The Home Stretch

A large majority of UPK- 12 schools in North America are now on a one to two-week spring recess. This is a great time to recharge the batteries and get ready for the final marking period. Report cards or status reports for the previous three periods have been sent home and it is a good time to reflect on how acceptable your child is doing.

Knowing what can be done to assist them making it through all the chaos and stress of the final weeks of the 2012/2013 school year can be a challenge. The challenge is even greater if the student is not doing well and there is a chance of failing. Here are some tips on meeting the challenge and helping your child succeed.

Talk with the schools counselors/guidance department – Use this first step to get an accurate picture of what your child’s status is and their chances for success. Also get assistance from the staff in contacting and meeting with the teachers where your child is having issues. If your school doesn’t have a guidance dept. you can go to the teacher or principle. Bottom line is to remember you are the client or customer. You have a right to time with these individuals and their support in having your child succeed.

Talk to parent of children in the same class or classes – Ask if they are also having difficulty. If there seems to be a large number of students having issues it maybe something more than your child having an issue.

Discuss the situation with your child and develop a plan of action together – If your child is involved in the planning and desired outcome they are more likely to succeed. Have them help create the consequences for failure and rewards for success.

Plan the rest of the semester – Look at the calendar and plan for the rest of the semester. Planning is a large part of success. Don’t forget to put together a plan for the individual days and when your child does homework and study

Determine if Sports or other After School activities are interfering with your child’s academics – Often times students have too many things going on and they are not getting the sleep they need. It also cuts into the time they have for homework and reading.

Be ready to support and work with your child – This is often the hardest part for parents who work and have other obligations. Some other support measures can be study groups, studying with a friend and/or getting a tutor.

Do weekly check-ins with your child and the school – Doing this will help you support your child’s difficult task of achieving success in a sort period of time. It also allows adjustment to issues and concerns that may arise during the week.

We hope you have a great break and success in the fourth period

 

Classroom Presentation Tips for Students

Oral presentations can be daunting, but they are great ways for students to gain confidence and to learn to speak in front of a group of people. Giving presentations is a valuable life skill that can help to further your career, so it’s important for you to acquire the skills you need to deliver your message with confidence. Here are some tips to help you prepare and to ensure that you get the best possible mar for your presentation.

Write It Yourself

Writing your own presentation will mean that you are being sincere and you’re more likely to remember it. Being yourself is the key to a successful presentation. Write your presentation in the same way that you talk; trying to be too professional will make you sound stiff and unnatural. Put some of your personality into your presentation too. Presentations that are peppered with personality will be warmly received.

Practice Makes Perfect

Place keywords on a series of cards to help you to remember where you are in your speech and then practice, practice, practice! If you know your presentation by heart, you will feel more confident and will sound more natural. Practice first in front of the mirror until you have the presentation memorized. Then ask friends or family members to listen to your speech so that you become accustomed to speaking in front of others. They can help with pointers that will make your presentation better. You can also make a video of yourself to see which parts of your presentation need work.

Visual Aids

It’s always a good idea to have something that helps to illustrate your points. If you are shy, visual aids will divert attention from you and this will help you to feel more comfortable. Make sure your visual aids are appropriate and not too distracting.

Take it Easy

Talk slowly, like you would if you were having a conversation. Talking too quickly makes you sound nervous and makes it difficult for people to follow you. If you have trouble speaking in front of a crowd, try focusing on someone with whom you feel comfortable talking like a teacher or a friend. If you can, make eye contact with as many people in the audience as you can – this helps to include them in your presentation.

Good Start, Great Finish

Make your introductions and conclusions pop! That way you will get people’s attention and leave a memorable impression. Summarize your most important points here so that people really understand what you are saying.

Dress for success

Dress professionally, but not in a way that distracts your audience. Being yourself is the most important part of your presentation. So relax… you’ve got this!

Remember no-one was born a natural orator or speaker. The skills and talents they have come from years of hard work, study and practice. So keep practicing and honing your skills. Break a leg!

Note: this post was adapted from a Tutor Doctor Corporate blog posted on 3/15/2013 titled ‘Classroom Presentation tips for Students‘

Spring Forward & Change

Change is an interesting phenomena for us humans. Typically we push and desire change (e.g. getting a new job, new car, increased income) and yet we dislike when change is force upon us (e.g. getting laid off, losing a car in an accident, reduced income). I don’t know of any studies that identify the general time that it occurs but students in K-12 also tend to have a change in attitude toward school about 6th grade. Then it seems that school becomes a chore and learning is not something fun to do.

