Category Archives: The Child’s Mind

Did You Know Most Kids Lose a Lot of What They Recently Learned in School While on Summer Break? Teachers Call it the “Summer Slide.”

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Did You Know Most Kids Lose a Lot of What They Recently Learned in School While on Summer Break?  Teachers Call it the “Summer Slide.”

Nowhere is the adage: “If you don’t use it, you lose it” more accurate than in the case of young minds and the reason behind the “summer slide.”

In today’s Learning Curve Francie Alexander explains how you can protect your child’s learning and advancement.  Learn how you can easily prevent the “summer slide.”

Francie Alexander is Vice President and Chief Academic Officer for Scholastic Education. Francie has taught at all levels, was a district reading consultant for Pre-K through high school, and has authored professional articles for educators as well as 25 “Books Kids Can Read” for children.

In today’s Learning Curve we reveal:

  • What the “Summer Slide” is.
  • The fact that teachers typically need 4 to 6 weeks in the fall to re-teach material students have forgotten!
  • The importance of “summer reading in beating the summer slide.”
  • The wonderful treasure trove of tools and resources available at the scholastic.com website.

Learn of the many initiatives and tools Scholastic has made available to you so you can beat the “summer learning loss” and also help your child in everyday learning.

  • Scholastic Summer Challenge a program where students can win prizes by logging their reading minutes online or using a new mobile app. called The Scholastic Reading Timer.
  • Scholastic Reading Timer kids can set personal reading goals, using the built-in stopwatch to reach their target number of reading minutes.
  • Storia® is a free eReading app specifically designed to support kids’ reading
  • Sushi Monster, Scholastic‘s newest free math fact fluency game available on the iPad.
  • Summer book packs for all age groups.

Get tips for parents from Francie on how to keep kids learning over the summer

For teachers, the Scholastic website is an equally wonderful resource.  Their website has been set up to serve as the content and e-Commerce hub for everything a teacher needs most for use in the classroom.  Each week, more than 1.6 million visitors to Scholastic.com access over 100,000 pages of free content and teaching resources.

This show is one of the most enjoyable Roger & Virginia has done on the Learning Curve.  And the material it makes available to parents, teachers and students is truly valuable and quite amazing.

Scholastic, Inc., is a publishing and educational industry service company whose mission is stated as:

“The corporate mission of Scholastic is to encourage the intellectual and personal growth of all children, beginning with literacy, the cornerstone of all learning. With more than 90 years of experience supporting the learning lives of children, today Scholastic remains committed to providing quality, engaging educational content in digital and print formats for the next generation of learners, and the families and educators who guide them.”

But the big surprise to Roger is that Scholastic are also the people behind bringing the Harry Potter series to America!  So it’s not all serious academics at Scholastic.

 

Click her to listen to:  June 11, 2012 Francie Alexander

Roger and Virginia at The Learning Curve.

 

How Do You Recognize if Your Child is Having Difficulty in School Early Enough to Properly Help? What to Do and How Do You Find the Help You Need?

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The Learning Curve March 5, 2012 Dean Larson

How Do You Recognize if Your Child is Having Difficulty in School Early Enough to Properly Help?  What to Do and How Do You Find the Help You Need?

Too often parents fail to recognize their child is having difficulty and by the time they spot it, too much damage and loss has occurred.

Even when parents are astute enough to recognize the struggling student in their child, they still have the problem of what to do to help and where to go to get proper professional help.

Today, on The Learning Curve with Roger & Virginia, we have the return of Dean Larson, Director of Access for Knowledge Learning Centers.

Dean has a wealth of experience in both preventing student difficulty in his own students and remedying the struggling conditions of students brought to him.

Hear Dean describe how you would first observe, and then proceed to handle, indications of your child having difficulty at school.

His first, critical word of advice is that a parent must stand back and examine the facts of the situation . . . don’t dub-in emotion or opinion.

Look for trends in grades and behavior; a change in friends and a change towards the family.

Write down only the facts.  Just gather data.

You must use “reflective listening” with your child—you must ask, and listen: not tell and assert your belief.

Kids don’t have enough life experience to yet be able to understand all the emotions and feelings they go through.

You’ll hear Dean explain how all this is done, and give you the key question to be asked:

  • What are the possibilities of change?
  • Are there medical conditions (hearing, eyesight, biochemical) behind the trouble?
  • What about tutoring services?  How do you evaluate the options?

Dean brilliantly and clearly answers all these questions . . . .

 

Click here to listen  Dean Larson 3-5-12 redo of e too large 

Imagine a parenting technique that doesn’t tell you what to do, but teaches the art of self discovery that can be implemented with your child for its benefit.

