Love Learning

Guest Post: Curriculum Selection-Picking the Perfect Titles for Your Child

Today, we're excited to have a guest post from Leah Nieman, homeschool mom and Co-founder of CurrClick.com. We love this story about one mom who learned to choose materials that met her child's unique learning needs instead of following what her friends or popular curricula suggested. 

I remember so clearly the day my daughter cried. I remember it like yesterday because I cried later that evening as well. Although that moment won’t stand out to anyone but me, it marked a turning point in our homeschool lives.

My daughter was always incredibly enthusiastic about “school work.” She’s a visual learner. I like to joke with her and say she lives solely in the right side of her brain, visiting the left side on a “needs to” basis. She was always good at math and science but those were never her favorite subjects. And she always processed them from a more artistic point of view.

This wonderful child of mine is also a perfectionist. Every coloring page was always colored with care. Each handwriting page was written beautifully with no errors. When it came to math she handled her worksheets fine, but most curriculum came with timed practice sheets. Because she processed math differently, she rarely finished these in the 2, 3, or 5 minutes allowed. This caused her great stress.

I spoke to other moms who insisted it was most important she be able to do these timed fact sheets. They weren't being judgmental at all. They were simply sharing their opinion because I asked. And, this was something that was strongly encouraged in the program they were using. My daughter knew her math facts, but I now had it in my head we really needed to work on these timed fact sheets. I feared I would put my daughter at some terrible disadvantage if we didn’t find a program that would help her learn this skill, so I began to look for resources to help. This only cause more stress for both of us. Nothing says to a child “Hey I’m really freaking out that you aren’t learning this” like hitting them with a steady stream of products one after the other-all teaching the same skill. I’m ashamed to admit at one point we had an entire section of our bookshelf filled with products all focused on this one skill! We had card games, bingo games, audio songs, triangular flashcards-you name it, we had it!

One day, after numerous attempts and countless products, I finally had my sweet daughter in tears at the kitchen table. Through her tears were words like…”I’m stupid!” and “I just can’t do math!”

None of this was true. She could do math perfectly. In fact, she was actually ahead in her math curriculum by a year. She just couldn’t spit out her math facts quickly. She was trying her hardest and still she felt like she was failing. In that moment watching her cry, I knew I had one of my biggest homeschool mom failures. I had been listening to the priorities of every other homeschool mom instead of focusing on what was best for my child. It was heartbreaking, eye opening and a big turning point in how I approached learning in our home.

I apologized to my daughter that afternoon. We talked about true education-it’s learning and there is no right or wrong way. We began approaching our days and our homeschool focusing on what was best for her. My role as her mom was to help support her and guide her so she would become a lifelong learner. It was not to crush her in the process. The same was true for my son's education. He is a very different learner, so the learning plans for both my kids turned out very different.

I’m so thankful that lesson came early in our homeschool journey. It changed the approach I took with my kids. I wanted to grow lifelong learners, but until that moment I was still stifling them. I was too busy listening to what everyone else was saying was “the best” or “the most important” educational path to see what was naturally best for my kids.

We’re entering convention season. Many of us are reading homeschool blogs, magazines, and articles. Many of us will even be heading to homeschool conventions. It’s exciting to learn about the various ways to educate our children. And, we do want to learn about what’s available in the homeschool market. We also want to seek out information and advice from the homeschool community. Our community is an awesome resource of support and we want to stay connected! But, when thinking through all the great stuff on the market, remember first your kids and their learning styles. Ask yourself is this product a fit for them? Will it work for the way they naturally learn? Is it causing tears or crushing the learning desire of my child? Then make your curriculum selections based on your answers. And, don’t ever feel trapped by something that’s not working. One benefit of homeschooling is you are always in control of your child’s curriculum. If something isn’t working, set it aside and find a product that does work and move forward. The goal is always to create lifelong learners.

