Teaching Methods: How can you encourage a teen student who performs poorly on exams to study and get better grades?

I fully agree that there's no silver bullet, and every student is different. I'm neither a professional educator nor a parent. That said, here are a few general thoughts. First, see if you can figure out what the hold-up is, in a little more detail than "performs poorly on tests." Is the student dealing with test anxiety? Is he/she ahead or behind the rest of the class? (Note that being ahead of the class can lead to boredom and demotivation, as well.) Is the student having trouble seeing how this stuff relates to his/her life, now or later? After all, we adults don't sit around doing arithmetic exercises, and a lot of basic high school education, including test taking and scoring, doesn't look much like the real world. Do friends and peer pressure hold that it is not cool to do well in school? Your teen's teacher(s) may be good sources of insight as to both the nature of the trouble and, once you pin that down, may be able to suggest likely remedies. If you possibly can, involve your teen in the discussion, too. Explain your concerns and acknowledge his/her talents and ask about life goals. If by any chance vague notions of "getting rich" should come up, you will have an excellent talking point. In any case, you may have an opportunity to talk about grades in the context of higher education and later career opportunities and advancement. And try, if you can, not to blame. There's nothing anyone can do about last term's lagging grades, and if your teen is struggling, it will only make him/her angry and resentful. Good grades and good test scores are not the only thing in life, just one measure of a student (albeit one that many people see as important). If your teen is bright and "talented," in other respects he/she may have difficulty feeling motivated in the face of boredom or struggle.

The answer is indeed to motivate! Ask him/ her to answer the question "Why am I doing this exam?"  If the student has a goal (a particular career path?) s/he is more likely to study.  Get him to break his study time into small manageable tasks with specific time limits.  They should never say "I'm going upstairs to study" - they must have decided what is is they hope to learn in this session and when they will complete the task!  Every 25 minutes (max.) they need a short break!  Short, sharp hits of concentrated effort and lots of little breaks may help your child to get started.  www.studentenrichment,ie

Tell that teenager that learning can be fun by using mnemonics. With mnemonics we use all of our senses, emotions, exaggeration and transform the information in a creative, funny, yet motivating and interesting way in vivid images/clips. Once your teen master mnemonics they will be amazed on how smart they can be using this powerful tool that I blog about on http://www.learnersdelight.wordpress.com. Einstein once said "Imagination is more important than knowledge because knowledge is limited". Meaning, we human beings have a huge potential in terms of learning by using mnemonics.

Every exam has its own demands and there are always specific ways to deal with them. I would try to show the proper way to tackle those issues and at the same time try to figure out what can make him love the subjects that the student has to take exam on.

Given a choice, this is what I would do:1) At the macro-cosmic level, I would advise the teen student to take a close look at the larger scheme of things in his or her life, by urging him or her to establish compelling, inspiring and overarching long-range goals and objectives, broken down into short-term, medium-term, and long-term perspectives, and covering all the major life dimensions, with academic pursuit as the top priority, followed by a systematic game plan, to drive his or her life;2) At the micro-cosmic level, I would help him or her to learn, acquire and practise proven efficient and effective study tools, like SQ5R, Cornell Notes, Index Card Strategy, etc., to help navigate his or her academic journey with ease, expediency and ace;You may want to read these nice write-ups on SQ5R and Cornell Notes:http://www.saddleback.edu/uploads/la/rl/powerpoints/revised%20sq5r%20version2.pdf http://thestudentpower.com/tsp-blog/guide-to-effective-note-taking-sq3r-and-cornell-note-taking/http://thestudentpower.com/tsp-blog/guide-to-effective-note-taking-sq3r-and-cornell-note-taking/http://thestudentpower.com/tsp-blog/guide-to-effective-note-taking-sq3r-and-cornell-note-taking/ 3) In conjunction with (2), I would firstly help him or her to pinpoint the significance of each and every subject in the academic curriculum, so as to enhance his or her personal interest.Secondly, I would help him or her to explore the significance of each and every subject in terms of its potential contribution to his or her future employability and/or career tracking.I am actually drawing intellectual cues from Leonardo da Vinci, who had exhorted more than 500 years ago that: "everything connects to everything else". 4) You may even want to teach him or her to explore the use of the following seemingly popular and yet proven efficient and effective productivity tools:http://lifehacker.com/productivity-101-a-primer-to-the-pomodoro-technique-1598992730http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secretMeanwhile, I take this opportunity to append herewith a simple template for setting goals and achieving goals:1) First and foremost, know exactly what you want, and why, in terms of long-range goals and objectives:a) what do I want to be?b) what do I want to do?c) what do I want to have?d) what do I want to improve?e) what do I want to change?in tandem with the following major life dimensions in your life:i) academic pursuit;ii) mental development;iii) career aspirations;iv) physical health;v) financial wealth;vi) family relationships;vii) social networking;viii) recreational ventures (including hobbies, interests, sports, vacations, etc.);ix) spiritual development (including contributions to society, volunteering, etc.);2) Translate all your long-range goals and objectives in (1) into specific, prioritised and executable tasks that you need to accomplish daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and even annually;This initiative forms the basis of your systematic game plan!3) With the end in mind as formulated in (1) and (2), work out your start-point, end-point and the developmental path of transition points in between;At this juncture, you can now factor in learning agenda/study plan/side-gig project plan!4) Pinpoint specific tasks that you need to accomplish at each transition point till the endpoint;5) Establish metrics to measure your progress, or milestone accomplishments;6) Assign and allocate personal accountability, as some tasks may need to be shared, e.g. with team members, if any;7) Identify and marshal resources that are required to get all the work done;[I like to call them the 7 M's: Money; Methods; Men; Machines; Materials; Metrics; and Mojo!]8) Schedule a timetable for completion of each predefined task;9) Highlight potential problems or challenges that may crop up along the Highway of Life, as you traverse on it;10) Brainstorm a slew of possible strategies to deal with (9); This is your contingency plan.11) Institute some form of system, like a visual Pert Chart, to track, control and monitor your forward trajectory, as laid out in your systematic game plan, in conjunction with all the critical elements of (4) to (10);12) Follow-up massively and follow-through consistently your systematic game plan;13) Put in your sweat equity of intense effort and focused execution;14) Stay focused on your strategic objectives, but remain flexible in your tactical execution;Godspeed to you!

