Using your child's strengths is the best way to overcome their weaknesses.

At Top of the Class, we work together with your tutor, your child, your school and yourself to form a network of support to make sure that your child gets the best from their learning.

How does a ‘lower ability’ student become the world’s most well-known entrepreneurial billionaire?

Richard Branson, one of the world’s most successful billionaires, has Dyslexia. His poor literacy skills drove him to drop out of school at age 15. Branson believed he was no good at school, with the exception of sport. His natural talent for Cricket and Football saw him become captain of his school teams. In the process of utilizing the only strength he knew (sport) he inadvertently discovered another which later proved far more useful. His experiences captaining school sporting teams lead Branson to discover and develop his abilities to deeply understand and lead people - a strength he later attributed to being the most important factor for business success.

When potential is awakened, dreams become real..

We all know our children have more potential than they are yet to realise. Our team’s goal and passion is to support our client’s families in the expedition to discover and develop their children’s progress towards realising and exercising their full genetic potential.

Step 1: Identify existing strengths:

The first step is to explore and identify your child’s existing strengths. With your assistance, your Tutor will evaluate what your child does well at and feels confident with to establish a starting point to direct progress.

Step 2: Use existing strengths to overcome weaknesses:

Learning is like exercise. Weak muscles are only weak if they are yet to be strengthened. The best study workout is one that targets weakness by making use of strengths. We strategically utilize those strengths to stretch out whilst unearthing and solidifying new stepping stones of progress previously hidden under weeds of fear and inexperience (misinterpreted as ‘weaknesses’).

Step 3: Support progress by building strength on strength:

Whilst directing your child’s learning to stretch out and uncover new strengths, we must also build them progressively by arranging scattered stepping stones to construct a strong staircase of achievement.

Step 4: Use new confidence to drive motivation:

The higher your son or daughters progress climbs, the brighter their confidence will shine and reflect in their attitudes to academic success. When this happens, your child will have the drive and momentum we can apply to power their positive cycles with full force and autonomy in the direction of expanding, realising and functioning at their full genetic potential.

The Three Learner Types – Which One Is Your Child?

We all know that our personality characteristics affect our career path. In fact, as a Careers Advisor, this was my area of expertise. What your child’s school is unlikely to share with you however, is that your child’s aptitude affects their learning too. When we work one-on-one, we can use your child’s strengths to overcome weaknesses. In the classroom however, strengths can get stronger, but weaknesses can get weaker if they are not individually catered to. We’ve identified the three most common ‘learning aptitude’ categories among students Figuring out which of the following best fits your child will help us know how to teach them best.

Strengths: These students strength is their imagination. They may be good at coming up with unique ideas, thinking outside the box and seeing the bigger picture.


Weaknesses: Their minds are too energetic to stay confined in one spot, so they might have difficulty concentrating on one task at a time and get bored easily. Memorisation and process based activities can feel suffocating to them, especially if there is too much concentration and rigid structure involved. They are also likely to ‘switch off’ when the teacher is speaking to the class, but then ‘switch on’ again when the teacher is speaking to them individually.


Opportunities: They have strong creativity and work best when they can ‘play’ under free and flexible conditions. They probably like lateral thinking exercises, are good at seeing the bigger picture and come up with unique ideas. Give them choices, flexibility and short sustained bursts of concentration rather than long uninterrupted periods. They are likely to engage with the ‘boring stuff’ when they have someone to explain it to them one-on-one and keep them on task. Under the right conditions, these ‘dreamers’ can become amazingly successful artists, writers, performers, advertising geniuses or entrepreneurs.


Threats: Without the right teaching conditions, these kids are likely to struggle with process based thinking such as mathematics. Before they complete the process in full, they are likely to get distracted by a more interesting thought. Black and white is boring to these kids, who find more interest in the million shades of grey. They will benefit most by feeling comfortable using structure to their advantage, rather than see rules and regulations as a fence that keeps their imagination in prison.

“Imagine what these kids could do with the right ideas…”

Strengths: These students are logical, quantitative learners who work best under highly structured conditions so they can join the dots with certainty, so long as the dots ‘make sense’. They are likely to enjoy problem solving activities such as word and number games. They are also likely to see the finer detail that others overlook.


Weaknesses: Whilst these learners may appear obviously intelligent, they might also look ‘lost’ without routine and certainty, thus holding their creativity from growing. This stems from being conditioned that it has to ‘be right’ to ‘feel right’. They may also get so bogged down in the finer detail that they struggle to see the ‘bigger picture’.


