How to Cultivate Learning Values in Students
School is a great place to learn how to learn and to make sure students are taught required lessons before they become adults in the real world. It’s not the best place to instil the value of learning
though.
This is because the focus is on what to learn and how to learn it, rather than why learn the content.
Schools are usually too busy to individualise their approach to each students’ personal reasons to develop a love of learning. Instead, parents and private tutoring sessions can help with this.
Here are a handful of suggestions parents can use in their home to help their kids learn to value learning.
If we make learning exciting, kids will be excited to do it.
1. Cool skills
A simple way to get kids excited about learning is to introduce them to interesting or rare skills. This allows the kids to go to school and tell their teachers and friends the really amazing skill they’ve
learnt.
These skills can be physical like learning to do a backflip, which they can easily show off on the school oval. They could also learn how to bake a cake and take it into school on someone’s birthday
(eg the teacher’s birthday), so that everyone can enjoy their cooking.
These types of skills are extremely beneficial and will make learning to do a new skill rewarding. The motivation to learn more skills will come quickly with all of the positive feedback.
Build something. Make something. Learn from doing.
2. Have a project
One of the hardest things to explain to kids is why they need to learn something that they’ve never needed before. Once they understand why they need something, they are usually very open to learning it. This helps develop a mentality of “perhaps, I’ll need this later”.
If you develop a project to work together on, you can then teach them a range of skills. For instance, you could do a woodwork project where they have to learn about measuring, cutting, etc. This will also teach them how lots of skills can be used to make something.
A similar project might be to go camping. Instead of going camping and teaching the skills while camping though, spend some time teaching each of the required skills beforehand. How to make a fire, how to cook on the fire, how to set up a tent in the backyard, etc.
Read. Imagine. Learn and improve creativity.
3. Reading
Reading is one of the best ways to learn to enjoy learning. Fiction books are great to help students enjoy reading and non-fiction books will teach students many things.
Over the years, I’ve heard lots of different ways that parents get their kids to read more. One of the most successful ways is to have family reading time before bed. This involves everyone switching their screens
off 1 hour before bedtime, then sitting down and reading. They can read their own books, or everyone can read together.
This has the extra benefit of helping kids get to sleep easier, due to less blue light (from screens) near to bedtime.
Watch someone achieve, and learn how to achieve like them.
4. Model characters
Another option is to help them model after their favourite characters.
For instance, if your child enjoys watching Batman, you might help them learn self-defence so they can feel like they’re moving closer to their goal of being Batman.
Similarly, if they enjoy watching Barbie, you could spend time teaching them how to have a good fashion sense, the differences in designs and colours, etc. All of this will help them move closer to being like Barbie.
Modelling is extremely helpful, and it will also teach them a valuable lesson – that they can do and be whoever they like.
Teaching is one of the best ways to learn.
5. Let them teach
Give them the chance to teach you something they know about.
Teaching is one of the best ways to learn. There are two reasons for that.
Firstly, they have to revise the content they’re teaching as they teach it. Sometimes, they may even need to revise the content, before they take the time to teach it to you.
Secondly, you’ll ask questions as they’re teaching. If they know the answers, they’ll have to recall those answers and think more about the content. If they don’t know the answers though, we can use this to encourage them to get excited about learning something new on one of their favourite topics.
A great place to start with this is their favourite hobby, cartoon, or social media influencer. This also gives you a chance to see what they’re watching and make sure it’s appropriate, which is getting harder to do as kids spend more time on the internet.
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