I'll assume that when you say "talented," you mean that the student is very intelligent. If the problem is that he's not taking school seriously, then it's going to be tough. I'd recommend you sit down with him and have an honest, and *judgment-free* conversation about the matter. Ask him if he knows what he wants to do when he grows up, or when he leaves high school. Try making him realize that if he continues down his path, he may not be able to achieve his goals/dreams. Make sure he knows that you'll be there to help, guide, and support him throughout the process. If you want some good study tips then you should look at other Quora questions. Here are a few: , ,   Good luck!

I've just started to teach a class that would prefer to jump, run, throw balls, laugh anything but pay attention because they've had a full day of school already. I find it fun to watch so I use this energy to give them little breaks between activities or as part of activities so they feel like they are having more fun. I quickly found out that if I make sure that every student has to participate, their attention level goes up and the other activity goes down. Student teams to answer a question via brainstorming that compete against each other really focuses everyone on the task. Some students ended up teaching other students how to find the answer. Since each student shares the few things they remembered, they all learn more. Assigning every student something to read ensures they, at least, remember what they read. By mixing up assignments I ensure students change who they sit with. Asking every student their opinion encourages high participation and interest. The students feel like their answers matter. I often mix up the activities, some reading, some role playing, some organizing of material, some Question-answer, some creative to make the class go fast. I like the team activities since students focus on the task and I can circulate through the class and give individual directions and answer any questions. Once one student asks, I often repeat the answer with each group. This encourages lots of questions. Even though I have an agenda to teach certain items, encouraging students to participate allows them to meet their own agenda. The class size is 12 or fewer and they are studying Catholic sacraments, so their need to know and understand everything is less important to me than having them make friends, understand the basics and want to be there.

There are 5 simple ways you can do this:1. Relate his studies with something that he likes to do/something that is relative to his lifestyle. Make each of his topics interesting for him, such that he doesn't take it as studies and does it like a hobby.2. Make a schedule for him and don't tell him about it, just let him know what he should be doing the next day (if he is not interested), otherwise you can let him know a plan so that he gets time to revise stuff even after he has completed studying them.3. If you've time, go through his subjects and try to make it easier (by adding diagrams/flowcharts) that will help him understand as well as grasp a topic in one go. If you don't have time to study his subject and do it for every individual topic, ask him to start studying like that.4. If he is reluctant to studying/lazy enough to complete something, give him some goal as to something that he'd get after he completes this stuff. This will make him do this stuff fast. Now after he completes doing it, check how much knowledge he has gained out of it, if he has gained a good amount of what he has been studying, give/fulfill that wish you told him you'd do for/give him.5. Don't let him distract his mind in between. Allow him to take timely breaks of 5-10 minutes, but in the meantime do not let him watch TV/pass time. Ask him to take a power-nap and then ask him to wash his face, give him a cup of coffee/tea and then ask him to start studying again. This will refresh his mind and will make him ready for the stuff he'd be studying later on.

I think you may have to find out what they actually like and what they might actually want to do for  living, and teach them what is relevant to that skill set.  If a kid can read, write, add, subtract, multiply, divide, use the internet, and learn stuff from videos and books . . . he has a lot of skills already.  The additional skills he gets can be in a specific area of expertise related to something he wants to (and it may not be book learning). I work with a lot of actors who bail out of school in high school (Robert Downey Jr. did) and they go on to do fine. They are smart, they pick up skills they need when they need to have them, and they don't have patience for having their time wasted . . . which is kind of cool in a way. I know a lot of entrepreneurs who find traditional schooling a fairly big waste of time.  They what they need to know when they need to know it based on what they are working on at any given time.