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When your child enters High School, it can feel daunting trying to help them with classwork. You may feel unqualified and confused by what they’re expected to do. So how can you, as a parent, help?
1. Appreciate their work
Recognition of your child’s hard work is as important as the education they’re receiving. You can encourage them to keep working hard through reading their work, praising them whenever they put good effort into their tasks, and collaborating with their teachers and tutors.
This also extends to fostering a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed mindset. A fixed mindset views failure as a result of their lack of ability, whilst people with a growth mindset see the opportunity to expand their abilities and work harder and smarter. Hence, people with a fixed mindset who encounter struggles with English will admit that English is just not their strength, whereas one with a growth mindset will acknowledge that this is a challenge that can be overcome with effort.
This is especially true with English, as sentimentality is often tied to the writing style and creative writing children produce. When you reaffirm your child’s progress, you enable their confidence and creativity in writing, which does wonders in furthering their English!
2. Share with them your culture
Culture is an important well of ideas that can be drawn on in creative writing. High school students more often than not learn about their culture through their parents and family. For example, HSC English Advanced’s prescribed texts Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway and the Hours, Shakespeare’s King Richard, Atwood’s Hag-Seed and Keat’s Bright Star are all literature that draws deeply from their respective cultural context. Being able to connect elements of their own culture and the culture experienced by the author is key to your child’s appreciation of English!
Hence, through sharing your culture with your children, they are exposed to diverse ideas about their identity and can wield it to engage with literature. This engagement with the tradition of storytelling is key in the NSW English syllabus, and it is at home where an awareness of how storytelling works can be grown!
3. Discuss the importance of English
English permeates almost every aspect of our day to day. From newspapers to radios, language is always deliberately crafted to produce an intended meaning. Children will internalise the perspectives their parents adopt, so holding English in high value means that your child will similarly see its importance, and grow to work hard within the subject.
Overall, discussing your perspectives on communication and language will spark a passion in your child’s English journey, where they get to define how they engage and communicate, and will help them become better writers!
Want your child to both appreciate and succeed in English? Reach out to Concept - we're always happy to help!
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