For level of creativity there was a noted study in the 1960′s that showed substantial evidence that creativity was educated out of students by the Fourth grade.  The study is titled “Understanding the fourth grade slump in creative thinking” (1967) and was conducted by Dr. E. Paul Torrance at the University of Minnesota.  The work of Dr Torrance was seminal in promoting gifted education and increased creativity and problem solving skills into American education.  He is often said to be ‘the father of creativity‘ and from my connection to him through my colleague, Mary Murdock, I’d say that if he were alive today he would be working on solving the challenges ‘Race to the Top’ and ‘No Child Left Behind’ have brought to teachers and students today. He’d also be trying to find ways to bring funding back to gifted studies for students of all socioeconomic circumstances because so much talent is being wasted.

Change is inevitable. Some change we can control yet other change is out of our control. Change comes in many forms like spiritual, mental or physical changes. Change also has degrees and levels. Some change is individual like birth and death, while others are global like climate change. Some change is natural like the seasons while others are created by humans.

One induced change that is coming to most of the USA this evening is Daylight Savings Time. Remember to Spring forward! In the Autumn you then Fall back. As Bob Aldrich of the California Energy Council says in his informative web article titled ‘Daylight Saving Time: Its History and Why We Use It‘ this Spring ahead, Fall behind is “ingrained in our consciousness almost as much as the A-B-Cs or our spelling reminder of ‘i before e….’ And it’s a regular event, though perhaps a bit less regular than the swallows coming back to Capistrano. (Though that may even change with the impacts of global climate change.)  Yet in those four words is a whole collection of trivia, facts and common sense about Daylight Saving Time.”

So Happy Time Change Weekend. I know I dislike it!

Time Change Facts:

• Beginning in 2007, Daylight Saving Time is extended one month and begins for most of the United States at:
• 2 a.m. on the Second Sunday in March
  and lasts until
• 2 a.m. on the First Sunday of November.
• The new start and stop dates were set in the Energy Policy Act of 2005.
• The primary goal of time change was to conserve energy but not all studies support it
• As best we can tell Benjamin Franklin, while a minister to France, was the first to suggest the idea in an essay titled “An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light.” The essay was first published in the Journal de Paris in April 1784.

Multitaskings Impact on Study & Homework: The Myth Exposed

Image Source: http://wonderwoman.intoday.in/story/is-multitasking-good-for-us/1/92097.html

Ever checked to see if your student is doing their homework only to find them listening to music, chatting on their phone, checking their social media sites and doing their homework at the same time? Have you wondered if this is really effective?  Multitasking is generally a reality that most teens have grown up with and have seen from the media, parents and peers. However, does it mean multitasking is productive? Are that they are doing a number of tasks badly or are they actually being more efficient? The answer to this question depends largely on the individual learner and the kind of tasks they are performing.

The average student spends about seven hours a day using electronic devices and 58% say they multitask while doing homework. Studies are ongoing as to what the influence of multitasking and electronic devices will have on cognitive and social development, but there are very practical ways to measure whether multitasking has a positive or negative effect on your student’s ability to study or do their homework.

A Stanford University study found that when students switch from one task to another, it negatively affects their ability to think critically or evaluate. Multitasking students were hampered when trying to discern which information was vital and they had to reorient themselves whenever they went back to a task which actually wasted more time than multitasking saved. Other findings from researchers at Stanford include: it impairs your cognitive control, may harm the social and emotional development of tweenage girls, and a reduction in ability to filtering irrelevant information from relevant to name a few.

A Kaiser Family Foundation study found that 47% of students who spent more than 16 hours a day multitasking received lower grades (lower C’s) than students who spent less time on electronic devices. While these examples are extreme, there is evidence that the brain really isn’t very good at juggling more than one or two tasks at a time. Professor Earl Miller, an MIT neuroscientist, scanned volunteer’s brains as they multitasked and found that only one or two of the visual stimulants could activate the brain at any one given time.

This is especially true when we try to perform two tasks that use the same areas of the brain. For example if you are trying to send a tweet while writing an essay, your brain becomes overloaded and simply slows down.

Not all multitasking is bad. Some studies have shown that playing instrumental or classic music quietly in the background can actually improve concentration and higher cognitive functioning while having a number of sources of information open can help reduce the amount of time students spend on research. If multitasking of this nature is limited to two separate tasks that require different parts of the brain, then it may be successfully accomplished.

