You sit down with your child to go over the day's work. You ask a question. He looks at the table, or the ceiling, or somewhere slightly past your left ear, and say: "I don't know."

If you have ever sat beside your child at the kitchen table and watched them work through every problem correctly; then received a test result that looked nothing like that performance, you know how confusing and frustrating this can be.

The first six weeks of a new school year are the most revealing weeks of the entire term. Not because of the grades — those come later but because of what you can see, if you know what to look for.