 

Hi! I’m Leah Nieman. I’m a wife, homeschool mom and Co-founder of CurrClick.com. My husband and I live with our 2 children in Central, Illinois. We’ve homeschooled since 2001 and have just crossed the “homeschool finish line” with our oldest daughter. I’ve been using eCurriculum and other forms of online educational resources in our home since 2002.  I juggle family life, homeschooling and work while trying to keep it all balanced with the amazing love and support of my family. It’s somewhat of a learning curve and I find it’s always a work in progress.

What to do when your child does poorly on reading tests

A comment come in yesterday from a visitor to our website:

“My son tested and retested poorly on the d.i.b.e.l.s. testing in kindergarten and now 1st grade. I am not getting any feedback from the school as of yet. He has trouble sounding out words and recognizing sight words.”

This is a common problem for children taking DIBELS, or Fox in the Box, or whatever test is used in the particular district. And testing is coming this fall as surely as summer follows spring.

DIBELS is timed, and the goal is to see how many words the child can read in the time allowed. There is also a part of the test that requires a child to read nonsense words. Can you only imagine if a child can’t sound out real words, what she would do with words like “talp” or “smint” or “lesk”? One of the reasons we can read fluently as adults is because our brains become familiar with the patterns in words, so without actually having to look at each letter in the word, we glance and recognize the word. So for children, nonsense “words” are impossible. There is no underlying meaning tied to them.

The reason I began to design SnapWords™ back in 2000 was because I had very bright kindergarteners in my classroom who struggled to sound out words and couldn’t remember from one moment to the next the word they had just labored to figure out. Reading was a chore and a real pain for them (and for me). One word that especially stands out in my mind as causing difficulty is the word HELP. It is not a hard word, is not tricky, and is straightforward to sound out. My kindergarteners could sound it out, but if they saw the same word again on the next line of text, they didn’t remember ever seeing it. I was frustrated and so were they.

There are several reasons why my students had difficulty sounding out words and with the related issue of not recognizing words on sight.

• Many children get stuck in trying to sound everything out because that is how we traditionally teach reading. Children who struggle with holding individual sounds in their minds long enough to blend them into a word are considered to be at risk in reading. If a child believes that sounding out a word is reading, he or she will likely not move into the skill of reading a whole word all at once. HELP will always be H-E-L-P to them, no matter how often they see the word.

• Many children don’t naturally think from part to whole, so for them, to have to retain four or five sounds in their minds in the correct sequence is just plain hard. These are the children who can far more easily learn to recognize whole words and remember them easily.

• Another problem for many children is learning sight words without any visual helps. Many children just don’t look and remember, even with many repetitions of the drill. There are too many words that look similar to each other.

What can be done to help these children?

• Make sure they know their basic sounds. If they don’t know the sounds letters make, they really will be in trouble. But you can use visuals and body motion to teach this skill easily. If the child sees the letter in an image that is shaped just like the letter, learning will be easy. Then have them make the body motion that mimics the letter also.

• Introduce sight words using the same approach: visuals and body motion. If you want to be sure the child can truly segment a word into its parts, just be sure he or she can read the whole word first. Also make sure that the meaning of the word is conveyed along with the word because in this way children will understand that reading is a process of recognizing groups of letters that convey a message. So we go past word naming and into words that carry visual images of the meaning they convey.

What a difference it would make to a child to see the stylized HELP next to the plain HELP.

Many of our customers and website visitors have found us because they have been searching for helps for these very common reading obstacles. Inability to sound out words or to recognize them on sight is not a sign of looming learning disability; instead, let’s see them as signals that quite possibly the child is a visual or right-brained, or global learner who needs to learn words all at one time complete with meaning before he can hope to take the word apart into its components.

Do you know your child's learning style?

Do you know your child's learning style? While no two children are exactly the same, many learn most easily through one of 4 general learning styles: concrete random, concrete sequential, abstract random, and abstract sequential. Check out our free learning style inventories to see descriptions of each style and decide which one best fits your child. Here's what one parent had to say about our inventories, "I purchased all 5 of the Is my child a.....? series, and I have found them very helpful in helping me narrow down my daughter's learning style and tweek curriculum to ways she can better understand and retain the information. I knew what I 'thought' before, but these gave me concrete observations to compare to my child. I would recomend all of them for anyone who is not sure what their child needs that they haven't figured out how to provide. I know I am a lot less frustrated since reading these!"

