It seems as though everyone is giving you advice about how to prepare your child to go back to school. The problem is that no one is telling you about the one thing you can do that is guaranteed to lead to a successful year for your child.

I have seen ads for kids back to school clothes, pens and pencils, sticky notes, computers, even backpacks. I have read articles on how you can help your child with homework, pack nutritious lunches, wear backpacks safely. You are being bombarded with information and advice on ways  to make the coming school year a success for your child.

But no one is telling you about the one most important thing you can do to that is guaranteed to help your child have a successful school year.

Students need school supplies and maybe a  set of new clothes to replace the ones that were outworn or outgrown last year.  But having these things  will not help your child learn, and isn’t that  what you really want for your child?

The most important ‘back to school’ tip need not cost you a penny to implement, but could go a long way to ensuring that your child gets the education he or she needs.

The one thing you can do that will guarantee a successful year for your child is making contact with your child’s new teacher.

Here are the reasons why doing this is so important;

1. Teachers take more care of students when they know that parents are going to be involved in their schooling – I have been a teacher and I know that this is true.

2. Letting the teacher know that you exist confirms that you are both on the same side, you both want to help your child succeed

3. It is important to create a connection between home and school that leads to open communication between your child’s teacher and you. Then you will be the first to hear when there are problems.

4. Making contact with the teacher shows your child that you care about what he does in class, this acts as a great motivator for  students.

5. Acknowledging the teacher’s existence indicates that you will be supporting the work they do

6. Your child’s teacher will want to know who you are, and that they can rely on you to be there when your child needs help

7.  You don’t want the first time you meet your child’s teacher to be at conference time when everyone is busy and stressed.

8. It is much easier to bring up any issues you may have about your child’s education if you have met the teacher previously.

9. It is the polite thing to do

10. Your child is precious, don’t you want to know who he or she is with all day?

Get your child all the school supplies he or she needs, then, as soon as school starts, make contact with your child’s teacher.  You will be surprised at the difference it can make to your child’s education.

Do parents  know what they are teaching their kids?  Or are they trying to make life difficult for them?

I was so upset by something that happened this morning that I have to tell you about it.

I was walking home from the gym, crossing the street at the lights, when a car – OK it was an SUV, but I am trying not to be prejudiced  here!- did a U turn in front of me, crossing a red light at the same time.  He nearly ran into me as I was on the crosswalk.

OK, he had seen a free parking place on the other side of the road and wanted to get it before anyone else – but he didn’t have to put me in danger to get there.

It gets worse!

As he got out of the car he spat on the road – UGH! – this was obviously a guy I wanted nothing to do with.  He had left his car at a meter but made no attempt to put any money in or check if there was an time left from the previous person’s parking time.

By this time I had decided that this guy was a jerk.  But that was not what upset me so much.  What really upset me was when two kids, aged about 7 and 9,  got out of the back of the car to follow him into the store.

These children had witnessed everything he had done.  They would have been left thinking that what their father did was fine, they would probably grow up doing the same things themselves!

My immediate reaction, being a teacher at heart, was that I wouldn’t want those kids in my class.  I wouldn’t want to be the one that had to handle their bad behavior, or have to deal with their father.

Surely this father must have known what he was teaching his children?  He must have known that he was setting them up for a lifetime of problems?

He was being more than a jerk- he was being a totally irresponsible parent.

Your child loves you and wants to be like you.  Don’t be an irresponsible parent, be aware that your actions, any actions, have a real and lasting influence on your child’s life.

When your kids are around, don’t be a jerk!

When we think of getting children ready for school we tend to think of school supplies. But there is a much more important way to help your child get ready for school – make sure that their brain is healthy!

Children need to use their brains to learn. Their brains needs looking after if you want them to work well.

Here are three simple things you can do to look after your child’s brain.

1.  Make sure they sleep at least eight to nine hours a night.

Sleep deprivation can impair learning as much as brain damage.  As your child sleeps their brain is consolidating the learning that took place when they were awake.

Think of a brain as being like a super dishwasher.  During the day it gets full of all kinds of stuff.  When you sleep your brain not only cleans the dishes, it puts them away where you can find them again!

If your child doesn’t get enough sleep they can never find the thoughts – or the dishes – that they need!

2.  Feed your child’s brain.

Brains needs energy to work well- you need to give your child the energy their brain needs.  At the start of the day, as their brain is getting ready to do a day’s work, make sure it the energy it needs.  You should never allow your child to skip breakfast, and  make sure that breakfast includes some protein – cereals and milk are fine.

Don’t let your child rely on drugs (coffee) to wake up their brain!  Give it the food it requires for the work  it must do.

3.  Help your child’s  brain grow.

Your child’s brain is a muscle, it need daily  exercise.

Exercise leads to the development of new brain cells, so make sure that your child walks, runs, skateboards, swims …..   Whatever it takes to give your child’s brain some daily exercise.