Despite a few studies that show the possible potential to learn to multitask to some degree most suggest it is a wasted effort especially when the tasks were not related. A recent study by Junco & Cotten (2012) on the effects of multitasking on academic performance found that using Facebook and text messaging while studying were negatively related to student grades, while online searching and emailing were not. This sounds reasonable since the searching and emailing was probably related to the task at hand while the texting and FB’ing were probably just social functions that distracted the subject.

Test this out for yourself! Conduct practical tests to see how your student fares when multitasking. Set out a number of similar tasks like multiple choice science questions or math problems. Get your student to do half of them while multitasking and the other half while focusing on the task at hand. Compare accuracy and time taken to establish what works best for them. My personal experience in the workplace has been that multitaskers are less productive and hinder group performance. All to often we had a group of ‘rock-star’ programers, marketers and computer software developers attending a meeting and texting and IM’ing. Needless to say the project they were hired to do failed and they wasted a load of our time and money. Now we have a rule of NO ‘multitasking’ during meetings.

I tend to agree with Psychiatrist Edward M. Hallowell who has gone so far as to describe multitasking as a “mythical activity in which people believe they can perform two or more tasks simultaneously as effectively as one.” As a parent you can help your child by limiting the number of distractions your students have and try to encourage them to concentrate on one task at a time when they are studying or doing their homework.

An article in Forbes seems to sum up the matter nicely. In the article author Douglas Merrill states

I’m often asked if this is a generational phenomenon. Specifically, “everyone knows kids are better at multitasking.”  The problem? “Everyone” is wrong. Their brains, especially the limits imposed by short term memory, are the same as those of adults. Even though your kid boasts she can watch TV and study simultaneously, don’t believe her. If nothing else, learning to concentrate is a skill that will serve her not only with geography exam but also with life.

Nova has a very nice show on multitasking that you might want to watch. Perhaps you can watch while you are doing the laundry and texting a friend?

Home for the Holidays

Image Source: http://www.ckcollegeprep.org/2010/12/09/winter-break/

It is almost upon us … Christmas break! That means trying to find things to do during the Christmas break for your children and you. In this post we’ll look at what the college student can do during the break.

While the Christmas holidays are a welcome respite from the busy school calendar for most college students. This holiday is too short to get a new job or tackle a large project, but they are long enough for you to catch up on your sleep and spend some quality time with friends and family members. Although getting some rest and relaxation is important for you to recharge, you can also use this opportunity to prepare for next semester.

Catch up on your reading during your Christmas break. Ask your teachers for reading lists and get started on reading you will struggle to find the time to do next year. Read books you are interested in so that you can still relax. Reading a couple of books during your break will really help take the pressure off you in the new year and leave you with more time to pursue other interests.

If you are working towards your college or university application, consider using this time to volunteer. There are many volunteer opportunities as people who usually volunteer are away on holiday. Consider a volunteer job in the field that you wish to study. Not only will this help with your college application, but you will also find it a hugely rewarding activity and an avenue for personal growth.

Get moving! Healthy bodies mean healthy minds and if you don’t have much time for your favourite sports, use your break to catch up on your exercise. Christmas break gives you the opportunity for skiing, snowboarding, tobogganing, skating, hiking or indoor sports. Have some fun, get a little exercise and help your body to reduce toxins and build muscle.

Get a hobby. Whether your hobby is building model airplanes, cooking or learning a new language, participating in a hobby that interests you will give you the opportunity to learn new skills and meet new people. Hobbies make you a more interesting, well-rounded individual and reduce the stress you have accrued during the school term. If you are not sure what hobbies suit you best, try the list of 101 hobbies or the world’s largest list of hobbies.

Christmas clean ups help you to sort through your closets and get your room in order. You won’t have time to get your living space organized during the school year, so take this opportunity to go through your closets and collect everything you don’t need or use. Encourage the rest of your family to join in and then donate the stuff you don’t want to a charitable organization. If you have valuable items, sell them on eBay and use the money to buy Christmas meals and gifts for those less fortunate.

Supporting Less Structured Play Time (aka Fun Unplugged)

There have been a lot of studies supporting the idea that playing is essential to healthy childhood development. The generation before mine frequently bemoans the fact that today’s kids are glued to the television rather than romping around outside playing impromptu games of tag and soccer, and this complaint is probably a fair one. However, the reason today’s kids have become dependent on technology (whether it’s a television show or a Playstation) is because their parents don’t encourage unstructured play time.

To be fair, a true unstructured play time may involve no parental intervention. However, if you’re looking for a little less Lord of the Flies and a little more kids playing catch, parental intervention is definitely necessary. So how can you support your child’s play time?