Using multiple learning elements to reach children with a variety of learning strengths

Following are some comments we've received lately in response to our question, "How can we help?"

"My five year old doesn't recognize words all the time; she forgets."

"My son will be a 1st grader this coming school year. He needs some help to improve his reading skills."

"I would like flash cards to help my son learn how to read. He has trouble remembering his spelling words from one week to another. I would like to try these sight words cards to see if it will help him to getting ready for next school year. He is behind due to his learning disability."

"I just found out I have a child with dyslexia and am trying to find ways to help him."

"I am teaching my son and daughter words to keep them caught up over the summer break."

"Interested in sight word flash cards to begin increasing a 4-yr-old's sight vocabulary."

"Looking at sight words for my students who are at educational risk."

"I teach kindergarten and have students who struggle with memory issues."

"I would love more sight word ideas. Also more ideas for teaching ESL students!!!"

All these parents, grandparents, tutors, and teachers are looking for something to help this diverse group of children. The children are all different ages, genders, from different backgrounds and have many different learning preferences.

However, there's something at the core of them all. They need a different approach from the traditional, with its focus on the sequential, systematic, lecture and memorization-based teaching. Since every child is unique, these children need a teaching approach that combines a variety of learning elements (such as visuals, body motions, patterns, stories etc.) so that every learner will be reached. With such an approach, each child will rely on the elements that align most strongly with his/her learning strengths and simply ignore the tools that aren't as effective for them.

And research has shown that many beginning and nontraditional learners learn most easily when information is presented through visuals and using body motions. We wrote a blog post a couple of years ago that explains some of the research behind this idea. You can read it here.

This idea of combining multiple teaching elements in one curriculum to reach children with many different learning strengths is what fueled the creation of Child1st learning resources, beginning with SnapWords™ sight word cards. These sight word cards with pictures include visuals, body motions, and the words used in sentences to provide context and meaning.

What tools or strategies have you found to be most effective with learners with diverse needs? Or what has been your greatest challenge as you've taught nontraditional learners?

A Fresh Look at Teaching Children with Learning Challenges

A decade ago when I was still in grad school, I could hardly contain my excitement when the time came for taking remedial reading courses. I just couldn’t wait to find the answers to questions that had plagued me about why seemingly bright children struggled to learn to read. Imagine my chagrin when I found that the class was preparing me to test, to detect learning differences, to track reading rates, to classify text as to reading level, to… in short… do everything but successfully teach reading to a non-reader.

Over the past ten years, I have learned about a whole array of classifications for disabilities. There are so many! The impression one could get is that children are getting more and more broken, and we are developing more and more detailed labels for describing them. What I have NOT seen, however, is more and more evolved solutions to accompany all this highly classified collection of labels. The SOLUTIONS are what have always interested me!

[Note: this intro is long, but bear with me because it does lead to the rules of thumb!]

So should I scrutinize the child or the educational system?

1.    If we continue to examine the child, we are “pitting” thousands of children against one educational system. There is one specific educational approach with teensy variations here and there (but still basically pretty recognizable) but there are thousands upon thousands of specifically God-designed children out there. Which are we going to scrutinize? The children or the method? Which are we going to measure against the other? Imagine taking your five children to shop for clothes. You walk into Kid’s Clothes dragging your children after you.  Kid’s Clothes is very organized and research-based to give you the shopper the best shopping experience. There is a long rack of boys’ shirts, another of boys’ pants, a long rack of girls’ dresses, etc. So you take your girls to their area and the boys to theirs. Within a few hours all of you are distressed and upset. You have only one child that fits into the clothes! OH NO! The other four children are ALL WRONG!

