A Fresh Start

The first week back to school after the holidays is always a tough transition for students. However, the break can also offer a period of revitalization and provide the fresh start so many students need after a long, tough marking period.

These easy steps can help any student jumpstart their new year.

1. Backpack Purge – A student’s backpack is notorious as a deep dark abyss. Who knows what over-ripe, half-eaten, treasures lurk in the far reaches of canvas after four months of continued use. Setting aside one hour to turn a backpack inside out and giving it a good cleaning (often in the washing machine) will not only return it to a hygienic state but will probably also turn up a missing library book or two.

2. New Calendar – Using a calendar as a visual representation of time is always helpful. At the beginning of each month it can be helpful to sit down with a student and fill in all known upcoming events such as extra-curricular activities, vacations, family occasions, long term projects, and exams. The process can often lay the groundwork for improved time management, especially when the calendar is re-visited often.

3. Organize Binders – Even the most organized students struggle to keep their binders organized under the stress of daily handouts, homework and flyers. The tell-tale sign of a bulging front pocket about to burst under the stress of dozens of worksheets is always a good indicator that a binder purge is overdue. A home filing system using colorful folders can be very helpful for those students who are wary of cleaning out their binders because they are unsure of which papers will be necessary later in the year. This way work can be saved by subject at home until they are certain it is unnecessary.

4. Set Goals – New Year resolutions are not just for adults, with half of the school year complete, students are often in a good position to set realistic goals for themselves. They should be aware of goal setting and encouraged to ponder their aspirations for a few days before committing to them aloud. By identifying steps for achievement and planning for potential challenges these goals are more likely to be reached.

You Don’t Need Luck

Call me neurotic but the phrase “good luck” has never done much good for my psyche. Although I appreciate the good intentions embedded in the delivery, the phrase has always generated more nerves than confidence, as though I’ll need to rely on luck in order to achieve success.  As it turns out, I’m not alone. A belief in luck has been found to undermine students’ academic performance.

After decades of research, we now know that students have theories about why they succeed or fail and these theories provide important insights into their behaviors in the classroom.

Students who feel that both their successes and failures are the result of causes within their control, like the amount effort they exerted on a problem or the extent to which they studied for a test, are likely to demonstrate high levels of motivation, engagement and persistence. In contrast, students who report that the reasons for their success and failure are out of their control, rather the result of the actions of their teacher or due to luck, are more likely to behave in a helpless manner, reducing effort, strategy use and motivation in the face of a challenge.

Yet even with this information in our educational arsenal, the phrase “good luck” still prevails as the dominant expression of encouragement lfor students facing a challenge.

There seem to be two reasons why the term is so pervasive. First, luck does have some role in student success. Consider the spelling bee contestant who receives one of the 500 words she’s been studying as the contest tie breaker, luck is certainly central to her success and our hope, as educators, is that hard working students will always have luck on their side. But the second reason for the phrase’s popularity is that there is no sufficient alternative. Although expressions like “good effort” or “show how hard you’ve worked” don’t quite have the same ring to them as the original, it may be worth expanding our encouragement repertoire to include phrases that emphasize the power students have over their own future.

The Language of Food

Sometimes there is no better place to engage a child then in the kitchen. Reading recipes aloud not only improves decoding skills but also provides an opportunity to improve children’s abilities to follow directions, expand their vocabulary, and strengthen their memory.  Following a recipe can be particularly effective for children with language based learning disabilities. They often struggle with directions that are only delivered in an oral manner. Learning opportunities that couple oral directions with visual and tactile experiences are more likely to ensure the successful encoding and retrieval of memories. Overall, there is nothing better than ending an afternoon of hard work, and hard thinking, with a scrumptious dessert.

Here are some recommendations for how to build a child’s memory and vocabulary while creating a whimsical “dirt cake”.

Ingredients

1 package of Oreo cookies	1 pkg of instant chocolate pudding	1 1/2 cups of milk
1 small container of Cool Whip	6 gummy worms

Tools

Rolling pin	Large plastic bag	Mixing bowl
Spatula	Measuring cup	Flower pot
Mixing spoon	Aluminum foil	Toothpicks

Directions

1. First place cookies in plastic bag, seal and crush with rolling pin until cookies are crumbs.

2. Next mix pudding with 1 ½ cups of milk in mixing bowl, and stir spoon until smooth.

3. Fold Cool whip into pudding with spatula.

4. Line inside of flower pot with aluminum foil.

5. Put ½ cookie crumbs on bottom of flower pot.

6. Place pudding over layer of crumbs.

7. Top with remaining crumbs.

8. Poke holes with toothpick and place 6 gummy worms in dirt.

9. Last, put cake in refrigerator until cold.

Answer these questions about how you made the Dirt Cake.

1. What was the first thing you did with the cookies?	2. Where did the milk go?
3. How many containers of cool whip were mixed into the pudding?	4. What tool did you use to fold in the pudding?
5. Where did ½ of the cookie crumbs go?	6. The rest of the crumbs were put on the _____.
7. Where did you dig holes?	8. What was the last thing that you did with the cake?

To Edit or Not To Edit

One of the most arduous tasks a writing tutor faces is getting children to edit their work. Although many students have been taught the  role of editing in the writing process from an early age, it does not make the act of taking one last look over their work any easier. Perhaps it is our perfectionist tendencies that dread finding mistakes. On the other hand, it maybe that we like time to revel in the feelings of  relief  associated with writing the last line of an assignment. The glory of putting the pencil down and exhaling “finished” is quickly dashed when you need to pick it back up and read over the assignment again looking for errors.

In our work with school age children, we have found that a few simple adjustments to the editing process makes the experience a bit more palatable to most students:

1. Take a Break – Almost all writers will agree that it is necessary to take a break from a piece writing before returning to edit your work. Fresh eyes will catch more mistakes than tired ones.

2. Read it Aloud – Asking students to read aloud their work will not only help them discover spelling and grammatical errors but it gives them a sense of how their writing flows. An assignment that is choppy or too wordy would probably benefit from short, concise sentences and/or the insertion of transitional words.

3. Baby Steps – Many students become overwhelmed by the process of editing because there are too many elements to keep track of. In order to simplify the process, younger students can focus on the basic principles of proof-reading, often represented by the acronym C.O.P.S (capitalization,  overall appearance, punctuation, spelling), while older students can also edit the structure of their paragraphs or entire essays. If a student tends to make the same mistake repeatedly (for example, mis-spelling complex words like necessarily, or conveniently) s/he should always be mindful of checking.

4. Put on the Editor Hat – In the professional world editing is a designated profession filled with individuals with a cultivated skill set. Being an editor is special, you have the final word on how a piece of writing  will be presented and often hold executive power in a organization. By making students aware of the power of an editor, and perhaps even giving them a prop, like an editors hat or special pen, teachers and parents can make the experience qualitatively different.

Time Management Aids

Timers are not for every student, but in my experience they have been incredibly helpful for estimating how long a task will take, completing an assignment in a timely manner and preventing procrastination. I have a variety of timers I like to use depending on the needs of the student and the type of assignment s/he is attempting to accomplish.

The Timers (clockwise from top left):

1. Reading light & timer – Set up to 90 minutes of reading time, after which, the light will turn off automatically. Great for younger children who are required to complete a certain amount of reading each night or older students who tend to fall asleep while reading, www.smarthome.com ($15.99).

2. Time Timer – This product is a fantastic visual representation of the amount of time allotted for any given task, www.timetimer.com ($30.00).

3. Sand Timer – A great source of false pressure, sand timers can motivate children to try and accomplish as much as in a limited amount of time.

4. Time Tracker – A fun product for younger children, the green, yellow and red sections can be programmed with sound effects to indicate that time is running out, www.target.com ($39.95).

5. Egg Timer – Another good source of false pressure for those students who struggle with procrastination and perform better when provided with a sense of urgency.

Sunday Night Dread

Many children and adults alike grapple with the classic anguish of Sunday nights; the freedom of the weekend is slipping away and thoughts of the new week loom. Sunday nights can be a particularly stressful time for students who want to enjoy every possible moment of the weekend and “save” their assignments for the last minute. As most parents and students realize saving assignments not only aids stress to an often tense evening but often results in incomplete or poorly executed work.

Here are a few suggestions that I and the families I work with have found as helpful ways to break the cycle and transform Sunday evenings into a pleasurable time:

• Create a Homework Plan Early

Parents and children should sit down on Friday afternoon or evening to create a weekend homework schedule. Spreading out the work over the course of two days and trying to accomplish as much as possible Sat & Sun mornings can not only significantly lessen the blow, but also allows time for purchasing supplies or trips to the library as necessary.

• Systematically Relinquish Control

Creating a structure schedule for homework completion which children know they will be held accountable for can be highly effective strategy for preventing procrastination. However, working under constant monitoring can seem stifling to most students. Since it is highly unlikely that parents will provide homework supervision throughout their child’s academic career and it is in the student’s best interest to engage in self-monitoring it is important to create a compromise. The most effective type of compromise is one in which both members are clear about their responsibilities. For instance, a contract that clearly states parent and child will work together to create a weekend homework schedule for 4 weeks, and then the child will be given the freedom to create his/her own weekend schedule but cannot save all homework until Sunday night and if all homework is saved for Sunday night the 4 week cycle will begin again. A parent who systematically relinquishes control of the weekend homework plan as his/her child can demonstrate the independent ability to be proactive about assignments, will provide an healthy foundation for planning and time management.

• Replace Negative Associations with Positive Ones

Creating an enjoyable Sunday Night ritual can not only replace negative end of weekend associations but it can also provide the motivation to complete work ahead of time. Utilizing the evening as a time to gather as a family to engage in a relaxing activity like having a movie night complete with popcorn and tickets, playing a game or talking a walk for ice-cream can provide a tranquil transition from the weekend to the new week.