Ways To Help Your Child
How can I help my child at home? That is the question most asked of a teacher by interested parents. Here are some suggestions that may be of help to you:
When booklets and papers are brought home, look at them; comment on them; go over them with your child. Show genuine interest in the work. This communicates the idea that education is important and encourages your children to do well in school.
Talk with your children about school and everyday events.
See that your child gets plenty of sleep. Encourages exercise and good nutrition.
Monitor TV programs. TV can be instructional and also relaxing in proper doses at the proper time. Talk with them about the programs they watch. Turn off the TV during meals to facilitate conversation.
Encourage your child to do homework as early in the afternoon or evening as possible.
Provide a quiet, well lit study area for your child. Set up a desk, table or area designated for study, not far from the other family members. Remember to provide materials such as pens, pencils, pencil sharpener, paper, dictionary, ruler, crayons, glue stick and scissors.
Take an active interest in your child's schoolwork. Keep up with your child when he/she has a test and needs to study.
Orally quiz your child to help him/her prepare for a test.
If your child has trouble understanding something, try to help.
Be aware of numerous study strategies, such as flash cards, that can be shared with your child.
Provide learning experiences outside of school. Parks, museums, libraries, zoos, historical sites, and family games offer good learning experiences.
Reading: What parents, guardians, and other concerned adults can do to help students improve in reading back to top
By Anne Chapman, Dean of Western Reserve Academy
"All through school and for years after school, parents continue to teach their children." --Gilbert Highet
1. Recognize that reading with understanding is an ability youngsters can be helped to develop over time, and that is important to their success across the curriculum in school, college, and also in later life. The best way to help readers improve their understanding of what they read is to have people in the home and at school get together and exchange ideas about what to do and how to do it, and then be consistent in doing it.
2. Get youngsters to read as much as possible, and as many different kinds of written materials as possible. The more youngsters know about the more different kinds of things, the better the chances that they will be able to make sense of any particular reading. Anyone is more likely to want to read what they have chosen themselves. So try to give youngsters choices, while making sure that their reading varies in level of difficulty, length, subject matter, genre, style. You might try presenting them with several options, and asking them to choose one of them. You can also recommend to youngsters readings that are related or similar to ones you know they enjoy, or that are about subjects you know they are interested in, or that shed new light on topics they deal with in class. Consider enlisting a librarian's help, or look at one of the book-lists that give a description of the books presented.
3. Expose youngsters to reading matter written by, and about, people from a variety of cultural backgrounds, both women and men. This will be easier in some circumstances than others. But if you are on the lookout for such materials and for opportunities to use them, there are many more of both then you might think. This is true in fields as varied as current events, sports, career-related information, literature, history, the arts. mathematics and science.
4. In talking with youngsters, broaden their horizons by discussing information, and giving examples, illustrative incidents or anecdotes drawn from various perspectives. Alert them to ways in which people are similar, but also different due to class, culture, gender, race, religion, nationality and so on. Challenge them to look at events and ideas from different points of view, and to consider how their experience and their attitude to it would be different if they stood, figuratively, in someone else's moccasins.
5. Put learners into situations where they have to generate, explains, elaborate on information.
6. Get youngsters to participate more actively in their own learning.
7. Occasionally, observe the youngsters you want to help as they read. Do so for some extended period: perhaps fifteen minutes or so.
...backtrack?
...look ahead?
...change how fast they read?
...subvocalize?
...take notes?
...if permitted, do they underline/highlight on the average about 10-15 per cent per page, when the reading is difficult or they are studying rather than just reading? Does what they have underlined make sense if read without looking at the rest of the text?
...Write comments in margins, when allowed to?
All the above can help readers to make sense of difficult text.
Good readers need to be able to vary their reading speed according to what they want to get out of the reading. The following figures give some approximate guidance to what might be looked for from individuals readers. (Estimates of different researchers vary, but the ball park ranges given are consistent.)
Average reading speeds are...
...for 6th graders, about 185 words per minute
...for 9th graders, about 214 words per minute
...for 12 graders and college students, about 250 words per minute
...for scanning, 1000 words per minute or more (can locate specific information)
...for skimming, about 500-1500 words per minute (can form a general impression of main points)
...for "close reading," 100-800 words per minute (can understand most of the content read, and store it in memory for later use. Comprehension scores of about 70-89% have been recorded at the 400-800 rate.)
...for "critical reading." 50 to 300 words per minute (can form well-reasoned judgments and analyze the reading's significance as well as understand it at the 80-90% level.
Some conscientious or slow readers can benefit from being given adult permission to skip the boring parts, to read the end first, to dip into the reading here and there rather than starting at page one and grimly chewing their way through every word. These youngsters also need some advice about the circumstances when it is appropriate to treat a reading with more, or less, care.
8. Try to avoid criticizing, nagging, or scolding youngsters about their reading habits, and don't use reading activities as threats o. punishments. Anything that results in unpleasant associations with reading will have bad effects on both the willingness to read, and on the ability to do so successfully.
9. Help youngsters to see mistakes as bases for learning. By the way you react to their mistakes, you can play a very important role in learners' success. Youngsters often "feel dumb when they make a mistake or do not understand, and adult reactions may contribute to this. Unfortunately, when they feel dumb, they very often act dumb. As a result, improvement is slowed or blocked. A mistake should be treated as clue, not as a fault. It is a signpost that points to the learning that needs to be done. Mistakes are negative only if they go uncorrected .
Would-be critical readers need to know how to find their mistakes, and how to deal with mistakes once found. Adults can help by encouraging readers to monitor their own understanding and to use the appropriate fix-up strategies when they run into trouble. It also helps to show faith in readers' ability to find and deal with mistakes, and give them praise as they do so. Adults in and out of school can remind readers to keep a mental eye as it were on how they are doing with understanding all the time as they are reading. They can also give a reminder that readers are not helpless, but have various strategies they can use to shore up understanding if necessary.
10. When talking with youngsters about their successes or failures, stress the part played by those things they have some control over. Examples might be how carefully they allowed directions, how much time they spent, how well they concentrated, whether they used the appropriate strategies. Don't leave them with the belief often held by youngsters that their successes were due to luck, and their failures to lack of ability. If they go on believing this, there will be no reason for them to put much effort into trying to improve. After a failure, remind them that as its result they now have valuable clues about what they need to do to improve, and make sure they do it. Give them the opportunity to show themselves as well as you that what they have done did result in improvement. Encourage them, if necessary, to go back and try some other path to improvement if necessary, and reward them with approval, praise, or other means for showing the grit it took to keep going.
Author: Anne Chapman. Selection from Making Sense: Critical Reading Across the Curriculum, reprinted with permission from NY: The College Board, 1993.
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