Opportunities: A good tutor can gradually apply a structured approach to allow the student to gain increasing confidence with creativity and abstract thinking. They should gradually become more familiar with using their intelligence to explore new concepts, and stimulate an attitude of playful curiosity about the unknown, one step at a time. They can still approach seemingly ‘vague’ concepts so long as they have a structured formula that they can apply. If the conditions are right and they learn in the way that suits them best, these kids can grow up to be highly professional individuals such as accountants, analysts, administrators, IT experts or scientists.


Threats: If the conditions are wrong however, they may struggle with abstract reasoning and inferential thinking. You’re more likely to find them ‘lost’ outside their comfort zone when it comes to understanding vague texts or expressing themselves creatively as they feel more comfortable thinking in black and white rather than shades of grey. They are therefore likely to be held back by stress and fear of failure, as they’d rather ‘not try’ than to try and get it wrong.

“That’s right…this makes sense doesn’t it…”

Strengths: These people are so heavily connected with the physical world around them, it’s as though their hands are an extension of their mind. These kinesthetic ‘hands on’ learners have great spatial awareness, and learn best when they see what they are learning in three dimensions, and even better if they can ‘feel’ what they are learning about through physical interaction. They’re more likely to know where to find the items the Dreamers lost, and fix items the professors broke, and you’d probably prefer these kids on your sports team than either of the other two.


Weaknesses: These learners find it difficult to convert words into concepts. They may struggle to express themselves through language. Whereas others can communicate through language alone, these people might get frustrated unless they can see it and do it, as linguistic communication (such as reading, listening or verbal expression) may leave them feeling ‘dumb’. They are more likely to be male, and are likely to grow into a ‘man of few words’ who prefers action over talk.


Opportunities: These learners need to be interacting with their body to kick start their mind into gear. Give them something interactive and three dimensional (such as models and even iPads) and it will make just as much sense to them as it will to anyone else. Make it practical and relevant to real word issue they can ‘apply’ and it will make sense. Where the only communication tool is language, at least use kinaesthetic wording so they can ‘grasp’ what you mean. These learners are also likely to be more emotionally in tune than what they show, so focus on how everything ‘feels’ so they can ‘connect’ with it. If the conditions are right and they are taught using a style that suits their learning best, these kids can grow up to become brilliant engineers, inventors, architects or builders.


Threats: These kids struggle to make sense of concepts communicated the usual classroom way of reading, writing and verbal discussion. They are therefore likely to underperform in many areas of school, and form the belief that they are not smart enough, which has devastating effects on their confidence. They are likely to try understanding anything where the only way to do so involves things that are too ‘wordy’. This often holds them back from many things they are otherwise capable of. They are often also likely quick to anger when they feel ‘dumb’ or unable to express themselves properly though language.

“Is that something you feel you can grasp?”

To use an analogy; a good Teacher applies a structured constructivist learning process in a similar way that good Engineers, Architects and Builders construct a house. If the bricks of our children’s learning are not connected piece by piece it creates gaps in their knowledge. If the walls of their knowledge are not built around a constructivist learning framework, it creates weakness in their understanding. If their understanding is not supported by a solid foundation of constructivist teaching, it will crumble under the weight of assessments. When the learning process is supported by a constructivist framework however it converts nonsense into sense, disorder into order and confusion into clarity. To put it simply; constructivist teaching strategies makes hard stuff seem easy!s

QUOTES

Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.
Winston Churchill

Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
Ghandi

My attitude is that if you push me towards something that you think is a weakness, then I will turn that perceived weakness into a strength.
Michael Jordan

We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face... we must do that which we think we cannot.
Eleanor Roosevelt

HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD

Discover the 3 most important skills that young learner will need to thrive throughout the next industrial revolution. A must watch for every student, teacher and parent!

More and more people are starting to realise that the current school system is failing to prepare young graduates with the skills they really need to be successful in an ever changing world. Cheap outsourcing, automation and robotics is creating a shift in the workplace, making it more competitive than ever before. On top of that we are seeing record rates of mental illness (such as anxiety and depression) afflicting more and more young people during their schooling years. In this presentation, you will learn what the 3 most important cognitive skills which students should be learning in order to not only grow up with good mental health, but the skills they will need to be successful as the world continues to change. This presentation explains our mission to change the way the that leaders, educators and parents think about learning so as to equip our next generation with the strengths they will need to survive, to thrive and to ultimately - change the world.