These suggestions are based on the work coming from Duke’s Center for Child and Family Policy.

The new school year is coming and you need to know that your child will be in the type of  class that will help him or her learn.  You might not have much say about what type of class your child goes to, but when you know the signs that tell you that your child is in the wrong type of class you can do something about it.

Here are three signs that your child is struggling to adapt the way he or she learns with the way the teacher is teaching.

1.  Boredom

When a child likes to learn in a non-linear way (as many visual learners do), and he or she is placed in a class where the teacher uses a traditional, step-by-step approach to teaching, he is going to be bored.  This kind of learner likes to learn in many different ways and if he is expected to learn in a structured way he will feel limited and may even begin to feel that his way of learning is wrong.

Similarly, a child who needs a structured teaching approach will feel lost and confused if he or she is in a class where the teacher allows children to learn in an unstructured way.  This child will feel bored because he will not know what he is supposed to do, he will be ‘at a loose end’.

2.  Homework

Homework is always an issue but if you feel that your child has either too much or too little homework it could be a sign that your child’s learning style does not match the teacher’s teaching style.  First, check with your child’s teacher to make sure how much homework your child should be doing.  Some teachers do not give much homework, they like students to have time for other learning opportunities.  Some teachers give lots of homework, they want students to practice what they have learned in class.  Either way, you need to make sure that your child is not stressed by having too much homework or being ‘let off the hook’ by not doing enough.

3.  Avoidance

This is a hard one, but students who are not happy in class will avoid talking about what they do in school.  They are not deliberately avoiding telling you about the problems, they probably are not really aware of what they are.  Your child may not tell you about his school day either because everything is perfect and he sees no need to share OR because he has issues but cannot verbalize them.  You have to decide which it is and what action, if any, you should be taking as a result.

Watch out for these signs.  If they continue after the first two weeks of being in a new class you need to provide your child with the support he needs to manage the situation.

The first two weeks of school are always full of new experiences for a child.  Just make sure that they are good ones!

Is your child going into a mixed grade classroom next year?  Are you concerned about what this will mean for your child’ learning?   Here is a list of benefits and barriers to learning in a multi-age classroom and a description of the type of student who benefits most from this arrangement.

Multi-age classroom.

Mostly this means that the class contains students from two grades.  Sometimes it can mean that there are three grades in one class.  One of the best classes I ever taught was a ‘three grade’ classroom.  When a class is evenly divided between two or more grades the teacher knows that he or she has to have different expectations for each grade.  It is when a class contains only one or two children from one grade that parents need to know exactly why their child was chosen to be in that class.

There can be many reasons for putting a child into a different grade- nt all of them are based on sound educational practice!  So, if you are concerned about the class your child has been put in make sure that you get the information you need about why this happened.

Benefits of multi-age classrooms

*  Not all children learn at the same pace.  Your child might benefit from being with children who are at his or her level of learning

* Children learn from each other and older children can help younger children learn while benefiting their own learning. Teaching is a great way to learn.

* Having the same teacher for two or more years in a row can be a real benefit to a child’s learning. The teacher gets to know the child and time at the beginning of the year is not wasted.

* Multi-age classroom encourage responsibility for learning.  Children are often given projects and expected to carry out research on their own

* Friendships – children can make friends with older or younger children depending on their maturity

*  Sense of security – children feel less threatened by change and are able to concentrate more on learning

Barrier to learning in multi-age classrooms

*  Noise level – because there may be children working on different projects at the same time it is easy for teh noise level to increase.  A good teacher will make sure that it stays withing a ’safe’ level.

* Rigidity of teaching – in a multi-age classroom teachers need to be flexible and open to new ways of working.  Some teachers find this difficult to do and struggle to keep every child learning at capacity.

* Poor home school communication. It can be harder for teachers to let parents know what is going on in their classrooms when there is so much happening.  Parents need to make an extra effort to learn what their child is doing in class.

What type of learner benefits most from a multi-age classroom?

Before I discuss this I want you to know that I loved teaching in multi-age classrooms.  I found that they fitted my teaching style. So, assuming that you have a teacher who also enjoys teaching this way- these students will benefit most…

A student who …

* likes to work as part of a group

* makes friend easily

* does not need to be told what to do all the time

* comes from a multi-age family (has siblings) and is used to others having different needs

* Likes project work and the research that goes with it

What type of learner will find a multi-age classroom a difficult learning space?

A student who …

* is used to being told what to do and when to do it

* an only child who may not have had experience working with other children of a different age

* a child who likes to learn on their own

What setting is best for your child?

Next post I will be discussing how parents should react to the two types of classroom.

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Soon your child will be going to a new classroom: will it be the type of classroom that matches his or her learning needs?

What is the most effective and motivating learning environment for your child?  That depends on how your child learns best and how different types of classroom meet different learning needs.  Here is a quick run down of how single grade classrooms can create benefits and barriers to learning for a child.

