Posts Tagged ‘parents’
4 Activities to Improve Reading Skills (Part 4 – Writing)
August 9th, 2010Improve Reading Skills Part 4 - Writing
As a parent you have a large responsibility. You need to not only care for your child, you also need to watch over their education and be sure they learn with ease. Reading, writing, and spelling can be difficult for many kids. But as a parent, you do have the power and ability to help your kids improve reading, writing, and spelling skills. Now what I mean here is that you as a parent can help your child improve reading skills whether they have an identified learning disability, dyslexia, ADHD, are falling through the cracks or are gifted.4 Easy to Implement Activities to Improve Reading Skills
Their are 4 easy to implement activities that each take just a few minutes a day to improve reading. 1. Improve reading fluency in 5 minutes a day 2. Improve spelling and learn the 8 ways we put letters together to make words 3. Improve reading comprehension by playing a reading comprehension game 4. Improve writing skills using specially designed graphic organizers I've already talked about how you can help your child improve their reading fluency in just minutes a day. I've already talked about how you can help your child improve their spelling skills in just minutes a day. And, I've talked about how you can help your child improve their reading comprehension by playing a game with them. so, today I’m going to talk about the fourth activity which is helping your children improve their reading – and that is by helping them with their writing skills.The 4th Activity to Improve Reading Skills
The fourth activity to help your kids improve reading skills is to help your kids learn how to take notes with the graphic organizers found in Ten Minutes to Better Study Skills. These fill-in-the-blank graphic organizers make note-taking, paragraph writing, and essay writing easy. As a parent, I hated watching my son struggle with a writing assignment. I’m sure you feel the same way. One of the best things I found to do to make this note-taking and paragraph writing or even essay writing easier was to create graphic organizers that were easy for him to fill in. Then he wasn’t staring at a blank sheet of paper anymore. It was so much easier for him to fill in the blanks and within about 10 minutes he’d have his notes done. His life became easier and my life became easier too. We didn’t have the ‘homework wars’ going on anymore. You know, I’ve had students bring me their notes over the years that they had done in class when they needed help writing their paper from them. The sad thing was, they couldn’t make heads or tails out of their notes even though they used a ‘webbing’ system when they did them. The notes were just too hard for them to follow. That is why I created the graphic organizers the way I did, so students whether they had perception problems or not would be able to utilize the notes they took. It isn’t enough to take the notes. You need to be able to utilize them after you’ve taken them. Donna Walker Tileston, author of What Every Teacher Should Know About the Brain states, “Approximately 87% of learners either need to see the learning or do something with it. Using visuals with the learning will help students take in the information more efficiently, but even more important, it helps them to develop their own methods for organizing content.” Using pictographs, charts and graphs, graphic organizers, and note-taking models is the way to do this. So, give the graphic organizers from Ten Minutes to Better Study Skills a try. I created them in such a way that once he filled them out he’d actually be able to use them for study guides or for help in turning notes into paragraphs or rough drafts into final copies.4 Activities to Improve Reading Skills (Part 3 – Reading Comprehension)
August 6th, 20104 Activities to Improve Reading Skills
(Part 3 - Reading Comprehension)
As a parent you do have the power and ability to help your kids improve their reading skills. Now what I mean here is that you as a parent can help your child whether they have an identified learning disability, dyslexia, ADHD, or are gifted. There are 4 easy to implement activities that each take just a few minutes a day to improve reading.- Improve reading fluency in 5 minutes a day
- Improve spelling and learn the 8 ways we put letters together to make words
- Improve reading comprehension by playing a reading comprehension game
- Improve writing skills using specially designed graphic organizers
Improve Reading Skills Activities
The first activity you can do to help your child improve reading skills just takes 5 minutes a day - reading fluency. The second activity which is helping your children improve reading skills is by helping your children improve their spelling skills (about 12 minutes). The third activity is to play games with your children. The key here is to play games that are specifically designed to improve reading comprehension. So, the third activity is playing a reading comprehension game. That’s right, game playing! Playing The Comprehension Zone, a reading comprehension game, teaches your kids how to read for the main idea and details or sequence what they read does the trick. So many children struggle with reading comprehension, specifically finding the main idea of what they are reading or finding details that support the main idea or for sequential order. This can be daunting for some students, and not just those students with LD, dyslexia, or ADHD. You don't have to have a learning disability to have difficulty with reading comprehension! Even gifted children sometimes struggle with reading comprehension. Think about how difficult note-taking is when you don’t have a clue about the main idea of what you read. Typically you either stare at blank sheets of paper or you copy everything down, not knowing how to pick out the important information.Play Reading Game to Improve Reading Skills
