taking Skills
One of the reasons you may have been identified as underperforming is that you’re not taking good enough notes. Hurriedly scrawled notes from class can be challenging to make sense of when you come to revise them or even write an essay based on them. It’s all too easy to misunderstand your notes and fail to get a strong enough grasp of the topic.
Therefore, you must produce good notes from each of your classes, and the books you use—notes that you can read that are useful and logically organized. If you make notes by hand—in class, for example—try to type them up at the end of the day while they’re still fresh in your mind.
8. Improve Your Essay-Writing Skills
Another common reason for academic underperformance is that the student’s essay-writing skills aren’t sufficient for the level required to achieve top grades. This is pretty easily fixed by improving your essay-writing technique.
Good essay technique covers all aspects of essay writing, from the research phase to the final proofread, and even how you respond to the feedback you get for your essays. Reacting correctly to feedback—and not taking criticism personally—will be particularly useful if you feel you’re underperforming, as this should give you the guidance you need to improve.
9. Find Your Learning Style
If you’re academically underperforming, another possible reason could be that you haven’t found the right learning style for you. We’re all different, and each has our way of studying that yields the best results. Perhaps you just haven’t found your most effective studying style yet. If you’ve been trying to work independently, for example, you might find it easier to work with a friend or two so that you have someone else there to motivate you.
10. Improve Your Memory
Many students need help remembering all the information they need for exams, which lowers their grades. With so much to learn across many subjects, memorizing facts, figures, and arguments is a monumental task, and you need to use some effective memory aids to help you. You’ll find more tips on improving your memory in our article on memory techniques for exam preparation.
11. Stop Procrastinating
One of the reasons you’re underperforming could be spending too much time procrastinating—putting off work by distracting yourself with other things, such as social media. This is a typical response to a significant workload; when you have so much to do that you don’t know where to start, the temptation is simply not to start. The problem is that in doing so, you’re delaying the inevitable and making your task worse by eating into the time when you could be productive. If you’re guilty of procrastination—and we all are at some point or another—look at our article on five reasons we procrastinate and how to stop it.
12. Allow Plenty of Time for Revision
If you’re achieving lower scores than you’d hoped for on timed tests or mock exams, it could be because you’re not allowing enough time to revise for them. This may be because you know it’s not ‘the real thing,’ but practice exams are just as important as real ones. They show you which areas to spend more time on, and achieving good grades will boost your confidence.
Treat them as seriously as you would a real exam, allowing yourself plenty of time to revise. Better still, revise everything you learn as you go along so that you know it correctly the first time and have less need for revision. Also, be sure to read our articles on effective revision techniques for science students and humanities students.
13. Make Learning More Fun
Sometimes, students underperform because they have simply lost the motivation to learn. It’s not surprising when the pressure of exams and doing well at school takes away the enjoyment of learning. It’s easy to get so focused on achieving top grades that you forget that learning can be fun—and not only that, but it’s much easier to do well when you’re enjoying it. If studying has become a chore for you, it’s time to put the fun back into learning.
14. Hire a Private Tutor
As a last resort, if the ideas in this article haven’t worked for you, you might consider hiring a private tutor to help you improve your grades for a particularly tricky subject. Some extra tuition may be just what you need to help bring your grade up, as you’ll benefit from one-to-one tuition in an environment where you might feel more able to ask questions without the fear of speaking up in front of your peers. If you think this would help you, speak to your parents and suggest they place an advert in the local newspaper if they’re willing to cover the cost of private tuition for you. Or you can get an online AI tutor such as YouLearnAI
15. Go on a Summer School
A final option—best taken alongside the other advice in this article, rather than instead of it—is to book yourself onto an academic summer school. Taking part in summer school would allow you to learn away from the pressures of the classroom and exams, reinvigorating your love of learning and inspiring you to take a more determined approach to your studies. What’s more, summer schools are great for helping you get to grips with trickier subjects, so this could also be an excellent solution to your underperforming subjects.
12 Tips On How Can I Be Positive In School
1. Reflect on Your Thoughts
The first step to shifting your mindset is self-reflection. Reflecting on your current outlook and pinpointing any negative thought patterns will reveal the areas you may want to work on.
2. Set Positive Goals
Next, define clear and positive goals for yourself. Make sure these are tangible so you can measure your success. These can be academic or personal goals, but having clear targets will help guide your journey toward developing a positive mindset. It can be helpful to include a range of short—and long-term goals and break goals down into smaller, achievable tasks. This creates a sense of progress and ensures you don’t get lost searching for some big, far-in-the-future goal.