Single grade classrooms

This is the type of classroom that you are familiar with. All the students are the same age and are taught by the same teacher for the whole year.

Benefits

* Children stay with their friends as they move up the school.  This can give them a sense of security.

* The curriculum is straightforward, all the children are taught the same thing.

* Teachers do not have to prepare multiplee lesson plans

* It is easier to understand your child’s progress against other children of the same age

* Teaching can be very directed and focused on specific curriculum aims

* You were probably taught in a single grade classroom so yo will not feel anxious about your child being in one.

*  If you have had other children in the same grade you know what goes on in the classroom, and what to expect from the teacher

Barriers

* Not all children develop at the same pace. The level of the material being taught might not match what your child needs to learn

*  Your child may be stuck with the same ‘unfriendly’ student as last year

*  Children do not get the benefit of working with older, more experienced students

* Children have only one standard to measure them selves against, that of the whole class

* These classes tend to be teacher centered.  The teacher sets the curriculum and delivers it. It can be hard to accommodate individual differences

*  The children who just scrape into this grade because of their birth date may always be the ‘babies’ and the ones who are not ready to learn

What type of learner benefits most from single grade classrooms?

The child who -

* has parents who understand and expect their child to be in a single grade classroom

* has the same close group of friends in and out of class

* is an ‘average’ learner because this is who the teacher directs her class lessons to

* who has brothers and sisters at home who provide different perspectives on learning

* who learns best in a traditional, directed way

What type of learner does not benefit from a single grade classroom?

The child who -

* is either an ‘above average’ or ‘below average’ learner because he or she may be bored or confused by lessons directed at the grade level

* the more mature child who needs friends who are older than him

* the immature child who still needs the type of teaching approach used in earlier grades

* likes a more self directed approach to learning

* has been left out of the groups of friends in the class

* the ‘different’ learner who does not learn the same way as the majority of the other students

You may not have a choice about the type of classroom your child goes into, but  understanding how it will help or hinder your child’s learning,  gives you an insight into your child’s learning issues.

Next post – mixed grade classrooms and the benefits and barriers they offer to learning.

If you and your partner have different learning styles you probably disagree about ways to help your child learn.  But there is something you can do about it.

A couple of friends of mine are discussing parenting issues -they have a new baby and they want to be on the same page as they bring him up. They want to make sure that this baby get all the opportunities they can give him to to learn and to grow. Fortunately they are in agreement about most things, and everyone seems to be getting along really well.

However, this is not the case with many parents that I meet.

I have learned to always ask to speak to both the mother and the father when I am finding out about a child’s education and learning. Often there are differences between how a father sees a child and how a mother sees the same child. What can seem to be a problem to the mother may be seen as just a ’stage’ the child is going through by the father. What is causing a mother to be concerned may be quite different from why a father is concerned about a child.

It is always interesting when this happens. I know that these differences can cause issues within some families and I am often asked to mediate between parents when one is concerned about a child’s education and the other thinks that the first parent is just making a fuss.

Usually there is some truth in what both parents believe. What interests me is why two parents can have such different views about the same child.

It all comes down to style. Parents have different styles when it comes to helping children learn.

For example, recently a mother told me of her concern about her son’s learning. She told me that her son was quite bright and always did reasonably well in class. She had no real reason to worry about his grades but she was concerned because he never seemed to take time to do his homework properly and when she tried to help it usually ended up with them having a row.

I asked her what happened when her husband offered to help her son with homework. She told me that her husband hardly ever helped with homework because he felt that the boy was doing OK and did not need help. She started to complain that if it was not for her trying to help her son he would get no help at all. Obviously this was beginning to cause problems in the family.

We talked for a while about different learning styles and it was soon apparent that this Mom was a logical learner who was very organized and took a structured approach to her work and life. She readily admitted that her husband was very different, preferring to let things unfold rather than trying to force things to happen. He knew that his son was doing reasonably well in school and had every confidence in his ability to work hard when required.

The parents had different parenting styles.

Both worked, both were very useful, both were very helpful to their child. However, the mother needed to realize that her husband’s way of supporting their son was just as valid as hers. She needed to accept that her son might not be a structured, logical learner like she was, he might learn in a different way, and her husbands style of support might be just what he needed some of the time.

Once she understood that differences in how she and her husband helped their son meant that her son was able to benefit from both types of support she calmed down and frustrations over homework help gradually disappeared.

What is your style? How do you try to help your child learn? Does it work? Do you get frustrated and upset when things don’t seem to work?

You might want to find out if your learning style matches that of your child.

It could make a temendous difference to how you interact around learning.

Schools are failing children because they only reward and recognize students who learn the way they teach.  So says Sir Ken Robinson, and I agree with him.

He tells the story of a mother who was told that her daughter was having trouble in class.  She could not sit still and was struggling to learn.  The teacher suggested that the mother take her to her doctor to get some medication that would help her focus more.