To be able to play a game and learn, practice, and reinforce the skill of pulling out the main idea and the details or putting information into sequential order at the same time is quite something. Additionally, this reading game can be played for both reading comprehension or listening comprehension. One of the beauties of playing games that improve reading skills, teach, and reinforce skills is that you are in a relaxed state when you are playing. Leaning is retained more efficiently when your body is not in a tense fight or flight state. Using games to learn skills is a way to learn in a non-threatening way. Games even help and encourage learners to stay interested and they often work happier and longer without even realizing it. Lee Su Kim states: 'There is a common perception that all learning should be serious and solemn in nature, and that if one is having fun and there is hilarity and laughter, then it is not really learning. This is a misconception. It is possible to learn a language as well as enjoy oneself at the same time. One of the best ways of doing this is through games.' 'There are many advantages of using games to improve reading skills in the classroom: 1. Games are a welcome break from the usual routine of the language class. 2. They are motivating and challenging. 3. Learning a language requires a great deal of effort. Games help students to make and sustain the effort of learning. 4. Games provide language practice in the various skills- speaking, writing, listening and reading. 5. They encourage students to interact and communicate. 6. They create a meaningful context for language use.' Creative Games for the Language Class 'Forum' Vol. 33 No 1, January - March 1995, Page 35 So, be sure to include games like The Comprehension Zone in your family’s activities. Your children will benefit from them. And, you will be spending quality time with your children and be helping them improve their reading comprehension skills at the same time.Mid Summer Training – What You Can Do to Prepare Your Kids for School
July 9th, 2010
Mid Summer Training – What You Can Do to Prepare Your Kids for School
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Mid-Summer Training Call
I have had so many calls from parents recently, wondering how to help their child between now and when school starts back up. They realize it’s not too late to give their child a boost, but they also want to be sure they have an enjoyable rest of the summer. So, I decided to have a teleseminar where I will present information on summer activities to help your child's skills improve as well as activities rich in experiences and family time.
I'm hosting a FREE Live Teleseminar on Wednesday July 14th at 8 pm Eastern, 7 pm Central, 6 pm Mountain, and 5 pm Pacific. Upon registering you will receive a FREE Handbook on the 5 things you can do to help your child over the summer. Those that attend live will receive a surprise FREE gift.
Searching for Mid-Summer Activities to Improve Your Child's Skills and Still Have Fun?
FREE Live Teleseminar on Wednesday June 2nd at at 8 pm EST, 7 pm CST, 6 pm MST, and 5 pm PST.
Space is limited. You can attend via phone or via internet!
Reserve your Teleseminar line now at:
Title: Mid-Summer Activities to Improve Your Child’s Skills and Still Have Fun
Time: Wednesday, July 14th at 5:00pm Pacific
Listening method: Phone + Web Simulcast
To attend, visit:
Mid-Summer Training Call
LD Specialist and Board Certified Educational Therapist Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., is answering your questions about summer activities to help your child improve their skills. The teleseminar will be recorded; if you can't attend, you'll be able to listen later. Plus special surprise bonus just for registering! Those that attend live will receive another surprise FREE gift.
Mid-Summer Training Call
6 Must-do Learning Games & Activities For the Summer
June 3rd, 2010
Can you do your own summer learning program?
Should you do your own summer learning program?
Fact: More than half of the achievement gap present in 9th grade between lower- and higher-income children can be explained by summer learning loss.
Make Learning Stick with learning games and reading fluency training over the summer. There are many things you can do at home to bridge that summer learning gap.
- Reading Fluency using Five Minutes to Better Reading Skills…and Yes…it only takes 5 minutes to do. Sally Shawitz, author of Overcoming Dyslexia states, "I urge parents to make fluency training their number one priority."
- Take a weekly trip …to the zoo, a local park, the pool, the river, a local factory…and afterwards as a family write down what you did and what your favorite part was…using the fill-in-the-blank forms from Ten Minutes to Better Study Skills and create a booklet to keep for all of your weekly trips.
- Do some nature activities such as listening to outdoor sounds, nature rubbings, shape hike, incher hikes … again use the fill-in-the-blank forms from Ten Minutes to Better Study Skills to describe what you found or did.
- Activities to do at home like making puppets and putting on a puppet show. Bake cookies together, have a backwards day where you eat dinner in the morning and breakfast in the evening, do add-on-stories. Again write down your favorite things or worse things about the activity.
- Have a Game Night or a Game Day…choose learning games…they are fun as well as work on skills. Some great ones are The Sentence Zone (play & learn sentence building and grammar while having fun) , The Comprehension Zone (play & learn reading comprehension and listening comprehension), or the Math Zone (play & math calculation practice).
