From good to great My son is a good student and regularly brings home excellent report cards, however, we have been talking recently about how we can help him move from good to great in his homework and study habits! The other night I received a phone call from my son's grade four teacher. She expressed a concern about his homework habits, mentioning that there are several assignments that she has received late, incomplete or not at all. Upon getting off the phone, my husband and I approached our son about the situation. We spoke with him quite seriously and sternly and impressed upon him the importance of learning good study habits to maintain his grades throughout his academic career. We realize that he is only in grade four, however, if he's already struggling to keep up with the demands of homework and assignments, we know he'll be floundering once he hits high school. Besides, we know that he is very intelligent and has the ability to excel in school. We decided to put our heads together to figure out a way to help him advance from good to great. The first part of our plan was to get him caught up on any outstanding assignments. We requested a list from his teacher which she readily supplied. After reviewing the list, we realized that we'd caught the problem in time. There were only two assignments that were overdue and they were nearly complete, and then two projects that would be due in a day's time. We got our son the tackle the incomplete assignments first. I explained to him that his task was to get this work done as quickly as he could and that because he was already past deadline he would have to sacrifice his preferences in favor of getting the job done. When those assignments were complete, we moved on to the two with deadlines looming. The first assignment was to collect together eight political cartoons dealing with the looming Canadian election. My husband helped him locate and print off several that fit the bill, and that our son could grasp at his grade four level. The next part of the assignment required a rundown on one of the local candidates, along with some background information. Using the Google search engine, my husband showed our son how to find this information, searching by keyword. We helped him to assemble his information and bound it into a duo-tang cover. The final assignment was to clip and collect articles from the past several weeks dealing with any aspect of the upcoming Canadian election. Thankfully, our local paper had an entire archive of all the articles. My son and I got up early and went through the articles together picking out a number that dealt with campaign promises, overviews of the various parties and the impact that various factors would have in our local area. We ended up with tons of information, and although my son ended up making a mad dash for his school bus, he had a smile on his face, knowing that his teacher would be pleased. Left to his own devices, my son would probably always get by, but with parental support and involvement we know he can reach his full potential and go from good the great in a short span of time. Being a parent with school age children can be challenging, but being able to mold them into successful adults is a worthwhile goal and makes it all worthwhile. What is more, by investing time and energy into our children we as parents too can go from good to great as well!!