The mother took some time explaining to the doctor why her child needed some medication.  She told him all the things the teachers had said and that it was the teachers who had suggested that the girl needed medication.

During this lengthy chat the young girl, trying hard to be good,  sat on her hands in an effort to stay still.

After hearing what the mother had to say the Doctor said that he needed to talk to the mother alone, and asked the girl to wait for a few minutes until they came back.  As he left with the mother he switched on the radio that was on his desk.

When they were both out of the room he told the mother to look through the window in the door to see what her child was doing.  She was dancing to the music!

He then said that her daughter did not need medication, she needed to go to dance class!

When the mother took her to dance class the girl said that, for the first time, she had met other children who were like her. children who needed to dance.

This girl went on to start her own dance school, create the choreography for Broadway musicals, and earn millions of dollars.

Would this have happened if she had been medicated as the teachers suggested?  I doubt it.

It may not be your child that is failing to learn, it may be the school that is failing to teach your child in the way he learns.

Students who are different learners often appear to have a learning disability.  But there is an enormous difference between the two and parents need to understand this.

Parents often think that their child has a learning disability when the issue is that their child is a different learner and needs a different teaching approach

A few days ago I got a call from a mother who is worried about her son’s ability to learn.  Her concerns started when he moved into Grade 4.  She told me that her son is very bright and that he used to get straight ‘A’s’ but that his grades had started to go down, and he was having problems studying.

What could they do?  The parents were afraid that their son had a learning disability.  They wanted to know how they could help him learn.

The family gave me two enormous clues that helped me determine that this boy did not have a learning disability.

Firstly, his troubles only started when he went to Grade 4.  If he had a genuine learning disability they would have been apparent much earlier.

Secondly, he had been getting ‘A’s’ and it seemed that his grades were dropping because he was not studying.

These are signs of a ‘different learner’ rather than a learner with a disability.

It was a brief call, but here is my read on he situation.

Many children start to have learning problems when they go into Grade 4 as a result of changes in the way they are taught.  In Grades 1 – 3 teachers use very visual ways of teaching.   Children may have limited language ability at this age and the teacher understands this and compensates by using visual ways of getting the message across.

Then, in Grade 4, everything changes.  Teachers assume that children have developed the language skills they need and they use a much more verbal teaching style.

Most children can accommodate this change in teaching style, for some ( about 25% is my guess) it creates real learning difficulties.  These students may, or may not, have developed the language skills they need but they cling onto their preference to learn visually.

This is when bright students start to create wonderful  strategies to either avoid working or to find ways to make the teaching make sense.  I am always amazed at how hard some of these students actually work and how little progress they end up making.

Then, two things start to happen.

1.  Because learning is so hard the student stops trying so hard, grades drop, and

2.  The student starts to think he or she is stupid and cannot learn, so stops trying to learn.

The situation becomes a downward spiral.

The ONLY way to stop the student spiraling downward, and the parents becoming upset and frustrated, is to find out how the student likes to learn (preferred learning style)  and show the parents, and  student, how to adapt the teaching situation to meet their learning needs.

And the irony is that it is easy to do, prevents a lot of anxiety and frustration, and best of all, helps the student become the kind of learner that he is capable of becoming.

It is a guaranteed process, it works every time!!  What else can you say that about?

School’s out!! – Or it will be in the next few days, and you need to know how to handle the changes that are happening.

The last few weeks of the school year are special. Students may be completing exams, getting ready to change schools,and beginning to relax more in class as the summer approaches. Learning may look as if it is slowing down or even not happening at all. Students can become restless, even somewhat lost, as the start to loose the regular rhythm of school life that has determined the structure of their day. for most of the year.

It is a difficult time for teachers too. There are end of year meetings to plan for next year, teachers may be leaving and there are the report cards to write and send out. All this on top of the out of school activities and visits that take place as the weather improves and the year’s work gets completed.

These changes can make life difficult for parents who are trying to keep to their normal schedule and who may not be directly involved in these summer preparations. So here are some tips on how to handle this time of endings and new beginnings that your school aged child is experiencing right now.

1. Try to join in the excitement of the upcoming summer.
You might be looking forward to a couple of weeks vacation but your child is looking forward to much more than that. He or she sees an endless summer spread out in front of them, a summer that is ripe with possibilities, places to go and things to see. Try to see the summer through your child’s eyes even if, for you, it means trying to find childcare or summer camps to send your child to. Understanding how and why your child is excited about the holidays will give you a much better grounding for the inevitable conversations and disagreements that summer can bring.

2. Don’t worry about ‘learning loss’
Yes, sure, kids ‘forget’ stuff they have learned the year before but they don’t forget a lot and they normally forget the stuff that is not worth remembering anyway. Most teachers can get kids back on track within the first few days or weeks of he new school year. Learning doesn’t stop because your child is out of school, it just changes from formal school-type learning to informal (and possible more important!) out-of school type learning. Just make sure that your child is not stuck in front of the TV screen all day and that he or she has time to spend with friends and family doing fun stuff and all will be well.

