With coronavirus pandemic, the education system around the globe has dynamically changed. The schools and universities have been closed to stop the spread of coronavirus, leading to online classes and forcing kids to study at home.

With the closure of schools and universities, new solutions for education can bring much-needed innovation. And, these changes have given us a glimpse at how the education system can change for the better – and the worse – in the long term.

So during school days, what happens usually that when a kid comes back from school and his mother asks what you learned and the kid tells his mother. At maximum, parents only see the marks that kids get in their assessments to gauge their understanding. No one has ever asked how did they learn. The only thing people are concerned about is what did they learn?

So now, when parents are in charge of their kids’ study; they want to make sure that they teach their children in the best possible way and make their children independent in their studies.

This situation has posed a challenge for the parents in how they teach their children at home. In this article, I will share some tips on how to make your children an independent learner and how to teach them effectively.

SQ3R Reading Strategy

SQ3R is a reading strategy that has been crafted for the students to help them improve their reading and comprehension skills. This strategy aims to store the information in the long term memory by familiarizing the reading stuff for easy understanding and illustrating the important points for active reviewing.

Francis P. Robinson, an American educational philosopher introduced this reading method in his book “Effective Study” in 1946. It is named SQ3R for the five steps that it incorporates into. These five steps are: survey, question, read, recite and review.

• Survey – Gather the Information

The S in SQ3R strategy stands for a survey or scan. Allow your kids to scan the entire text or lesson even before they start reading. The purpose of the survey is to scan for important information about the chapter or content. With this, you can tell your child to pay attention to layout, sections, pictures, chapters, headings and text in bold and italics.

This quick scanning allows for the creation of an overview and structure related to the topic. This will, in turn, serve as a foundation to put all the relevant information on it.

• Question – Help the Mind Engage and Concentrate

Now when your child is done with the scanning, ask him questions related to the text. Keeping in mind the information that the child gathered at the pre-reading stage, you can encourage him to formulate his own questions by using “Wh questions” (what, when, where, who, whom, which, whose, why and how). Questioning helps the child to build his interest in the topic and he gets curious to know the answers to his questions.

Let your kid turn headings and important points like boldface and italicized phrases into questions. Let them go through the questions that are given at the end of the chapter. This will allow your child to focus on important points related to the topic. The better the questions, the better is comprehension likely to be.

• Read – Get Familiarize with the Material

Let your kid read the chapter keeping the structure from steps 1 and 2 (Survey and Question) in the back of his mind. Let them find the answers to the questions they prepared in step 2.

You can tell them to use a highlighter to highlight the main ideas that support the concept. Encourage them to give answers in their own words. At this stage, you can rate their reading with their comprehension level. If they do not understand, then let them re-read the text again.

• Recite – Train the Mind to Absorb Information

Let your kids recite or repeat aloud in their own words what they have just read. Make sure that they can recall the answers and can explain to you about what they have read. At this point, you can ask them to make a summary of their reading. This will provide extra support to their comprehension.

The reason for doing this is to facilitate your kids to keep thinking about and comprehend what they have just recited. Their comprehension and retention will improve when they rephrase the chapter in their own words or when they rewrite the important points.

• Review – Improve the Mental Organization and Memory

Reviewing helps in improving memory and better organizing the information. Ask your kids to review each section after reading it. This should be a brief activity encompassing answering the questions. You can mark the information that is difficult for your child to recall. This will help in identifying what section needs more time to focus on.

Encourage your kids to review weekly what they have read to avoid forgetting it. The purpose of the review is to prepare them for the eventual test. Regular reviewing will eliminate the need to cram for a test.

Benefits of SQ3R Reading Method

The SQ3R reading strategy activates the knowledge and thinking about the text even before the students begin reading. With the SQ3R strategy, one can effectively review the information. Furthermore, it is the best way to optimally use reading time. Kids who study by using the SQ3R method become self-reliant and independent learners.

With the SQ3R method, children learn to first focus on the structure of the text and get the foundation on which they can place all the relevant information. This method encourages them to read actively which in turn ensures that they recall the content more skillfully.