Adding Atom to Your Child’s Routine

While every child is different, having a routine is key to academic success. Between school, homework, extracurricular activities and free time, children have busy lives. Creating a structured routine to consolidate learning helps children retain important subject knowledge. Plus, it lays the foundation for healthy habits later in life.

Your child's ability to process information into long-term memory increases as they age. Short but focused bursts are best for learning. Here's the amount of time child psychologists recommend for study sessions based on age:

• Age 7: 14–21 minutes

• Age 8: 16–24 minutes

• Age 9: 18–27 minutes

• Age 10: 20–30 minutes

• Age 11: 22–33 minutes

• Age 12: 24–36 minutes

When you sign up to Atom Home, you'll get a personalised weekly learning plan. This is tailored to your child's year group and, if they're applying to selective schools, the date of their exams. Each week's activities are structured in bitesize chunks to make it easy to fit into your child's day-to-day life.

We recommend spending between 90–120 minutes (up to 2 hours) on Atom each week. In our experience, the little and often approach to studying has the greatest impact on balancing progress with long-term engagement!

Your child’s weekly islands target (seen in the picture above) will support them in achieving this goal. The weekly islands target ensures that your child is spending the correct amount of time working through each subject area.

Monday and Tuesday

We suggest that your child kicks off their week on Atom by spending up to 30 minutes (age-dependent) on their weekly learning activities. This is where they should be spending most of their time as they will be learning the curriculum content.

Encourage your child to split this study session between two subjects. For example, they could spend 10–15 minutes working through their English activities, then 10–15 minutes on maths. On Tuesday, switch to verbal and non-verbal reasoning (if these subjects are on your child's Exam Prep Plan), or continue with the English and maths learning islands.

When your child is ready to get started, they should click on the relevant subject and the topic island which appears next. Here, they will have the option to learn the topic first if they would like to go through key knowledge and look at some example questions. Or, they can click 'Start questions' to begin practising. Your child will work independently through the questions and will receive immediate feedback, letting them know whether they have answered correctly or incorrectly. The difficulty level will adapt according to your child's progress to ensure they're always seeing questions at the optimal level of difficulty for them.

Wednesday

Mid-week is a great time to break out and study in a different setting.

With your Atom subscription, you'll get access to over 500 video lessons through your Lesson Library. These interactive lessons, led by Atom's subject experts, are a great way to keep your child engaged with their learning.

Ask your child how they felt about the topics they studied on Monday and Tuesday. Were there any areas they found more challenging? You can also take a look at your child's 'Track' page to see if Atom has identified any topics that need further practice.

Click on your profile icon at the top of your screen and select 'Lesson Library'. Simply filter by subject, or use the search bar, to find a lesson!

Thursday

On Thursday, take a look at your child's performance across all subjects 'Track' page. Are there any subtopics which stand out as needing further practice?

Atom makes it easy to set your child a customised practice. Simply click 'Start practice' in a chosen topic, then set a time limit and number of questions. Choose 'Tutor Mode' so the results from your child's practice are excluded from their scores and mastery levels.

When your child is ready to take the practice, navigate to your 'Learn' page. The practice will be available in their To-do List. When your child has taken the practice, scroll down to 'Recent activities' on your 'Track' page to see how they did!

Friday

On Friday, your child might want to return to the activities in their learning plan. The number of activities depends on whether your child is preparing for an entrance exam (and subjects tested) and their year group. By Friday, there may be some islands they still need to tick off!

Encourage them to work through the remaining islands independently. Remind them that the helpsheet and video are available in each question if they need a little extra help.