Oh, you might also want to encourage some reading for fun, perhaps you can each rad the same book and have your own mini book club as a way of encouraging reading and language development?

3. Keep a calendar in view
For children the summer seems endless, then suddenly it is all over. Having a calendar hanging around where it could be seen and used to note important dates such as trips, visits, back to school planning etc. helps your child, and you, get a handle on how much time is left to do things and maybe even plan so that the end of summer panic does not happen. No guarantee that it will work, but at least you tried!

4. Set some basic guidelines.
I am sure that you have heard this before but it is worth repeating. You have things to do, your daily routine is probably not changing as much as that of your child, so you all need to be clear about who is responsible for what. For instance, who will clear the dishwasher now that there are more dishes to clean? How will bedtime change and when will exceptions be allowed? How is the house going to be used? Which space is just for you and which space is just for your child? All this enforced togetherness can be difficult without a bolt hole for use in emotional emergencies. Talk about what rules or guidelines need to be in place, and be ready to accept dome that your child suggests.

5. Relax!
Your child will be relaxing, in fact he or she might be so relaxed that they spend most of the day doing nothing much at all .. and how annoying is that!

Here you are, working all the hours of the day and possibly the night, to put bread on the table … … … Well I am sure you know how it gos, every schoolchild does as they have probably heard it, or similar versions, spoken many, many times.

Relax, it is the summer and if you have set some mutually agreed upon ground rules, trust your child to have the responsibility to live up to them.

If your child fails to live up to the rules you need to discover how to help him or her take responsibility for their actions.

This video shows how comprehensive assessments allow children to demonstrate all their skills. As the video says, this form of assessment takes time but the results are worth it.

Just though that you might like to look at a different form of assessment than the one you will be getting on your child’s report card.

Which would you prefer?

There are many reasons why children behave badly, but one that is often overlooked is that the behaviour is caused by a learning difficulty.

Let me tell you about David.

David was about to be thrown out of his kindergarten class (kindergarten class!) because his behaviour was so bad. He kept annoying other children in class and, when disciplined in the playground, ignored the playground supervisors when they told him to stop. This boy had been in front of the school Principal many times and it never made a difference. David still bugged the other children.

His parents were desperate. They had tried everything they could think of to get their son to fit into the classroom, but nothing seemed to be working. They were unsure that a learning assessment would be any use but they were willing to give it a try.

It was fun working with David. He wanted to be good but he also wanted to see what he could get away with. His mother was very brave, she sat in the room and never interfered with the process even when it was obvious that she wanted to.

I discovered that David was a bright boy with lots of ideas and with a burning need to relate to others. The problem was that he had no idea how to do this because he had difficulties understanding what was said to him. Sure, he looked like he understood what people were saying to him, he nodded his head when asked if he understood, and he seemed contrite when he was disciplined for hitting another child, but it was all an act. He had learned how to behave, he was upset not at what he had done, but at being told off. He had no idea why he was in trouble because he didn’t understand the words.

The reason he bugged kids in class was because he wanted to see what they were doing so that he could do the same, he had no idea what the teacher had told him to do, not because he hadn’t listened but because he was unable to process complex verbal inputs.

Poor David. How could he be good when he didn’t understand why he was bad? He was trying to connect to the other children the only way he knew, by physical contact. The other children of course saw it as bullying and would run from him.

The story has a happy ending. When parents and teachers understood that David’s bad behaviour was a result of his verbal learning difficulty we were able to discuss ways of helping him develop the language skills he needed. Meanwhile, both his parents and his teachers learned how to talk to David in ways that he could understand.

The last I heard he was still in school and making great progress!

Not all behaviour problems are caused by learning difficulties, but many are, and they are often unrecognized and untreated.

Do you know that most of the people in the prison either have difficulties reading or some other learning issue!

If you are worried about your child’s behaviour you might want to use my free Parent Starter kit check how well he learns.

If you think that your child has a learning problem you are probably right. Don’t be put off by teachers telling you not to worry, get your child the help he needs before it is too late. Trust your instincts, your child needs your help.

Recently a mother told me that she was worried because her ten year-old son still couldn’t read well. She told me that she had been worried about his lack of reading ability for some time. She had done the right thing, she had told her son’s teachers about her concerns and had even asked for her son’s reading skills to be assessed by a specialist.

The teachers had told her not to worry, that her son did not need an assessment and that many children do not start to read until they are ten or even older. This information did not make her feel any better!

Let’s look at what the teachers were saying.

Yes, many children who become excellent readers do not start reading as soon as everyone would like. Some children who end up being very good readers do not start to read until they are seven or eight years old. But these are the exception rather than the rule.

If a child who is ten years old has reading problems it is time to find out why.

