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Entries from November 1, 2011 - November 30, 2011

Tuesday

Nov 29 2011

Study Skills for High School Students

Tuesday, November 29, 2011 at 9:08PM Anthony Garcia, M.A

High school is a time of increasing independence and intense change, but it can be one of the most difficult times of growth for students. During these years, students must navigate an often bumpy road of conflicting priorities, peer pressure and self-induced stress. These challenges can interfere with the development of study skills, and when more students are trying to get into a good college and even considering graduate studies in high school, there is even more pressure than ever to succeed and stand out from the crowd.

Conflicting Priorities

Students who excel in sports, the arts, or another activity often have difficulties planning their time. Practices, games, meetings and rehearsals can drain both study time and energy. Students who are in high school often have difficulty prioritizing study over it comes to social relationships, such as dating, and want to avoid being labeled 'uncool' by their classmates by opting out of events.

A Full Plate

During the high school years, many students take on extra-curricular activities, which when combined with academic and family obligations, makes for a full plate. There simply are not enough hours in the day for high school students to get enough sleep, attend school, do homework and study, eat dinner with the family, do household chores, and participate in school or community organizations. On top of that, many high school students have part time jobs.

Pressure to Perform

Star students can feel intense pressure to perform, causing stress that can distract from learning good study skills. Stressing about college entrance exams can interfere with high school classes. Parents and teachers also contribute to this pressure, with emphasis placed on accomplishments in sports and other activities instead of academic success.

Importance of Study Skills

At a basic level, study skills are really time management skills. Study skills are especially important for high school students because they are coping with so much at one time, all of which can seem incredibly overwhelming. Getting a handle on school through work on study strategies is crucial for relieving some of that pressure and making high school students healthy and happy.

Parents, teachers, and tutors all play a role in helping high school students overcome these obstacles. At Think Tutoring, we offer a study skills program that addresses a variety study habits/skills deficits, including time management, note taking strategies, test taking techniques as well as recognizing learning styles.

Building strong study skills requires the time and effort of all involved parties, but when done well can foster a lifetime of academic success.

Anthony Garcia recently completed his graduate education in English Literature. A New Mexico native, he currently resides and writes in Seattle, Washington. He writes primarily about education, travel, literature, and American culture.

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in Study Skills

Tuesday

Nov 29 2011

Why a Reading Tutor Can Make Your Child a “Stylish” Reader

Tuesday, November 29, 2011 at 8:29PM Marlene Caroselli, Ed.D

"Stylish" Readers are Efficient Readers

You know that variety is not only the spice of life. It is also the means to appropriate action and speech. To illustrate: you would never wear cut-off jeans to a wedding. Nor would you wear a tuxedo or fancy dress to a picnic. Your wardrobe is big enough to accommodate various situations. Good readers, similarly, know how to vary their approach, depending on the nature of the material. Their “reading-tools wardrobe” allows them to accommodate and match their approach to the various types of material they encounter.

If you are working to assist your child become a more proficient reader, encourage him to spend a minute or two taking stock of the material before tackling it. For example, if it is a newspaper article, he should pay special attention to the first sentence in a paragraph. (Ninety percent of the time, that sentence contains the main idea of the paragraph.)

Reading Efficiently

Beyond looking for main ideas, efficient readers know when to skim material or read it quickly. If the material contains information they already know, skimming is appropriate. Some authors use numerous examples to illustrate a point. If the reader “gets it” with the first example, there is no need to read the next four.

Here at Think Tutoring, our reading tutors help readers recognize signal words. These words or phrases are clues to what will follow. For example, if the writer has made a particular point and then says “by contrast,” the reader knows that what will follow is different from what has gone before.

As we’ve said, there are strong parallels between reading well and writing well. If your child is developing a comparison/contrast essay, a phrase such as “by contrast” is necessary for showing the differences between two persons or two things. The word “however” indicates the writer will make a point that contrasts with one made earlier.

Finally, the best readers are attuned to the way the page is laid out. Headings (usually written in capitals or in boldface) permit the reader to recognize at a glance the main divisions in the material.

Poet Ezra Pound asserted we should read for power. That power can be enhanced through numerous web sites, such as www. readingrockets.org/ ReadingSkills .

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Wednesday

Nov 09 2011

College Readiness: Cognitive and Behavioral Skills Required

Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 6:33PM Marlene Caroselli, Ed.D

What does it take to succeed at the college level? The answer is a complex one, involving preparedness on both the cognitive and the behavioral level.

