Sofia's History Dojo

15 minutes a day beats 2 hours on Sunday. That is the biggest secret in East Asian schooling. Little and often, every day, like guitar practice.

Open one topic. Read the cheat code out loud (use the speaker button). Say it in your own words. Then do the three tries.

Get one wrong? Brilliant, that is data. Write it in your Mistakes Book (错题本 — cuò tí běn). Chinese students keep a notebook of only the questions they got wrong, then redo them a week later. It is the single most effective study trick in Asia.

Say it back without looking. After reading a cheat code, close your eyes and say it. If you can't, read it again. That is retrieval practice, and it beats re-reading every time.

Teach it to dad. If you can explain the cheat code to him, you own it. If he looks confused, that's on him.

The game bits: stickers hatch eggs, bosses guard belts, wrong answers come back for a rematch, and Rocky will tell you when it's squish time. Nothing is timed. Nothing is lost for a wrong answer.

Dyslexia tools are at the bottom of the screen. Change the font, make the text bigger, tint the page, switch on the reading ruler, or have the page read to you. Use whatever makes your brain happiest. Nothing here is timed.

Same six habits as the maths dojo, plus three history-specific ones:

1. Dates are chanted, not listed. Chinese history classes use rhythm songs (年代歌) and picture-hooks for dates. A dyslexic memory holds rhythm and images far better than digit strings. The Black belt has the memory-palace and number-picture systems; use them from White belt onwards.
2. Every event gets sorted into causes, events, consequences. Three columns, every time, on paper. History marks are for argument, and argument needs the material pre-sorted.
3. Essay templates (PEEL, the "how far do you agree" three-parter, source NOP). The templates are in the Skills topics of each belt. They're the same at GCSE as in Year 7; she just adds detail.

What "good" looks like: White is KS2 (Britain to 1066 plus the ancient world). Yellow to Green is KS3 chronologically (1066 to the twentieth century). Blue and Black are the most-taught Edexcel/AQA GCSE units: Medicine Through Time with the Western Front, Weimar and Nazi Germany, the Cold War, Elizabethan England. If her school picks a different unit (say, Crime and Punishment or the American West), tell me and I'll add a belt.

Dyslexia notes: history is reading-heavy, so every topic here is one screen, with the story told in short lines and the names bolded. Use the read-aloud button for the story, then do the questions. Names she can't spell go in the Mistakes Book with a picture next to them.