I don’t know the whole story, maybe this boy is doing well in school and is just having problems reading. It is difficult to imagine as so much of schoolwork depends on a child’s ability to read.

Maybe this boy is having difficulty learning anything and his reading problems are only one of many learning issues that he has. I hope not, but this can often be the case.

Maybe this mother is overanxious, overprotective and overbearing. But I don’t think so. Any mother would be worried about a ten year old who was not reading, and from what she told me she seems more scared of the teachers than they are of her.

So what can this mother do?

Should she believe what the teachers tell her and wait for her son to ‘blossom’? Or should she fight as hard as she can to get her son the help that he needs?

I have worked with many children whose parents told me that they knew something was wrong with their child’s learning years before their child got any extra learning support. I trust parents’ instincts.

You know if your child is struggling to learn, your instincts tell you that something is not right. Don’t wait until it is too late to get the help your child needs.

Start fighting for your child, he needs your support now.

When parents want to help their children learn the first thing most of them do is hire a tutor, and, unfortunately, they may be wasting their money.

Now, as far as I know, the hourly cost for tutoring is between $25 (what a high school student might charge) and $60 (the amount a learning expert might charge). This means that the cost of hiring a tutor can be quite high, especially as the best tutors need to work with children at least twice a week.

But are you sure that this money is being well spent? Are you sure that your child needs a tutor? Are you sure that hiring a tutor is the best way to help your child learn?

Before you start spending money on tutoring for your child you need to be sure that hiring a tutor will be beneficial for your child, and for you.

Don’t get me wrong, hiring a tutor can be an excellent was of giving your child the learning support he or she needs to do well in school. There are some excellent tutors, and one of them might be able to offer just what your child needs to become a better learner. But before you start looking for a tutor, and paying for one, make sure that this is the type of support your child needs.

Here are three reasons why you could be wasting your money.

1. Your child needs help with more than one subject
Most tutors are subject specialists. They know their subject really well and have plenty of experience in helping children learn it. So, if your child is having trouble with one subject, then hiring a tutor to help him or her catch up could be a good idea.

BUT, if your child is struggling in more than one subject, for example, if he or she is behind in math and writing, then the chances are that tutoring is not be best way to help your child. Your child may need a different form of support, one that addresses his or her basic learning needs.

The rule of thumb is -
if your child is struggling to keep up in more than one subject, tutoring may not help-

2. Your child needs help with basic learning skills
Good tutors help children develop the strategies they need to be able to master a subject. For instance, a math tutor might help a child learn their multiplication tables, or how to understand written math problems; an English tutor might help a child to learn how to write an essay.

But what if the reason your child is struggling to learn is because he or she needs to develop some basic learning strategies, the learning strategies that underpin ALL learning?

If your child needs to develop basic learning strategies tutoring is not the best way to provide support for your child. You could end up paying for tutoring for many years, with limited results.

3. The way your child learns does not match the way the tutor teaches
This mismatch of teaching and learning style is a major reason why children find learning difficult. It is why your child can learn more from one teacher than from another. It is why your child will learn more from one tutor than another.

If you have decided that your child will benefit from having a tutor, the next thing you need to do is to make sure that the tutor teaches in a way that your child likes to learn. Otherwise you are spending money on a tutor who, at best, will not be making learning easy for your child, and at worst, may even be preventing your child from learning.

Before you waste money on tutoring be sure you know what help your child really needs.

Children need good physical abilities if they are to be good learners. Children who do not see well do not learn well, children who do not hear well do not learn well, children who are hungry do not learn well, children who are tired do not learn well. The need for a child to have these physical skills in order to be able to learn seems fairly obvious.

But not all physical abilities are so easy to see.

For instance, there is a report out today that shows that brains do not work well when they are starved of water. It seems that brains have problems making connections when they are dry and this lack of connectivity means less learning takes place, or that learning becomes more difficult.

So,if you want to make learning easier for your child make sure they get plenty to drink, and get them used to drinking water and juice rather than the sugary laden drinks that are on the market.

Who knew that helping children learn could be so easy?

Have you ever thought that your child was lazy, not interested in working, unmotivated? Many parents have. So they tell their child to work harder, they complain about the poor grades they are getting, maybe insist that their child does more homework.

But it doesn’t help. Their child does not do more work, remains unmotivated, and resents what you are making them do.

The problem is that you are trying to fix the symptom, not the cause, of their learning difficulty.

The cause of your child’s learning problem might be that he or she does not understand the amount of effort they have to put into learning something. The symptoms, or signs, of their lack of understanding may be any or all of the following;

1. Leaves work until the last minute and then panics at what he has to do.
If a child has no understanding of the amount of time and effort it will take to do something there is no way he can schedule in the work that has to be done. Most children (and many adults!) underestimate the time and effort they need to spend doing something. As a result they don’t do the work until they feel that they have to, usually the night before a big project is due. When they start doing the work they suddenly realize that it is going to take much longer than they thought. Then they start to panic. They have no idea how they will finish the work on time and either get you to do it for them, work through the night (not recommended) or quickly throw together some work that is really bad and does not reflect their abilities.