2.    When we focus on the child and label him using a term that sounds absolute and professional, the child will become that even more! (Imagine pouring concrete into a wooden form… and watching it set up). “As a man [or child] thinketh in his heart, so IS HE!” One day that is branded on my memory was a day in which I was subbing for a fourth grade teacher. I entered the room and was accosted by a slender boy, a very articulate boy, who announced assertively that he is ADHD and cannot control himself. And he spent the rest of the day proving it. He informed me, very articulately, every few moments what he couldn’t help doing. He was living up so perfectly to what his diagnosis said he was.

3.    The more we focus on the imagined problem with the child, the less effective we will be as teachers. When I was a little girl trying to learn to ride a bike, there were two big things I wanted to NOT hit as I wobbled across the yard. One was our concrete block house, and the other one was a particularly thorny orange tree. The more I wanted to avoid hitting those obstacles, the more I looked at them, and guess what? The more unerringly my bike steered right into them! If I am teaching my child and in my mind I am focused on her inability to memorize spelling words, my disbelief in her will be transmitted to her and my focus on the problem will become her focus on the problem as well. Nothing good will come of this.

4.    Every adult I have taken the time to talk to can describe what they are good at, and what they enjoy doing, how they remember things, what tasks they are gifted at, etc. Some of us know well that we can’t hear verbal directions and recall them for more than a nano-second, so we look at and rely on maps to navigate by. Other people can do really complex math problems in their heads. Why is it then, that we assume every single child should be able to memorize strings of letters (spelling) or memorize math facts, or memorize and apply phonics rules? Does this make sense? I don’t think it does. Back in the day when God planned a temple, He chose and gifted people to perform all sorts of specialized work on the temple. We are all wonderfully designed to perform exactly what we should in our lifetimes. And none of us should compare ourselves to the other person. We don’t tend to as adults, but the minute a child comes along, we try every way possible to get him to fit into a narrow educational mold. Oh dear!

Let’s take a look at our traditional educational system

It doesn’t work for many children. So the question is, do we change it or try to change our child to make them fit into the system?

Rules of thumb for teaching all children, but especially children with learning challenges

(All Child1st teaching materials are already designed with these rules of thumb applied, so it will become easier for you to pick up a teaching tool and know you will have it covered! It is not an easy task to redesign a whole traditional program in order to suit your beautiful snowflakes!)

1.    Get rid of the unnecessary clutter. For instance, in teaching reading, you DON’T have to learn all the names of the letters first, nor do you have to memorize their related sounds, nor be able to put the letters in ABC order, etc. Those traditional steps, including sounding out, memorizing blends, etc., are SO familiar that we feel if we don’t teach them, we will fail our children. The best way to teach a child to read is to get to the point immediately! Our Easy-for-Me Reading program (K-1st grade) will do this for you. The non-essentials are gone! This helps many types of learners. I can attest to the amount of clutter that exists in our teaching day. One really foreign concept to many adults is the fact that some children learn whole words more readily than they do the little pieces and parts of words. (See our SnapWords sight word cards.)

2.    Learn to distinguish between effective lessons and busy work. Much of what filled our day in the classroom (yes, when I was teaching) was busy work with minimal gains made by the child. You can tell which activities fall into this category because the child is simply not enjoying it and is not engaged. For instance, copying anything is absolutely a waste of time. It will make the child’s hand tired and will put the brain to sleep. Try it yourself. Put on a TV program that interests you a whole lot, and then sit down and copy a whole page out of the dictionary while you watch the program. Did you get much out of the copying? Any activity that is effective and useful and that will engage the child is going to be one in which he has to figure something out, has to invent something, has to think! If he is engaged, he is learning!

3.    Use images everywhere you can. Images are magical for many, many children who don’t memorize well. Try it for yourself. Ask someone to do you a favor. Have them drive to a street not too far from you and snap a picture of something distinctive such as an interesting house, or a weird building, or anything that is out of the ordinary. Then have them come back to you and first describe verbally, orally, what they saw. When they have finished, have them show you the picture they took of that very interesting object. Which is most effective at getting across the reality of the object? The oral description or the photo?