- Read books together…and write a review or report on it, or have a review night where you all act as book reviewers of the book you read.
A Parent's ABC's of ADHD
December 29th, 2009
I just read this by Lindsey Petersen of 5kidswdisabilities and thought you would all appreciate it. It rings true for so many parents, not just those of ADHD kids.
Hope you enjoy...
The ABCs of ADHD
December 27, 2009 by 5kidswdisabilities
The ABCs of ADHD/ADD
I’ve read the articles and books on ADHD. I know the discipline methods, rewards and time outs, the methods of Ross Green (from The Explosive Child) and the medications that work best. But I also know the realities of ADHD, having 2 children with ADHD and 2 with ADD. In real life terms, the ABCs of ADHD/ADD are:
Attention! Always on alert for dangerous situations due to impulsive behaviors, such as running across streets without looking, grabbing a butcher knife to cut the end off a banana, running up the down escalator, and grabbing the dog or any other animal roughly and the dog (or other animal) retaliating by biting (or scratching.)
“Be careful! Be careful! Be careful” is the parent mantra.
Climbing climbing climbing: out of the crib at age 15 months, out of the bedroom window when a teenager, on rock walls and curbstones and couches.
Don’t touch that! Don’t do that! Don’t hit her! Don’t pull that! Don’t eat that! Don’t hurt it! Don’t break it!
Exhausted parents trying their best to keep up.
Friendships are difficult.
Go! Go! Go! They’re always on the go!
Helpless parents, unable to control their child’s behavior, especially embarrassing in the grocery store under the staring eyes of others, judging them.
If only he’d… If only she’d…. Parents dream for a different lifestyle.
Jumping Bean: he goes here and there from friend to friend to friend, never staying long enough to establish a real friendship.
Kitchen walls are written on, bathroom doors have holes kicked in, curtains are ripped, bedrooms are messy.
LOVE. Parents give unconditional love, but the behavior doesn’t change because the ADHD remains…
MEDICATION! MEDICATION! MEDICATION! Alleluia when it works!!!!
Not paying attention in school so schoolwork suffers: not paying attention for homework, so it’s a nightly fight: not paying attention to other’s feelings, so no friendships are formed.
Overload happens easily and tantrums result. Keep it quiet. Keep it simple. Keep it under stimulated for peace.
Psychiatrists are our best friends!
Questions! Questions from them all the time! Especially hard to escape when you are stuck riding in the car together.
Rewards for good behaviors; stickers, ice cream, Playstation, tv.
Self-esteem is low, parent and teacher patience is limited so he’s always the troublemaker and never measures up.
Time-outs in the seat till we’re blue in the face. All the time spent in time-outs would add up to a year in the life.
Understanding is needed from parents, family, friends and teachers; understanding is often in short supply.
Very draining on all, child and adults.
Whining, whining, whining until their parent’s ears hurt.
X-rays, CAT Scans and emergency room visits: active behavior results in injuries.
YIKES! What has he done NOW?!?!
Zest for life would be a polite way of putting it…
|......................
Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET
Math Game Brings Up Skills
July 17th, 2009
A great game to play during summer vacation to keep up you math skills is the Math Zone. Kids happily do more math with the game than if you give them a workbook to work in. I played The Math Zone with one of my students just the other day and we shot a video of it so you'd know what it is like.
Here is what Heather Jackowitz, Staff Writer, The Old Schoolhouse Magazine had to say about it.
"I really love games that reinforce my children's lessons. I checked out a math game from Bonnie Terry Learning, The Math Zone. In The Math Zone, the object is to make the most points within a set amount of turns. There are three decks of cards: an operations deck (add, subtract, multiply, or divide), a deck of low numbers for younger children, and a deck of higher numbers for older children. Number cards have two numbers on them. Players choose an operation card and a number card and perform the given task. The answer for each operation is given on the back of the number cards, and players check their own work after calculating the answer. If the answer is correct, the player scores that amount of points. If the answer is incorrect, no points are scored. Bonus operation cards mean you double your total, and Sorry operation cards mean you half your answer. About the hardest problem to solve in the low number deck would be 35 x 7. Children would also need to know their basic division facts, and how to add and subtract with regrouping. In the higher number deck, children would need to be able to add, subtract, multiply, and divide numbers like 2457 and 63. I played the game with my third grader, and she beat me a couple of times, because she kept drawing multiplication cards, and I kept getting subtraction! I also noticed that she checked her work more thoroughly than she does with her math lessons! This would be a great game for keeping up skills during summer vacation or whenever you take a break from regular math lessons."