Have you ever been there, and had to handle a child who is panicking about getting work finished on time? Telling your child that he or she should have thought of this earlier is not the solution. Your child did not know he should have thought about it earlier, he had no idea how long the work would take. It isn’t a scheduling issues it is an issue of lack of understanding the effort that would be required to do the work.

2. Seems uninterested and unmotivated to do work.

Homework is finished in record time, or there is no homework because your child says he has done all the work in class, finished work is untidy and hastily done? These are all signs that your child has no idea that he has to put more effort into doing his work. The cause of your child’s learning problem is not lack of motivation, or lack of interest. These are the symptoms of a learning difficulty, the cause is that your child lacks a basic understanding of the amount of effort he has to use to do the work. (Lack of motivation and lack of interest can be caused by lack of other basic learning skills too).

3. Does poorly on tests or in exams.
Your child does the work, thinks he knows what he needs to know, and goes off to take the test or exam full of confidence that he will do well. After the exam he is a little concerned that he might not have dome as well as he expected to do. When he gets the results he finds that he has not done well at all. He is upset because he doesn’t know why. You are upset too because you know that your child is bright and seemed to prepare for the exam.

Your child did the work he thought was necessary to prepare for the exam. The problem was that he did not know what work he had to do, he underestimated the amount of effort he had to spend getting ready for the exam.

Doing badly on tests and exams is a symptom of lack of understanding of hoe effort leads to success.

4. Doesn’t know why their marks are so low.
This is almost the same as #3 above, but this time it refers to regular classwork. Your child does not understand the amount of effort he has to put into doing his work.

I understand that students cannot put all their effort into all their work all the time. They need to understand what work requires all their effort and what work they can do quickly. I have seen students labor over work that was unimportant, not giving themselves time to do important work well.

5. Starts to lose confidence in their ability to learn
Just imagine, yo think that yo have done everything you need to do to get something right, and then you find out that the results are now what you expected, in fact, they are much worse than you expected. You start to doubt your ability to do what is needed.

This happens with children all the time when they do not understand the amount of effort they need to expend on doing work. They THINK they are working hard, and they probably are working hard, but they are not working hard enough, or hard enough at doing the right thing, to make a difference to the final result.

If this happens over and over again the child is going to think that no matter what he does he is never going to be able to get things right. Therefore he must be unable to learn, he must be stupid. When children start to think this they stop trying to learn and this compounds the learning problems they have.

To help children overcome learning hurdles you need to find the CAUSE of the problem and treat that. Only treating the SYMPTOM leads to frustration and confusion.

The five signs above could all have a different cause. But more of that later.

Many students fail to get the grades they are capable of getting because they don’t do the work they need to to get the marks they deserve. But this lack of work is the result, not the cause, of their problem.

We have all known students like this, and we have probably accused them of being lazy, or unorganized, or even of not caring about their work. And we were probably wrong!

The story goes something like this -

Johnny (sorry to all those called Johnny!) has a test coming up in a week.

He knows that he has to revise if he is going to get good marks, and he also knows that the work was pretty easy for him to do the first time round. So, he thinks that all he needs to do is to quickly look through his previous work, maybe reread a section or two from the text book, and all will be fine. After all, he did OK last time so everything will be fine this time.

The night before the test he looks over what he has to learn, does some reading, and feels ready to do well in the test the next day.

You know what happens next.

He does not do well. He complains that the test was too hard, or that he didn’t understand the questions, or he answers the questions in such a haphazard way that he gets low marks.

And he wonders what went wrong!

Let’s get one thing clear, Johnny is a bright boy, and the work he has been asked to do is well within his capabilities. He knows this, so when he fails the test he has no idea why. If this happens more than once he starts to think that he is stupid, that he really cannot learn, and that no matter how hard he tries he will never do well.

The problem is not that he does not do the work he thinks he should do, the problem is that he has no idea how much work he has to do to be sure that he knows what he is supposed to know. Johnny would do the work if he knew what he had to do.

Let’s replay the scene above, but this time Johnny understands the amount of effort he has to put in to get good marks on the test.

Johnny is not worried about the test because he knows that he found the work pretty easy to understand. He also knows that he needs to be sure that he has all the information at his fingertips so he sets up a revision plan. He starts thinking about this about a week before the test and he decides to review one small section of the work each night.

So far so good.

But Johnny takes it even further. Not only does he review the work, he sets himself a small test on each bit of work, just to be sure that he understands and remembers it. He realizes that some information he thought he knew he cannot remember well. He spends a bit of extra time reviewing that information.

How do you think Johnny did on the test this time?

You guessed it, he did quite well, and felt good about himself and the work he had done.

Same Johnny, different perceptions about the effort required to review the material in the test.

