Happy New Year!

With school back in session this week, and given the ask for more how-to guides, I’m writing with two recipe cards. Each has simple steps your teen can follow to start building their learning skills for better grades, more confidence and greater focus.

Feel free to forward to your teen, or - if you’ve talked about helping them see how good they can feel about school with the right skills and strategies - print and put them on their desk as a belated Christmas present🤓 

#1:

#2:

An important note: many students don’t know the difference between summarizing and synthesizing (mentioned in Step 5 in the card above). The latter is a key critical thinking skill; it makes the difference between doing work vs. engaging with the material and actually learning.

The ability to synthesize improves students’ quality of learning - i.e. better comprehension —> higher grades —> more confidence —> more motivation - yet so few practice this skill in any sort of explicit or consistent way.

In order to practice this skill, they need to know what it means. Here’s a Grade 4-level explanation I quite like:

When you summarize, you’re like a detective finding the main clues in a story or a lesson. You take the most important parts—what it’s about, who’s involved, and what happened—and leave out the extra details.

• Example: If you read a book about a dog who saves the day, your summary might be: "A brave dog helps save its family during a big storm."

When you synthesize, you’re like a journalist bringing together different sources to write an article. You take ideas from different things you’ve learned, combine them, and come up with your own take or understanding.

• Example: If you read stories about a brave dog, a clever cat, and a helpful bird, you might synthesize by saying: "All these animals show that being kind and brave makes a big difference!"

The big difference?

• Summarize = pick out the main points from one thing.

• Synthesize = combine ideas from different things to create something new.

That’s it for today.

If you’re interested in providing your teen a one-stop-shop with everything they need to learn and practice these strategies (and more - like note taking, test taking, reading comprehension), check out the Student Success Accelerator 3.0. 

It’s 50% off until the end of the month, details below.

Speak soon,

Kelsey

💫 Special Offer 💫 

The Student Success Accelerator 3.0 is now open.

This program teaches students how to learn using their existing schoolwork, and includes a Parent Portal with workshops and tools just for you.

You can see all the details and sign up here.

It’s $997. For $500 off between now and January 31, use the promo code 2025LEARNHOWTOLEARN.