Is Your Child Becoming an Independent Learner? Find Out

posted on May 12, 2021

Which parent does not want their children to succeed? You naturally enrol your child in one of the top 10 schools in Greater Noida West and expect him/her to receive top-notch guidance from an experienced faculty.

Which parent does not want their children to succeed? You naturally enrol your child in one of the top 10 schools in Greater Noida West and expect him/her to receive top-notch guidance from an experienced faculty. Even at home, you try your best to be involved in your child’s education, provide him-her with the best of resources, and supervise every day to ensure that your child sticks to his/her academic habits. But too much guidance can turn your child into a dependent learner. Without any external support or drive, your child may become prone to not learning anything at all.

Being an independent learner is crucial in the 21^st-century. The current academic demand requires students to pick up topics and research them on their own. Guidance to some extent is acceptable but students need to be independent learners first to find true academic success. To test if your child is currently an independent learner or becoming one, ask yourself the following questions. Then, carry out the necessary steps to nudge your child in the right direction.

1. Does your child need clear instructions to complete a task?

If you answered yes, your child is a dependent learner. Independent learners figure out how to complete a task. With or without instructions, they get the job done. To help your child along this path, take away the instruction set and see how he/she behaves. An independent learner should pick up cues to complete the project from the problem itself, find out ways to get help, and research on his/her own to retrieve answers. You can step in at times to aid in critical thinking or make the required resources available but an independent learner will expect nothing from you and go forward on his/her own.

2. Does your child connect academic success with grades?

Dependent learners often seek motivation or validation from external sources like grades or praises. These tell them that they have followed the instructions perfectly. Independent learners, on the other hand, are more concerned with what they learned rather than what they achieved. Sure, grades are important but they are not everything. Independent learners prioritise a wide range of assessment methods than just their exams and focus on all aspects equally. Their habit of studying through intrinsic motivation automatically brings home good grades and it also adds skills in their arsenal that are vital for their overall development.

3. Does your child complete his/her homework on his/her own?

Probably the simplest way to test your child for independent learning. If you have to provide close supervision, plan out your child’s homework schedule, and run around with him/her to ensure that the assignment is complete, your child is then definitely not becoming an independent learner. But if he/she sets his/her own goals, creates a clear to-do list, and goes by without much supervision, the student is on route to becoming an independent learner. Assignment planning in the best schools in Noida Extension 2021 is on such lines. Teachers set and evaluate homework so as to create independent learners.

4. Does your child ask a lot of good questions?

All children ask questions but you can actually test for independent learning by understanding the motive behind asking them. Are the questions directed to understand every step of a given problem? Or, are the questions going to help your child learn something beyond the scope of the problem? Students learn things they do not understand by asking questions and if they know how to complete an assignment or problem, they will ask some unrelated question. The key here is to enable students to ask meaningful and thoughtful questions and independent learners do that naturally. And more often than not, they will seek the answer themselves, using their parents and teachers as mere mentors or facilitators.

As obvious, the top schools near Noida Extension look to create independent learners. And the habit stays on as students continue to learn by themselves well into their adulthood which is now seen as a valuable skill. BGS Vijnatham School’s curriculum and pedagogy are designed to enable students to become masters of their own learning. They have the freedom to experiment, think out of the box, and learn from varying sources that are way beyond their textbooks. Preschool students may not be independent learners but as they advance through their grades, all students must learn some portion of their academics on their own. BGSVS tries to maximise that extent and imparts education through encouragement and motivation. If your child studies in BGSVS, be sure that he/she is (or will become) an independent learner.