One of the basic learning skills you can help your child develop is the ability to understand the amount of effort they will have to put in to achieve something. It can be a hard lesson to learn.

In the next post I will give you some ideas about how you might do this. Trust me, it is worth the effort (ha!), and your child will be a much better learner as a result.

Research seems to be catching up with me! There is a study out of Michigan University that links better grades with the vision students have of themselves as adults.

Students who wanted to become doctors or lawyers, and students who wanted to become rock stars or sport heroes both intended to go to college but only one of the groups actually did the work required to get there.

What made the difference between the two groups? Why did one group do the work required to get to college while the other did not?

The group that wanted to become lawyers of doctors understood that they would have to work hard to get the skills they needed in those professions. The group that wanted to be rock stars and sports stars thought that it would just happen, that they would be ‘discovered’, and did not think that they had to work hard to get what they wanted.

The difference between the groups was that one understood the direct connection between effort today and success tomorrow. It was the understanding of what had to be done that made the difference. The research suggests that being annoyed with a student for getting poor grades is not the best way to help that student improve their study skills. It would be much more effective to help the student understand the relationship between the amount of effort required and the level of success he will achieve.

I believe that students fail because they lack one or more basic learning skills. I have a list of the basic learning skills that all students need if they are to become good learners. One of the basic learning skills I talk about is the ability to understand the amount of effort that a task will require. If a student cannot do this he or she will soon become unmotivated and will fail to complete the learning task.

If you want to help your child learn, help him or her understand how much effort they will have to spend doing things. If you play the lottery and expect to get everything you want with little effort, think about what your child is learning from you. Play the lottery by all means, but don’t count on winning to solve all your problems!

The BC Business Council highlighted the lack of school readiness as one of the major economic issues of our time. Virginia Green, the person I heard on the radio talking about this, said that when children are not ready to learn they miss out on their education and then find it difficult to get good jobs and contribute to the economy of the Province.

It makes sense. If teachers have to spend time helping children develop the basic skills they need to help them learn they are going to be spending less time on actually teaching them what they need to learn.

What I don’t altogether agree with is that the problem is caused mainly by parents not being able to spend time with their children because, in the present economy, both parents need to work full time to make ends meet. I know that finding time to spend with their children is a problem for some parents but I think that an even greater problem is that parents are not sure of their role in helping their children get ready to learn.

Too often parents try to help their children develop school-type learning rather than the basic readiness skills children need, readiness skills such as language, confidence, and curiosity.

Why do parents do this?

My research pointed to are several reasons:

1. Parents tend to value ’school learning’ over ‘home learning’
2. They do not understand the special role they play in helping children learn
3. They do not have the information they need to be able to help their children develop these skills.

So, although making sure that parents spend more time with their children does not necessarily mean that the same children will be ready to learn when they start school.

Parents need to know what to do in the time they have with their child, how to lead their child to learning (now you know where my business name came from!)

If you want to know more check out my articles, click on the blue Ezine logo on the left to access them.

The hockey playoffs have started and someone in our house (not me!) is glued to the TV whenever a game is broadcast. For those of you who don’t know, each game is made up of three periods of 20 minutes or so with two breaks of 15 minutes. I am really good at getting dinner on the table the moment that the sound goes for the end of a period. This is not as simple as it seems because of stoppages for penalties, goals, fights etc. The timing has to be carefully judged, it is important to get it right.

While clearing up last night (my husband cooks and clears on non hockey nights!), I started thinking about how important tit is to get the timing right when helping children learn. Children learn at their own pace but sometimes they need a nudge to hurry up and sometimes they need to be reminded to slow down and think about how they are learning. As a teacher I was pretty good at knowing how and when to do this. But parents do not have the experience of working with many children and understanding when a child needs to be nudged and when he needs to slow down.

This is unfortunate because it leads to two different situations, both of them hazardous to a child’s education.

Firstly, parents who try to ‘nudge’ too hard and too often – you know, the ones that get called ‘pushy parents’- may make learning so stressful for their child that he begins to hate having to learn and is so busy trying to please his parents that he never has time to think for himself. I know that parents only nudge kids in this way because the want the best for them, and many parents do not even know they are causing their child to dislike learning, but it is a problem.

Secondly, when parents do not realize that they need to nudge their child the child often misses out on getting the help he or she needs. I have worked with many parents who told me that they knew there was a problem with their child’s learning in Grade 1 but it wasn’t until the child was in Grade 4 that something was done about it. By then it is almost too late. The child has missed so much learning that it can be very difficult for him or her to catch up.

Timing is important.

Don’t try and speed up your child’s learning too much and end up putting them of learning for life

and

Do get help as soon as you suspect that your child needs help. You know your child better than anyone. Trust your instincts.

If your instincts tell you that something is wrong you can contact me to find out what you can do. Everyone gets 15 minutes free consultation.

How is your timing?