Trying to determine if a
book is the right level for your child?
Teach your child how to use the "Five-Finger
Rule" to guide the difficulty level of their
book choice. Have your child read about
100 words in a book and raise one finger for
every word they can't read. If they
raise more than five fingers, the book is
probably too hard.
October 31, 2011
Are you wondering what
to do with all your kid's Halloween candy?
Have your children sort by candy type or color
on the wrapper. Have them group candy in
groups of 5's or 10's and count by 5 or 10 as
high as they can count. Using candy is a
fun and exciting way to practice simple math
skills such as skip counting, adding, and
grouping.
October 10, 2011
Specific approval and praise makes us want to repeat the behavior. For example say something like, “I was so proud of the way you sat right down and got your spelling done yesterday! You didn't get distracted even once! That was awesome! Do you think you can do that again today?” Be sure to recognize even small successes.
October 3, 2011
Create a designated homework time. After all, humans are creatures of habit. If it's "what we always do," pretty soon, no one expects anything different. If your child doesn’t have homework one night, study for upcoming tests, work on long-term assignments, do free-reading, or write in a journal.
May 3rd, 2011
As an educator, I have always
heard how important early experiences are to
higher learning skills. I recently read
research that only confirmed what I have been
told. Here are three statistics that really
stood out to me.
First, a study done by the American Educational Research Association shows that a student who can’t read on grade level by third grade is four times less likely to graduate by age 19 than a child who does read proficiently by that time.
Second, the National Institutes of Health states that 95 percent of poor readers can be brought up to grade level if they receive effective help early. The research shows that if a student receives help by first grade, 90 percent will achieve grade level in reading. If the help is delayed to age nine or later, 75 percent of students will continue to struggle, meaning that figure drops from a 90 percent success rate to a 25 percent success rate.
In the past, I might have told parents to give their child some time to catch up, that reading slightly below their grade level was no cause for alarm. However, the final piece of research compels me to tell parents that early help is the best. It is this: If help is given in fourth grade rather than in early first grade, it will take four times as long to improve the same skills by the same amount.
Don’t get me wrong, it is never too late to improve someone’s reading skills. At Lec, we have worked with adults as old as fifty with great success. However, if reading and comprehension skills can be improved in early childhood, wouldn’t that be so much better?
Written by Christina Carson
I was watching a TV show recently and one of the characters said, “All I really want is for my child to have the ability to choose what he wants to do.” I got to thinking about this. I hear this often at the center. Many parents are worried that their child’s learning difficulties will prevent him from being able to choose what he will do later in life. It can be as simple as what classes he will take in high school, or as important as what type of employment he will have.
One of my first students wanted to go into the military after high school. However, the military will not accept someone who has been on attention medicine beyond a certain age as it is considered a controlled substance. He wanted to stop his medicine and improve his grades. He worked with us for about 5 months. He was able to stop taking his medicine and he began making A- B- honor roll. He came and saw me a few years ago. He had graduated with honors and was going to boot camp later that month.
That is one of the best things about what we do at LEC. Not only do we equip students with stronger processing skills, we get to see the opportunities open up to them.