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The Learning Curve February 20, 2012 Socratic Parenting

Imagine a parenting technique that doesn’t tell you what to do, but teaches the art of self discovery that can be implemented with your child for its benefit.

The big question parents should be asking is: when it works, why is it working; and if it doesn’t work, why not?

Our guest today with Roger and Virginia on The Learning Curve is Laurie Gray, the founder of Socratic Parenting.  Laurie’s experience includes having been a high school teacher, a civil and criminal trial attorney and author of young adult literature.  Currently she writes, speaks and consults through Socratic Parenting LLC as well as working as a child forensic interviewer and as a College Professor.

What would happen of you used “open inquiry” questions with your child instead of telling and indoctrinating?  Would it lead to greater self discovery and appreciation of truth?

Socrates is said to have stated: I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.

Only the practice of “open inquiry” opens the mind for thinking.

Many wise educators have deplored the current educational system’s practice of treating kids as sponges to be filled with the attempt to wring them dry at exam time.  It is an unwise parenting practice also.

As Laurie explains, there is nothing more useless than a mind filled with others’ thoughts.

Hear Laurie explain the principles of Socratic Parenting — principles such as:

  • Be aware versus beware.
  • Don’t cause a child’s life to be ruled by fear.
  • Have the child being present with interested.
  • Acknowledgement and appreciation is a very important first step.
  • Accept who your child is.
  • Appreciate the positives.
  • And much more.

 

Clock here to listen February 20, 2012 Socratic Parenting

Roger and Virginia at The Learning Curve

 

What Goes on in a Child’s Mind? What are the Keys to Childhood Successful Performance at Home and at School?

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The Learning Curve January 9, 2012 Anne Maxwell  #1

What Goes on in a Child’s Mind?  What are the Keys to Childhood Successful Performance at Home and at School?

Today’s guest is Anne Maxwell, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, and founder of The Child and Family Therapy Play Center.  She also founded the childfamilyplaytherapy.com website.

Anne has had extensive experienced dealing with “troubled,” “disabled” or “disadvantaged” children in her clinical career — but something was discovered by her: many of these disturbed or troubled children were, in actuality, highly gifted children who’d been misdiagnosed with one of the many fashionable designations used nowadays to try and fit the too sharp kids into the very dull system that is the US educational assembly-line.

Many of these kids mislabeled with any one of the acronyms ending with “D” for disorder were actually very bright youngsters driven into displaying symptoms of boredom, rebellion, disinterest or distraction due them not fitting into a system that isn’t geared to deal with exceptional talent and doesn’t know how to correctly cater to them.

These gifted kids get stressed-out because they end up feeling they are not being heard or understood . . . but who doesn’t suffer when that occurs to them!

Out of this experience Anne has developed a system of tools and game playing routines that enable all children: gifted, normal or “different” to have the best brought out in them.

In this show Anne discusses how you can “get it right” with your child.  The things you can do, the tools you can use, to help your child develop its full potential and reap the rewards in life it is due.

Learn the characteristics of a gifted child.

Learn the Three Stages of Student Decline that affect all kids, but particularly affect the gifted child in the current system.

The Federal Education Act requires that every child’s needs are to be met.  Much has been done to concentrate of the “disabled” . . . it’s time to demand the needs of the gifted child be met.

 

Click here to listen January 9, 2012 Anne Maxwell #1

Roger and Virginia at The Learning Curve

 

 

What Children Need to Learn to Read

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The Learning Curve May 23 2011

Michelle Vallene is the author of What Children Need to Learn to Read

This is a very inspiring story of what a dedicated, loving parent can accomplish, both for herself and her child.  Michelle’s daughter who is now 19 years old was the inspiration for her to start her endeavor, develop her classes, and write her book. Her daughter was very low in reading in 2nd grade so Michelle developed the reading classes and within 6 months her daughter went up 2 grade levels in reading. Her daughter is now a freshman in college working toward an English degree with an emphasis on creative writing.

Click her to listen  May 23, 2011

Her book What Children Need to Learn to Read is available on Amazon  http://www.amazon.com/What-Children-Need-Learn-READ/dp/0982285604/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1273011810&sr=1-1

Michelle has a website http://www.LearnersLane.com

Check out her Learners Lane YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/LearnersLane

Become a fan of Learners Lane on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Learners-Lane/116020068425096?ref=sgm

Follow her on Twitter: http://twitter.com/LearnersLane

For more information go to http://www.howtolearneasily.com  send any questions you have to questions@howtolearneasily.com