Limit the Tech
I enjoy watching some television to unwind after a long day, and I’m definitely not alone in this sentiment. The problem is that sometimes, technology can get out of control, especially as it becomes increasingly portable. To unplug your kids, then, is going to take some work. Keep all portable technology in a central location, perhaps in a basket in the living room near the television, and you will be able to monitor usage more easily. Set a limit on the amount of television that can be watched or the amount of electronic game playing that can go on.

But I’m BOOOOOORED
Just taking away the technology is probably not going to be enough. While the vast majority of families do have plenty of things available to facilitate a well-rounded play time, the biggest problem is making sure these items are accessible. If the hockey net is buried in the back of the garage under a stack of deck chairs, your kids won’t be able to access it. Make sure, then, that anything your kids might want to access is within easy kid reach, or make yourself available to help dig it out.

Get It Together
Along similar lines, it can be frustrating for kids to decide to play a game of baseball, only to find out that a glove is missing. Try to group all the supplies needed for an activity together. Big plastic bins labeled with markers can be a great tool.

Encourage Creativity
Of course, not all unstructured play has to take place outside or involve sports. Some kids really enjoy building with Legos or playing with a dollhouse. This kind of imaginative play is just as important as playing sports. Rather than buying the latest video game for your child’s next birthday, head to your local hobby and craft mart and pick out something that involves a little more hands-on creativity.

What are some other tips you have for supporting play time?

Stop…It’s Homework Time!

Back to school also means back to homework. By the end of September, students and families are really starting to get back in the swing of having classes, and teachers are starting to hand out increasing amounts of homework. While many students start the year off with the best of intentions and keep up with their homework, as the workload picks up many students start to see their motivation and organization slide. So how can you help your child stay on the straight and narrow? Here are some tips that have helped some of our students (and our kids!) keep up with homework.

Timing is Everything
Setting up dedicated homework time (even when your child claims he or she doesn’t have any) where your child sits in a designated spot in the house to work on homework makes getting work done part of the routine. Make this time mandatory for a reasonable length of time (that you decide on through discussions with your child), with the clear expectation that your child will work until the work for the next day is completed. If your child starts whining that the work is finished, work on weak areas or getting ahead on big assignments.

Priorities
Make homework a priority in your home by putting it before television, playing outside, talking on the phone, or getting on the computer for recreational purposes. Again, constant communication with your child is important. Many kids need time to unwind after the school day, so spending an additional 45 minutes doing math problems immediately after getting off the bus may not be a recipe for success for most kids. Be open to negotiations. If your child wants to watch one tv program or ride her bike to the corner and back before getting started on homework, be flexible. It’s important to get homework done, obviously, but it’s also important that your child has balance in his life and the ability to unwind.

Supplies
A lot of time doing homework can be wasted trying to find the necessary supplies. Whether it’s coloring in a bar graph or assembling a poster for a science project, your child is going to need quite a few supplies handy. Set aside a homework cupboard or drawer where your child can find everything he or she might need to cut down on frustrating time spent digging through drawers for a red crayon.

Be Available
Sometimes children struggle with homework, and they may struggle silently. By having someone available to help your child with homework, you can catch problems early on. Rather than finding out Sally Sue can’t add when she fails the unit test, you’ll find out one evening before dinner when she gets twenty-five problems wrong on her worksheet. This strategy can cut down on frustration for children, families, and teachers. Just be careful not to do your child’s homework. You’re there to help, not to take over.

What are other tips you’ve found helpful for getting homework done?

Sunday Morning Shout Out

Source: http://www.blogacademyoflearning.com/?attachment_id=1068

As the new school year continues to take hold, both parents and students alike must look at the concept of balance. While much seems to get written for parents on this issue, less seems available for students, particularly high school and college students. When it comes to looking at school work, extracurricular activities, part-time work, and having some sort of social life, how does a student find balance?  How do you still sleep? One website I visited recently brought it together well.

University Language’s site “How to Balance School and Work,” provides a good checklist for working high school and college students to keep in mind. It first discusses getting organized. Whether it is through an app or an old-school agenda, it suggests scheduling all activities, due dates, work meetings, and social events in one place. Thus, it is that much easier to schedule or no when not to schedule those things that are just extra in your life. It is that much easier to see the big picture when the big picture is right in front of you.

In a similar vein, it is important to schedule study time. Some students work out of necessity. Others work for extra spending money; while still others work mainly to boost the resume. Whatever the exact reason or reasons, it is important to schedule study time each day. It needs to be treated like an appointment that cannot be broken and for its slated purpose. Doing face book or the like is not a slated purpose!

It is also important not to overbook. Before adding anything new activities to your schedule, it is important to ask yourself if it is essential. While extracurricular activities are great, overdoing them is like overdoing anything else. Also, they fail to impress a prospective school or employer if it is at the expense of your GPA.

With working and going to school, it is important to ask for time off during key times. If you normally give your work due diligence and give your boss fair notice, asking for time off during mid-terms or finals should be very acceptable. It is better than calling in during these weeks at the last minute.

Lastly, make time for sleep. If you schedule your classes, work, extracurricular activities, and social life accordingly, there should be time for adequate shut-eye. (At least most of the time). Sleep is essential for health, true learning, and good job performance. Avoid the pitfalls of all nighters, plan ahead!

Navigating After-School Activities

Source: http://www.ihsa.org/NewsMedia/PortersCorner/tabid/537/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/86/National-High-School-Activities-Week.aspx

Most families have hectic morning schedules where it takes a small miracle to get everyone dressed, ready, fed and off to school on time. But that’s just half the battle! Having active students is a blessing, but getting them to their after-school activities can also be difficult for the busy parent. Here time management, organization and planning are essential for success. It’s also a great opportunity for parents to teachtheir students these valuable life skills. Here are some tips from the experts on how to navigate the quagmire of after-school activities.

The Family Meeting
A successful activity weeks starts with the family meeting. Make it fun by handing out treats or allowances at the end of the meeting. You can also get your students to chair the meeting because being involved will mean they participate and pay attention. Family meetings mean each member of your family stipulates their needs and is aware of other events taking place during the week. Write all the events on a family calendar which is can be seen at a glance. Put this on the back of the door or in the kitchen. Plan how and when each family member with get to their activities.
In addition to the family calendar, you can also utilize phones, computers and diaries to remind students of upcoming events and arrangements.

Ride Share
Network with other parents to minimize your transport needs. Make sure that your student knows who their lift will be on any given day. Networking with other parents can also mean that your students can have study groups with their friends when you are waiting for a sibling to complete an activity.

Plan Ahead
Activities bags must always be packed the night before so that any missing sports gear can be located and uniforms can be washed and packed. Also plan meals as hungry students are cranky students. Always keep a stash of snacks and drinks in a cooler in the car in case your student misses a meal or needs a little energy. You can also keep fun activities in the car for siblings who are along for the ride. Siblings can also utilize the time to do their homework.

Student Empowerment
As your students get older, leave more and more of the arrangements up to them. Of course you can oversee their plans and remind them of upcoming events, but making arrangements among themselves will make them feel empowered, involved and more understanding of the needs of others. When you students have made the arrangements for who gets a lift and who gets a ride with you, there may be less dissatisfaction at the outcome. It’s also important to remember that going home signals a wind-down period for most students. This makes it more difficult to get them back on the go. Avoid stopping at home after school and then going out again later.

After school activities can be a challenge, but they are well worth the effort.

(Original Post is from our Tutor Doctor headquarters blog posted 9/17/13 and titled ‘How to Successfully Navigate After-school Activities‘

Personality Flaws

One thing I’ve spent the past year learning about myself is that I don’t do well without structure. Without the regular 9-5 grind I flounder. The dishes pile up. The laundry beings to moulder in the hamper. The bill tower becomes the second-tallest building in Buffalo. I don’t brush my teeth until the mid-afternoon. I sometimes stay in my pajamas all day. Nothing gets done. Some people have said in the past that I lack discipline, and I’m the first to admit that when it comes to intrinsic motivation to get things done, I am the worst. I need an external force to structure my day.

I don’t necessarily look at this as a negative part of my personality anymore, though. I get home from my day at the office and I vacuum the entire apartment without a problem. Once in a while, I even bust out the mop. I do the dishes. I cook. I pay the bills on time. I take care of business. It’s like Newton’s first law of motion, that objects in motion tend to stay in motion. When I have something that motivates me to get out of bed in the morning, the rest of my day goes much more smoothly than it would otherwise. The motivation it takes to get me to work is the same motivation that carries me through the rest of my evening and even through the weekend. I used to think this was a bad thing. Obviously I wish I were more motivated and create my own schedule and adhere to it without problems. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to accept that there are certain facets of my personality that I have been unable to change, and so instead of wasting time and energy trying to change, I’ve learned to adapt.

What are some of your personality flaws, and how do you deal with them?