3. Practice Gratitude
Taking time to reflect on the positive aspects of your life will help you apply a positive mindset to your daily life situations. Consider keeping a gratitude journal and regularly writing down your gratitude. You could incorporate this practice into your morning or evening routine to build up the habit.
4. Surround Yourself with Positivity
Keeping a positive attitude when those around you constantly express negative thoughts and behaviors is challenging, so seeking positive influences is especially helpful. This could be through friends, family, a mentor, or a coach – the list goes on! This applies to both the natural world and the online world. Minimizing your exposure to negativity, regardless of its source, can substantially impact your mindset.
5. Challenge Negative Thoughts
Positive thinking doesn’t mean you’ll never have negative thoughts again; taking on a positive attitude won’t tell you that you’ll always think positively. However, challenging any negative thought patterns you catch yourself engaging in will ensure these negative thoughts don’t have the chance to impact your mood or attitude. Try to replace these negative thoughts with positive affirmations or realistic perspectives instead.
6. Develop a Growth Mindset
A growth mindset is believing you can improve your skills and abilities over time. Approaching challenges with a growth mindset allows you to embrace the opportunity to learn, grow, and develop your skill set through dedication and hard work. Apply this to your positive mindset journey. You can see that your ability to engage positively isn’t fixed, and any challenges and setbacks you experience can strengthen your positive mindset.
7. Create a Sound Support System
Having a support system is always important – we all need help sometimes! Surround yourself with supportive friends and mentors you feel able to trust. Sharing your goals and challenges with them can help your journey seem more concrete, and they might also be able to offer encouragement or advice.
8. Take Care of Your Well-Being
Although focusing on your goals is essential, you should prioritize self-care by ensuring you sleep enough, maintain a healthy diet, and exercise regularly. Remember that your physical well-being significantly impacts your mental well-being – and vice versa! – so keeping good habits in both areas is critical to staying healthy.
9. Stay Organised
It can be stressful to think about all the goals you’re striving to achieve and the tasks you need to complete. Developing strong organizational habits helps reduce this stress. Plenty of tools, including planners and calendars, are available to help you keep track of assignments and deadlines, and many of these tools are available online, with plenty of apps to help you stay organized and productive.
10. Learn from Setbacks
As with anything, you’ll likely experience some setbacks along the way. Try to view these as opportunities to learn and improve. Take some time to think about what went wrong, what adjustments you can make, and how you can move forward with a positive attitude. Learning from your setbacks is critical to developing resilience as a student.
11. Celebrate Successes
Just as you’ll experience setbacks, you’ll also experience successes! Make sure you acknowledge and celebrate these, no matter how small they seem. Positive reinforcement can help keep you motivated and emphasize your positive progress.
12. Seek Help When Needed
If you’re struggling with maintaining a positive mindset, never hesitate to seek help from teachers, counselors, or mental health professionals. Many people are happy to help, and you never have to struggle alone.
11 Habits of Successful and Good Students
1. Bright Students Don’t Cram for Exams. They Space Out Their Studying
Successful students break their studying up into smaller, more manageable chunks. They don’t try to cram all their studying into one or two sessions before a test. Research shows that this approach, known as spaced or distributed practice, is far more effective than cramming for information retention and long-term learning. So, to be a successful student, you must learn to balance your studying over time and be consistent about it.
2. Successful Students Create a Study Schedule
One thing that separates successful students is that they don’t just study when they feel like it. Instead, they create a study schedule and stick to it. They plan specific times throughout the week when they will complete their studying and treat these times like any other necessary appointment. Students who study sporadically and without a plan typically do not perform as well as those with a set study schedule.
3. Smart Students Study at the Same Time
Not only do successful students plan when they’re going to study, but they also try to create a consistent daily routine. When you study at the same time each day (or each week), you make studying a regular part of your life. This helps you to be mentally and emotionally prepared for each study session, and it allows you to make each session more productive.
4. Each Study Session Needs a Goal
Studying aimlessly or with direction is effective. Instead, you must know precisely what to accomplish during each study session. Before studying, set a specific goal for that session that supports your overall academic aims (i.e., memorize 30 vocabulary words to ace the vocabulary section on an upcoming Spanish test).
5. Successful Students Don’t Procrastinate
It’s easy to put off studying for various reasons — lack of interest in the subject, other things you need to get done first, or simply because the assignment is challenging. However, successful students DO NOT procrastinate studying. If you delay your study session, you’ll not only be less effective, but you may also not get everything you need. Procrastination also leads to rushing, the number one cause of errors.