-- Product Review by: Heather Jackowitz, Staff Writer, The Old Schoolhouse Magazine
Get The Math Zone here. Hope this is helpful. Have fun playing games!
Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET
3 Summertime Activities to Keep Boredom at Bay
June 19th, 2009
Now that it's summer...here's a few puppet making activities you might want to have your kids do to get their creative juices flowing.
1. Make paper-bag puppets & put on a puppet show
Make them characters from your favorite nursery rhyme or book
Use lunch-size bags, crayons, markers, buttons, yarn, & glue
2. Make grocery sack ‘puppet’ heads you can wear & put on a play or a
skit with them - cut holes for eyes & slits for arm holes.
e.g.: You can make a cute ladybug costume from a large paper grocery bag.
You can also make antennae by wrapping two pipe cleaners onto a plastic headband.
Supplies needed:
* 1 large paper grocery bag
* Scissors
* Red tempera paint
* Black marker or black tempera paint A. Cut a large paper grocery bag open along the seam (this will be the back of the costume). Then cut a neck hole in what was the bottom of the bag. B. Cut an arm hole on each side of the bag. C. Paint a large red circle (using red tempera paint) on the front on the bag. Let the paint dry. D. Draw or paint a black line down the center of the circle and draw black spots on both sides. E. To make cute antennae, wrap two pipe cleaners on a plastic headband. Make loops at the top. 3. Make sock puppets, use old socks, felt pieces for tongue, buttons for eyes, cut the plastic rings that hold soda cans together for ‘glasses’, cotton balls, etc. Put together a skit or play with several puppets. Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCETTips for improving sentence writing and grammar
May 29th, 2009
When I am working with a student who needs help learning how to write a sentence, to improve his sentence writing or to improve his grammar the first thing I do is pull out my Sentence Zone game. This is because it is a hands on game with color-coded cards. Their retention of what I'm teaching will automatically be 25% better. (Brain research by Laura Erlauer states color enhances memory retention by 25%.)
Remember, I work with students from 1st grade through adults. Some have been identified with dyslexia, or a learning disability. Some of my students are falling through the cracks. Some are even gifted. Even my wiggly ADHD students do well with it since it's hand-on. But, it doesn't matter. When I can improve a student's retention with using a color coded game I'm going to do it.
I like to have my students sort out the cards so they start to get a feel for the types of words that are in each category. For instance, they might not realize that the word about is an adverb. When they initially sort out the word cards by color, they get an idea of what types of words are in each part of speech.
Then I have them look at the cover of the box so they see how to set up the game and that the game strip is just there so they will have an easy reference point for placing the cards. It is NOT a game board, it is not used for making sentences. It is just used as a reference for placing the cards. They know they will be making their sentence in front of themselves while I make mine in front of me.
I use this game with students from 1st grade on up - even high school students and adults. With my advanced students (any age) we do more sophisticated sentences and grammar work. But, back to the basics…
My younger students soon realize they need to have a gray card (capital letter), a blue card (noun), a red card (verb), and a buff card (punctuation) in order to have a sentence.
They learn they can add adjectives, adverbs, or prepositional phrases to their base sentence to make it more interesting, but they need to only have one subject and one verb for the first round of the game.
For example, the following are all legal 1st round sentences.
The dog barks. The dog barks loudly. The dog barks loudly at the park.
When a student makes a 3-word sentence I often start asking questions to encourage them to make more interesting sentences. This helps them to see how to improve and expand their sentence.
Example with prompts:
The dog barks.
(What kind of dog is he? Let's use these adjective cards to find out. How does he bark? Let's use an adverb to tell us how.)
The big dog barks loudly.
(What color is the dog? Use another adjective to tell us. Where does he bark? Use a preposition, article, and a noun to tell us.)
The big brown dog barks loudly at the park.
This type of conversation helps to equalize the game with more proficient learners and helps that younger student to become proficient more quickly.
(Sometimes making funny sentences makes the game even more fun and sentence writing is no longer work.)
The long hairy dog barks loudly at the tiny ant.
Then the magic happens! I have my students go to their bookwork where they are supposed to underline the subject once and verb twice. Instead I have them use colored pencils (blue and red) and underline their subjects with the blue pencil and underline the verb with the red pencil. (They are able to identify the subjects and verbs more readily because they have been playing with blue nouns and red verbs.)
Nouns and verbs start to almost jump out at them as a result of playing the game. Additionally, they are much better at not confusing the assignment. For example, when the assignment was to underline the subject one and verb twice, I can't tell you how many times my students used to underline the subjects twice and the verbs once. They say to me, "Well, I underlined them, what more do you want?"
