From A+ to Zzz: How Sleep Habits Affect School Students' Learning and Academic Performance

Before taking any test or preparing for exams, you should have proper sound sleep at night. As students, you may not have been informed of the strategies to take good care of your sleep. Thus, it’s high time to consider sleeping habits and guide your child well from A+ to Zzz.

Improper sleep affects the brain. The brain is the only organ that cannot be replaced. Thus, you should take care of your brain, irrespective of which stage of life you are in. Proper sleep is important for leading a good life.

Importance of Sleep on Academic Performance

Getting proper sleep at night will help you to stay focused, and bring improvement in concentration level. Sleep helps in restoring our immune systems. Secondary school students keep sleep at the bottom of their to-do list as their priority changes. They are more focused on improving their academic performance. This interference conflicts with the normal sleeping pattern. Secondary school students who possess bad sleeping habits are prone to obesity, diabetes, low concentration, and poor mental health.

When you have a low attention level, your academic performance will also be poor. The chances of academic failure are higher among the students who have inadequate sleep in comparison with the ones who have proper sleep.

Impact of Sleeping Habits on Learning and Academic Performance

Research studies reveal that total sleep acts as an important predictor of health and performance. According to the sleep guidelines, teenagers should have 8 to 10 hours of sleep at night. Many international baccalaureates face insufficient sleep. Academic success is measured well through GPA. College students try hard to achieve the best GPA but fail sometimes because of inadequate sleep. The less sleep a student will get at the beginning of the school term, the lower will be the GPA at the end of the term.

Interruption in the normal sleep schedule leads to a loss of content. Students sleeping less than six hours face a decline in their academic performance. Each hour of sleep that you are losing corresponds to a fall of 0.07 at the end of the term. The most surprising fact is that no matter how hard we work to fall into a complete sleep cycle, the problem persists.

Sleep deprivation indeed results in poor health and performance for both secondary students and international baccalaureate.

Healthy Sleeping Tips Before Exams

Secondary school students do not accept the fact that sleep is an important factor in achieving academic success and learning. Sleep deprivation is linked with low-grade scores. You will thus automatically turn up to be less productive and laziness will result. Sleep disorders are concerning among the current generation.

The following are some sleeping tips you should follow to establish a good sleeping habit:

Go to bed only when you start feeling sleepy
Establish well a proper relaxing bedtime routine
Maintain a consistent sleep schedule. Try to wake up at the same time be it on weekdays or weekends
Set a proper bedtime where you can get 7-8 hours of sleep
Keep exercising regularly and maintain a healthy diet
Impose limitations on caffeinated drinks
Keep your smartphones away in bed

Teachers and professors should encourage good sleeping habits at the school and college levels. The students should abide by a fixed schedule daily which will help in balancing their social and study life.

Improper sleep will lead to problems regarding decision-making, memory, and problem-solving. Entire learning process gets affected because of emotional issues and problems. The academic performance of students starts getting worse. Thus, putting sleep on top of the list should be a priority to achieve success.

Social media also influences international baccalaureates and makes them partially sleep-deprived. This leads them to go through cognitive behavioural therapy. It addresses well the thoughts and behaviours which prevent you from sleeping.

If you are facing some issues in sleeping or want to improve your sleep then go through the above-mentioned healthy sleeping habits.