Cognitive Skills

According to David Conley ( www.aypf.org/documents/Redefining CollegeReadiness.pdf ), certain skills are more important than an extensive body of knowledge in a given field. Specifically, he says your child’s high school education, ideally, has prepared him to analyze and interpret knowledge. Additionally, it has taught him how to problem-solve and to engage in critical thinking. And, it has taught him to write well. (Conley asserts writing is, in all likelihood, the one proficiency most identified with success in college.)

study skills

Our tutors at Think Tutoring know that writing skills improve when reading skills are enhanced. Author Annie Proulx confirms the correlation when she says, “You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.” Because the two skills are so entwined, it’s easy to reinforce one while studying the other.

Parents Can Help Develop the Reading/Writing Connection

To extend the learning provided by our tutor s , you can encourage reading at home. But don’t let it be an isolated act. Before your child begins a reading assignment, fiction or non-fiction, ask her to be aware of the author’s style. You can give a few clues, such as “Notice what the author does to make the character stand out.” Or, “What did the writer do to make the material clear to you?” The answers to these questions will make your child more aware of the components of good writing.

Then discuss specifics with your child. You’ll be developing the important skill of analysis (cited by Conley as a college-readiness skill). As you and your child identify, for example, the use of adjectives in character development or the use of examples in expository writing, you’ll be strengthening awareness of what good writing is by analyzing reading material.

Behavioral Skills

Conley also notes time management as one of the most vital behavioral skills related to success in college. Here’s an excellent method of organizing your child’s time…one that you can implement today so he’ll make it a habit by the time he’s walking the halls of higher learning in college.

Devote one and a half hours for assignments due in the next few days.
Devote one and a half hours for assignments due next week.
Devote one half hour for assignments due next month.
Devote fifteen minutes for assignments due before the semester ends.
Devote left-over minutes for requirements you must getdone before the year ends.

Finally, refusing to procrastinate is a behavioral skill employed by the most successful college students. This reminder by Mark Twain will help encourage the don’t-postpone behavior: “If you have to swallow a frog, don’t stare at it too long!”

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in College Readiness , Study Skills , Writing

Thursday

Nov 03 2011

Inspire Your Child to Learn: The Art of Questioning

Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 1:53PM Christy Morris

LEARNING TO LEARN

language arts tutor Your child has been learning from the moment he was delivered into this world. But there are always new things to learn. And, better ways to actually do the learning. Our ThinkTutoring teachers keep abreast of developments in the field. They are aware of the statistics: As many as 40% of college freshmen are taking at least one remedial course. And, according to recent research , the earlier you can develop a “yearning for learning,” the better your child’s chances for future scholastic success.

If your child has experienced some difficulty acquiring new knowledge, there are things you, and we, can do to facilitate the learning experience. For example, study groups have been around for a long time. If your child has not yet formed one, why not suggest that possibility to him? Find a few others in his class and make arrangements for study dates, particularly when big exams are coming up.

Each member of the study group, of course, is expected to contribute and to fulfill commitments. Those commitments might include being on time, bringing the necessary materials, having read the material assigned, et cetera. Commitment also means working to make the material meaningful—for himself and for the group. The more relevance it has, the easier it is for students to recall and retrieve that information when necessary.

GOT TEN SECONDS?

One of the ways your child can intensify the learning experience—whether she is working alone or as part of a study group—is to ask questions. Some questions, of course, can be answered immediately. Others--especially those dependent on internalizing and then analyzing deep knowledge—make take much longer. As a “questioner,” your child should be aware of the nature of questions…and the kinds of answers they elicit. There’s a caution author Norman Mailer issues: “There’s this faculty in the human mind that hates any question that take more than ten seconds to answer.”

The automatic-response question will probably yield an answer that does not dig deeply into the material. Quick questions usually yield quick answers, which have some value. The more complex questions, of course, elicit more sophisticated replies.

Help your child understand the art, as well as the science, of questioning. There are questions that logical people answer directly. For example, ask a fact-prone individual, “How do you get to heaven?” and you are likely to get an answer that basically says, “Do good deeds.”

But, ask someone with a more creative bent and you are likely to get answers like these to that very same question:

“You have to take the God elevator.”

“You need God magic for that.”

“You go to hell and take a left.”

Know, as we do at Think Tutoring, that well-posed questions are integral to the learning process. Have your child start asking questions and learning to learn at Think Tutoring by calling 973-593-0050.

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in College Readiness , Learning Styles