When I have them use a colored pencil it takes that away and impresses on their brains which word is the noun (subject) and which is the verb. We even color code whole sentences according to the colors in The Sentence Zone, identifying the prepositional phrases or dependent and independent clauses.
I find that students who are just beginning to write sentences soon find that they can write more interesting sentences after playing the game because they start to make sentences that are worth more points. They often compete against themselves, keeping a running tally from turn to turn or day to day.
Also, when a student has a writing assignment and his sentences are all about the same length, I just have to say, "You need to have some small point sentences and some big point sentences to be a good writer. Remember, good writers vary the length and type of sentences they write." They know what I'm talking about because they have seen small point sentences and big point sentences.
Students who are proficient with basic sentences start to learn more complex grammar nuances such as subject - verb agreement, or needing to compose a sentence with a direct object and an indirect object in it etc. In fact I also use it for SAT prep.
Hope this gives you some new ideas for teaching and improving sentence writing and grammar. Learn more about The Sentence Zone.
Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET
Do Odors Help or Hinder Learning?
April 23rd, 2009I've written often about how we learn by seeing, hearing, and doing. But, we also learn through the olfactory system, smell.
In fact, smell actually plays an intricate part of our lives, of our sensory world, in the way we act. The process of recognition of a place is accomplished by our sense of smell. Think about this for a minute. The dentist's office has certain smells related to it, so does the doctor's office. Our homes smell wonderfully inviting when we've been baking or cooking a delicious dinner. We like to be in our homes when they smell good. A movie theater has another smell, as does a candy store. On the other hand, there are places we don't enjoy being at as much, due to the odors. For instance a locker room after a sports event can be full of odors we don't want to be near.
So, what does this have to do with learning? Our sense of smell adds an additional component to learning; it incorporates another sense so the brain is activated with an emotional and biological stimulus. Any time our brain is activated in multiple ways learning is affected, either positively or negatively.
Classrooms can have a variety of odors in them. Most of the time they are good odors. But, sometimes they aren't. For example, when a classroom has just had new carpeting put in, there is usually a pretty noxious odor from the make-up of the carpet. Some severe educational consequences can occur due to this.
When the olfactory system is inundated with noxious odors such as formaldehyde that is out-gassing from carpet, children can suffer health, mood, and behavior problems that undermine school performance and productivity. Children can become allergic to their classrooms from carpet out-gassing.
This actually happened to my daughter when she was in the 4th grade. Her class was moved into a new portable classroom during the second month of the school year. The carpet did not have time to 'outgas'. My daughter came home every day with uncontrollable coughing. She would get some relief at home by morning, and go back to school. By the time she came home again she was worse than when she left in the morning. I took her into the doctor after the 2nd day and then every day for an additional 3 days. We couldn't figure out what was going on. So I went with her to school to see if I could see anything there that was causing the problem. Upon opening the classroom door I almost keeled over. The odor was horrific! And, at that time I was an asthmatic. I immediately started wheezing. I knew what the problem was.
So, we had to educate the school about the problem. We actually gave some solutions to help the carpet odor dissipate quickly. Unfortunately, they didn't quite follow the suggestion [sprinkling the carpet every day after school with baking soda and then vacuuming it up every morning before school]. Instead they placed an open box of baking soda in the classroom. So my daughter ended up wearing a mask whenever she was in the classroom for nine weeks. After nine weeks the carpet odor had finally neutralized and she didn't need to spend her days wearing a max.
The reason I'm sharing this is not so much what happened to my daughter, because she had an extreme reaction to the carpet out-gassing. But the rest of the class was also affected. The absentee rate of students and the teacher in that class due to respiratory problems was higher during that time period than the rest of the school. The behavior of the students in the class during that time frame was also awful. So did maximum learning take place during that time? Of course not.
Other environmental issues that can affect learning
Children can even become allergic their schools when construction is going on from all the molds that are stirred up during the construction. Also classroom pets can create havoc with children. Sometimes children don't even know they have an allergy to pet dander and they end up being stuffed up in the classroom, which affects their ability to hear clearly. Some children respond to pet dander by becoming restless or irritable. So, you want to check and see if the classroom has a pet. Sometimes the behavior problem you child is having is NOT due to their not following directions, but is due to being allergic to pet dander from the class guinea pig.
So, when we are looking to create an optimal learning place for our children, let's keep in mind it's not just the hearing, seeing, and doing. It's also the smells we smell that lead us to places where we feel good and safe and secure. When we feel good, safe, and secure, we learn with ease. So, let's create good smelling classrooms to help our children thrive in learning situations!
Learn about the 3 roadblocks to reading, writing, and math success.
Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET