Helping Students to Record and Turn in Assignments

Recording assignments and turning in the finished product may seem like a “no brainer” for many teachers, but did you know that executive functioning, a key cognitive component in planning and organizing, is not fully developed until many reach their early 20s?  What’s more, many young students are not allowed to use modern technologies, such as smart phones and Ipads while at school to help them with this process.  Furthermore, many students are overwhelmed by the countless distractions in a busy classroom and miss what appear to be clear directives.  So, what can we do to help students remember to record as well as turn in assignments? 

Create a Structured, Reliable Classroom Routine:

   1)   Plan assignments for the whole week.  This will save a lot of time and trouble for everyone.

   2)   Post assignments and reminders at the beginning of class in a location that is easy to see. 

   3)   Review new assignments as well as those that are due, verbally, once everyone is settled down.

   4)   Make sure that all the students record assignments and check agendas for accuracy. 

   5)   Print assignments out onto labels that students can place into their assignment pads.  This is great for students that have graphomotor weaknesses.

   6)   Make a document or take a picture of written assignments and email it to the students and students’ parents with a simple email list.  

   7)   When students hand in their assignments, give them a sticker of a hand to place into their assignment pad.  This way they will know that they turned it in. 

   8)   To make sure everyone turned in their assignments say, “Raise your hand if you turned in your assignment.”  Be specific about which assignment and hold up a sample for all the students to see.

Offer a Consistent and Planned Approach for Missed Class Work and Assignments:

   1)   Post assignments on the internet.  However, do not use this approach unless the site is reliable and you can always post the assignments before the end of the school day.

   2)   Require that each of your students share their contact information with at least 5 other students (Study Buddies).  This way students can contact one another as needed. 

   3)   Suggest a plan for how and when students can make up the work.

   4)   Email assignments to students and their parents.

   5)   Allow students to email you finished assignments when they are not able to attend class. 

   6)   Communicate all missed work with students, parents and any service providers.

If you are looking for structured ways to help your students with planning, organizing and time management, consider purchasing Planning, Time Management and Organization for Success.  It offers over 100 pages of graphic organizers and handouts that can help your students with reading, writing, test prep, planning for long term assignments, memory, active learning, motivation and more.  Click here or on the image to learn more.

Cheers, Erica
Dr. Erica Warren is the author, illustrator and publisher of multisensory educational materials at Good Sensory Learning and Dyslexia Materials.  She is also the director of Learning to Learn, in Ossining, NY.  To learn more about her products and services, you can go to www.goodsensorylearning.com  www.dyslexiamaterials.com and  www.learningtolearn.biz 

Academic Support for Students with Learning Disabilities: Affordable Options

Just today, I wrote a post on my community blog that addresses the question, How Can I Afford Academic Support for My Child with Learning Disabilities?  Click on the title above or on the image, so you too can benefit from the information.  I would love to hear your thoughts!!

Cheers, Erica

10 Strategies that Transform Passive Learners into Active Learners

Students’ forearms prop heavy heads and eye lids become fatigued and weighty. Information fills the room, but the restless audience remains impervious as attention is stolen by fleeting thoughts and boredom.  If this is a common scene at your school, most likely the learning environment is passive.  Although a passive learning environment can accommodate large numbers of students, it is often an ineffective scholastic milieu.  In contrast, an active learning environment should have the opposite effect on students.  This way of teaching encourages creativity, self directed learning, mindfulness, interaction, discussion and multisensory ways of processing. 

So what can I do to nurture active learning?

1)   Help your students understand the difference between active and passive learning.

2)   Encourage your students to complete the free Passive vs. Active Learning Profile offered free here.

3)   Let your students brainstorm things they can do to become active learners. 

4)   Allow your students to brainstorm things you can do to help them become active learners.

5)   Integrate active learning activities into the classroom such as acting, small group work and hands on activities.

6)   Incorporate fun learning stations in the classroom, so that the students can move around and process with other peers in smaller groups.

7)   Encourage students to preview new topics by watching YouTube clips or doing internet searches so that they come to class with some prior knowledge.

8)   Give students assignment options so that they can make a choice on how they would like to demonstrate their mastery of the content.  Make sure the different options tap into different learning modalities. 

9)   Consider the 12 ways of learning and teach in a multisensory fashion.

10)  Break the class into groups where they take opposing positions on a topic.  Allow one student from each group to facilitate the discussion.  The teacher can act as the judge and can dole out points for good arguments, creative content and clever presentations. 

If you found this blog and activity to be helpful, this is just one of the many resources available in the publication, Planning, Time Management and Organization for Success: Quick and Easy Approaches to Mastering Executive Functioning Skills for Students. 

Cheers,  Erica
Dr. Erica Warren is the author, illustrator and publisher of multisensory educational materials at Good Sensory Learning and Dyslexia Materials.  She is also the director of Learning to Learn, in Ossining, NY.  To learn more about her products and services, you can go to www.goodsensorylearning.com  www.dyslexiamaterials.com and  www.learningtolearn.biz 

The Difference between a Tutor, Learning Specialist and an Educational Therapist: Choosing Your Best Option

Is your child struggling in school?  Are you considering outside help, but you just don’t know where to start?  Finding the right individual to work with your child is often a difficult task.  What’s more, it’s challenging to determine the type of professional that is required.  To help you with the process, here is a breakdown of the responsibilities and expertise you should expect from these three professions. 

Tutor:

A tutor is a private instructor that has an expertise in a specific school subject.  They teach or re-teach classroom concepts, and they may or may not have formal experience or training in education.  Many offer assistance with homework, and some can offer advice with time management or study skills. 

Learning Specialist:

A learning specialist is a private instructor for students, parents, and teachers.  They focus on metacognitive as well as compensatory learning strategies.  Many also offer instruction, training and remediation in specific academic areas such as reading, writing or math.  A learning specialist should have advanced training and degrees in education and significant coursework, if not degrees in special education, psychology, school psychology, educational psychology, and neuropsychology.  Specific understanding of learning disorders, psycho-educational evaluations, and intervention strategies is paramount.  An expertise in multisensory learning, alternative learning and teaching strategies, self advocacy techniques, and schooling accommodations is a must too.  In addition, they should be versed in assistive technology, software tools, educational websites and apps. 

Educational Therapist

An educational therapist is a private instructor for students and other individuals that wish to improve their mental functioning.  They too offer metacognitive and compensatory learning strategies but also include cognitive remedial training.  This involves strengthening specific areas of cognition that are weak, such as auditory discrimination or visual memory.  Moreover, the educational therapist should be versed in strategies that address social and emotional aspects that impact learning.  Many also have an expertise in working with students who struggle with executive functioning as well as attentional difficulties.  Like the learning specialist, educational therapists have degrees in education and significant coursework, if not a degree, in special education, psychology, school psychology, educational psychology, and neuropsychology.  Specific training in learning disorders, psycho-educational evaluations, and interventions strategies is vital.

What's most important is that you speak with each professional to learn more about their approach and educational training.  If you have any questions, I would love to here your thoughts!

If you are interested in purchasing learning specialist / educational therapist materials, go to: www.goodsensorylearning.com

Cheers,

Erica

Dr. Erica Warren, Learning Specialist and Educational Therapist

www.learningtolearn.biz

www.goodsensorylearning.com

Motivating Strategies for Reluctant Readers

I just wrote a blog that offers strategies that motivate reluctant readers.  Come check it out on my new community blog (Westchester Professionals for Community Empowerment) that offers free advice from the top professionals in Westchester, New York.  CLICK HERE

Cheers, Erica

Help for Struggling Readers

Many students struggle with the cognitive skills needed to be good readers.  With weak abilities in the areas of visualization, tracking, visual processing, auditory processing and/or memory, the practice of reading can soon become, frustrating, tiresome and laborious.  When kids pair negative associations and feelings with books, they may avoid picking up a book altogether.   For the same reason that you would not build a sky scraper on a weak foundation, for these kids, it is important to strengthen the individual areas of cognition first.   Many of these skills can be developed through game like activities that kids enjoy.    Here are a few ideas that you might like to try:

1)        When reading to your children have fun sharing your visualizations with one another by imagining what the settings and characters look like.  You can even encourage your children to come up with their own illustrations for stories.   

2)        Pull out a newspaper and encourage your child to find a specific word, such as the word the, on the page.  Encourage them to follow the words from left to right so that they are strengthening their tracking skills.  They can use their finger, a thin strip of paper or even a highlighter to keep their place.

3)        Play games such as the memory game - where students flip cards to find pairs, or get a free app like the old game Simon which strengthens visual and auditory memory.

In addition, I also offer four publications that might be helpful.  I have two visualization training PowerPoints, and I also have two workbooks titled Reversing Reversals and Reversing Reversals 2 that work on these foundational skills.  Click on the images below to learn more and download a free image of the 10 visualization skills as well as free samplings of both of my workbooks. 

Cheers, Erica

10 Ways to Help Students Cope with Making Mistakes

One of the most valuable things we can teach children is how to cope with making mistakes.  Making mistakes is a human quality that all students need be comfortable with.  They need to know that if we didn’t make mistakes, there would be nothing to learn. 

However, most all students strive for the recognition of a perfect score on assignments and tests.  Even a single mistake can create anxiety and disappointment.  Unfortunately, perfect scores continue to be rewarded and mistakes frowned upon.

So what can we all do to help?  Here are ten suggestions:

    1) Be comfortable admitting when you make a mistake.  Show students that it is okay to be wrong and that you can use it as an opportunity to learn.   

    2) Make sure to point out what a student has done right on an assignment as well as what was incorrect. 

    3) Always give your students the opportunity to fix mistakes so that they can learn from them and correct any misconceptions.

    4) Communicate to your students that their mistakes can help you to be a better teacher because it helps you to uncover the areas that need more instruction.

    5) If more than 50% of your students get a test item incorrect, throw out that item out.  For those that got it, you can offer them extra credit.  You can always then make sure to teach the concept in your next lesson and then include the item on the next test.  

    6) Thank your students for making errors and mistakes.   

    7) Instead of telling a student that they are wrong or incorrect, tell them that it was a nice try, or that they are close to the right answer and see if they can amend their response independently.  

    8)  Recognize a student’s effort and guide them to the right answer so that they can be correct.

    9) If a student provides the wrong answer, ask them why they gave you the response that they did so you can analyze their misconception.

    10) Keep a positive attitude when students make mistakes.    

     I'd love to hear your recommendations and thoughts on this matter!!

I

Careless, Lazy and Unmotivated are Three Labels that Should be Banned from Education

Kids never strive to be careless, lazy or unmotivated and referring to a student in this way never helps a situation.  In fact, many kids that hear these labels again and again can develop a sense of learned helplessness. 

I’ll never forget a student of mine coming into one of our sessions in a terrible frame exclaimed, “I’m careless and unmotivated!”  He slid a graded assignment across the table in front of me.  Red marks cut across his work and in bold, scarring letters and exclamation points the teacher had told Jake that he had made many careless errors. 

Even though Jake’s grade was an 88, it took me almost an hour to convince him that he was not careless and unmotivated. Jake had learning disabilities as well as ADHD and I knew the errors that he had made had nothing to do with care or effort.  The poor guy was so detached and dejected, he hadn’t even evaluated the mishaps, and when he finally looked at them, he could see that they were all unintentional.

 At the end of our session, I pointed out to Jake that his teacher had misspelled careless.  She had spelled it “carless.”  I exclaimed, “How careless of her,” and winked at Jake.   I then pointed out that this wasn’t really a careless mistake, it was simply an oops.  “School is a place where we should be comfortable making an oops and then learning from it,” I proclaimed. 

I took the paper out into the waiting room and showed it to his mother.  I then asked her to do me a favor and make an appointment with the teacher.  “Hand the assignment back to the teacher”, I recommended, “and point out how careless it was for her to have misspelled this word.  Then pause for a short while and say, ‘That’s how you made my son feel.’”

So please take care to erase these negative labels from your lexicon so your students can feel safe to make mistakes and then learn from them.

If you have any thoughts on this topic, I'd love to hear your thoughts!!

All the best, Dr. Erica Warren, Learning Specialist and Educational Therapist  www.goodsensorylearning.com and www.learningtolearn.biz

10 Ways to Teach Planning, Time Management and Organization

Teaching students planning, time management and organizational skills is necessary in the classroom as well as at home.  Although some find executive functioning to be quite obvious, there are those that need to learn the process.  Here are 10 recommendations:

© 2012 Good Sensory Learning

1. Provide verbal, written and even electronic reminders.
2. Let students select their preferred calendar option.  There are daily, weekly and even monthly calendars.  In addition, a calendar can be maintained on electronic devices, computers, wall charts, as well as printed planners.  
3. Offer a calm, supportive and mindful environment.
4. Avoid name calling.  Using terms like "careless" or "unmotivated" only creates negative energy, frustration and helplessness.  
5. Provide short breaks.  Schedule "unstructured time" in your daily routine.
6. Offer a structured and organized environment with clear expectations.
7. Set an example and show how you plan, manage time and organize materials.
8. Praise and reward self initiation.  In the beginning, recognize any movement in the right direction.
9. Schedule time, post routines and communicate expectations around the house or classroom.
10. Provide structure, by offering support and guidance.  In the beginning, do the process together.

Here is a free downloadable PowerPoint on the topic:http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Helping-Students-that-Struggle-with-Executive-Functioning

To learn all these strategies and more you can purchase my recent publication Planning Time Management and Organization for Success: Quick and Easy Approaches to Mastering Executive Skills for Student. 

 http://goodsensorylearning.com/planning---organizing.html

Good Sensory Learning

What is Brain Training or Brain Fitness and is it Helpful?

Brain Training or Brain Fitness is the act of strengthening deficits in learning or weak areas of cognition.  This is typically done using simple activities that concentrate on areas of difficulty.  Just like a personal trainer or physical therapist can focus exercises on a particular part of the body, many learning specialists, educational therapists and learning coaches can help individuals of all ages to improve memory, visual processing, auditory processing, attention, stamina and more. 

When instruction focuses on the area of difficulty, it’s important for the activities to be engaging and fun.  They need to start at a very simplistic level and increase in difficulty as the participants experience success.  Repeated training clears the hurtles that trip the thought processes and helps the mind run smoothly and efficiently. 

Clearly, the brain is not limited and defined.  It continues to grow, if exercised, throughout our lifetime.  Early intervention can sometimes cure or remediate learning disabilities and even diseases of the elderly such as Alzheimer’s and dementia can be avoided.  The bottom line is that it is never too late.

I am a learning specialist and educational therapist.  However,  I tell many of my clientele that I’m a personal trainer for the brain.  I help people of all ages to improve overall cognition, develop compensatory learning strategies and master optimal study skills.  I also write educational and brain training materials for learning specialists, educational therapists, teachers and coaches.

Homework Help Websites

I wanted to share a link to homework resources that I provide for my clientele. I think you will find them very helpful.  Feel free to share this page and also check back as I am continually updating the site. 
http://learningtolearn.biz/Homework_Learning_Websites.html

Top Three, Free Technology Picks for Homework Help and Test Preparation

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There is a vast sea of website and software tools washing up all around us, and staying on top of these resources can feel like an overwhelming tsunami.   I’m a learning specialist and educational therapist, and a big part of my work is to ride this colossal techno-wave so I can help my students surf the homework swells with confidence and grace.  

Here are my three favorite websites that can assist with home work help and test preparation:

1: The Khan Academy:

This is a not-for-profit organization that provides a free, high quality education to students around the world. They offer a growing collection of thousands of videos covering everything from basic arithmetic and algebra to physics, chemistry, history, SAT prep and more.  To top it off, they now have a practice/lesson component that is terrific.  This allows students to test their new knowledge, and if they get stuck, the website will walk them through the process and will even offer them the needed video tutorial!  They have built into this feature motivational tools such as avatars as well as feedback and progress summaries for parents and teachers.

http://www.khanacademy.org/

2: Quizlet:

Students can browse through and use millions of flashcards created by other students and teachers, or they can make their own.  There are numerous study options.  Students can review their flashcards electronically or in print form.  In addition, they can play games that are generated from the information entered.  Finally, students can make a multiple choice, true and false, or fill-in test with the click of the mouse.  There are even visuals and a new feature that reads the information aloud.  Students can save their flashcards, share them with others, and even merge them for midterms or finals.

http://quizlet.com/

3. Wolfram Alpha: 

Instead of searching the internet for answers, this service has its own engine that computes answers in many subject areas.  The resources on this website are growing rapidly and it already has a massive collection of knowledge.  Check it out and you will be amazed.  It’s fabulous for calculating difficult math problems, and is a great way to check homework.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/

I have many more great homework resources, links to free internet games that are great for the brain, as well as assistive technology and app advice on my private practice website, www.learningtolearn.biz 

To learn more about my own publications and educational resources, you can go to www.goodsensorylearning.com