6. Start with the Tough Stuff First
When studying, your most challenging subject or assignment will require the most effort and mental energy. So start with it first. Once you have completed the most challenging work, completing the rest of your work will be much easier. Believe it or not, starting with the most challenging work will significantly improve your study sessions' effectiveness and academic performance.
7. Review Your Notes Before You Start
Before you can review your notes, you must first have notes. Always make sure to take good notes in class. Before you start each study session and a particular assignment, review your notes thoroughly to ensure you know how to complete the assignment correctly.
8. Eliminate Distractions
When you are disturbed while studying, you (1) lose your train of thought and (2) get distracted, both of which will lead to very ineffective studying. Before you start studying, find a place you won’t be disturbed.
9. Use Study Groups Wisely
Have you ever heard the phrase "two heads are better than one"? Well, this can be especially true when it comes to studying. Working in groups enables you to (1) get help from other students when you are struggling to understand a concept, (2) complete assignments more quickly, and (3) teach others by helping both the other student and yourself to internalize the subject matter.
However, study groups can only become effective if they are structured and if group members come prepared. Practical students use study groups effectively.
10. Review Material Weekly
Successful students review what they have learned during the week over the weekend. This way, they are well prepared to continue learning new concepts at the beginning of each week, which builds upon previous coursework and knowledge acquired the last week.
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• Tips for School
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How To Do Good In School With ADHD
If you have ADHD, you might excel at certain subjects but struggle to learn the material for other classes. Studying for tests and getting through homework assignments can be particularly daunting. And while many kids procrastinate, children with ADHD often get so anxious about learning that they develop a mental block. Research shows that students with ADHD don’t need to study more; they need to study differently. For instance, they often don’t do well when cramming for tests at the last minute. Instead, if you have ADHD, it’s essential to understand how to learn and retain information in a way that works with your unique brain.
The Problem with Cramming
Cramming doesn’t work—especially when studying with ADHD. Students who have ADHD may have trouble regulating their attention when cramming. So even if they focus hard during this time, they often don’t learn much. Instead, students with ADHD must use effective study strategies well before a test and space out their studying over time.
Review Your Notes Before Bed
Studies show that you remember more when you take 10 to 15 minutes just before you go to sleep to review what you studied or learned earlier in the day. This doesn’t mean that students should do all their studying at bedtime, but examining what he has studied allows a child to process the information as he sleeps.
Exercise Sharpens Brain Focus
Thirty minutes of aerobic exercise daily, four to five days a week, improves focus and executive functioning skills, especially in students with ADHD. If you have a student-athlete, encourage him or her to study on the bus or in the car as he travels home from an event. Consider studying right after practice, too. If your child doesn’t play a sport, encourage him to run with your dog or shoot some hoops just before he sits down to do schoolwork. Although any aerobic exercise will do the job, the most helpful exercises for students with ADHD are ballet, yoga, and tai chi, all requiring students to focus on their body and mind.
Use Your Nose to Study Better
Smell is a powerful study tool. Research shows that if you are exposed to the same smell when you study and sleep, you may remember more. When your child studies, put a small dish of essential oil nearby; peppermint is a good choice because it relieves stress. Place a small dish of the same scent by her bed while she sleeps. Studies suggest her brain will associate the scent with the material she studied earlier. Researchers say this may help her retain more information she tries to remember.
Napping, Breaks, and Memory
Most people need to sleep eight to nine hours a night to retain memories, but teenagers need more. Thirty-minute afternoon naps can help. Be sure these siestas aren’t longer than 30 minutes since extended naps can interfere with sleep at night. Taking a break helps all kids learn more, especially those with ADHD. Studies show that students remember more when they take breaks between study sessions instead of studying straight through for an extended period. Having downtime enables a student’s brain to review information and material, even when he doesn’t know he’s processing it.
Sip a Sugary Drink
A drink that contains some sugar helps homework performance. Sugary drinks provide glucose, the primary fuel source to the brain. If you’re low on glucose, you won’t be able to focus or perform well. Gatorade or apple juice delivers glucose without overloading a child’s system with sugar. Sodas and other drinks with high levels of sugar (up to 10 teaspoons) provide too much glucose, which results in a sugar crash later, impairing memory and clouding thinking. So ask your child with ADD to sip (not gulp) a sugary drink. It can bring improved focus and mood.
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