4.    Use a body motion to help remember. When I have trouble remembering a phone number (which is always), I know to “dial it” on a key pad. While I am doing that, I notice the shape of what I dialed and I also am storing up that visual pattern in the muscles of my body. Every child who is good with some physical activity is going to benefit from a physical movement to accompany learning. And I don’t just mean bouncing; I mean a movement that reflects what they are learning. When counting by two’s, for instance, have them march in a line but lean over heavily on each even number. Their bodies will remember the even numbers as they hear their mouths say the even numbers at the same time.

5.    Relate the learning to a real-life experience. When learning to tell time or count money, do it throughout the day, not at a desk with pencil and paper. Measurement is best learned when the child is creating something very interesting to him.

6.    Have the child figure out some things for himself. With any science lesson, the more hands-on and real the lessons, the better. Anything a child can just cut out and paste is marginal at best. It might just be time fillers. Anything a child investigates and then makes or writes or puts into action (that he has to figure out) is going to be valuable.

7.    Find patterns and likenesses in all you teach because that is what the brain loves. There is beauty in patterns, and nature is full of them. Music is made of patterns; math is as well. I have seen a child come to life when he or she saw the patterns in learning. Unrelated details are hard to do anything with. A good example of using patterns to teach is our Sounds & Their Spelling Patterns book (as well as our math books). Rather than memorizing the spellings of the words in our language, use patterns (and images and humor) to teach in a way that by passes memorization and gives the child tools for deciphering unknown words. One 15-20 minute lesson a day will take the place of the boring spelling and phonics lessons!

8.    Don’t just tell; SHOW. I would love to have a nickel for every time I’ve heard a teacher complain, “I already told you that more than once.” Hmmm. Could it be that telling is not effective? Show them. Show them examples; show them how you do it (modeling); show them what a good outcome is. Remember, “Don’t tell me… show me!”

9.    Keep lessons as short as you can. Stop the minute the child is tired or restless. Of course I don’t mean ten minutes into the school day! I mean, however, that when your child begins to wiggle or be restless, check the activity or lesson you are doing for interest level. If you can inject some mystery into it, some novelty, by all means do it! But if you follow step one and get rid of the clutter and stick to the meat and potatoes of school work, you might just find that your daily work, the meaningful part, can be accomplished in a couple of hours in the day or three.

10.    Don’t, please don’t, keep on doing what you see doesn’t work. What the child needs is not more drill, but a radically different approach. Remember, we are going to abandon the notion that the child is broken! We need to change up what we are doing when the child at first doesn’t respond. Please know we are here for you. We have a lot of information, how-tos, teaching tips, lessons, examples, resources on our blog. And know you can email for assistance.

True multisensory teaching… what does it look like?

A couple of days ago I had a phone call from a first grade teacher who wanted to discuss a child in her class she is concerned about. Let’s call him Oliver. She shared with me various observations she had made as she puzzled through how best to help Oliver learn.

• He benefits from hearing himself talk through the concept he’s learning, which signals an auditory learner. So she fashioned an auditory amplification tool for him out of a PVC joint, to which Oliver responded happily. If you want an auditory amplification device and don’t feel like using PVC, we do carry two versions of this product. It will not only amplify the child’s voice, but will increase focus by helping the child hear his own voice more clearly than background noise.

• This teacher uses SnapWords™ sight word picture cards (and SMART files) in her classroom, and she noticed that when Oliver read her the plain words during assessments, he was doing the body motions he’d learned from the backs of the SnapWords™ cards. Because so many children benefit from the multisensory elements of the SnapWords™ we have designed more words and now we have 607 SnapWords™ encompassing 220 Dolch, 500 Fountas & Pinnell, and 300 Fry words and more. This product is a valuable and irreplaceable tool to add to your arsenal! 

• Oliver also seemed to be helped by having a visual embedded in the symbols, which is a mark of a visual learner. In addition, his teacher said that when he took traditional spelling tests, he was unable to succeed unless she chose words that had a sound spelling in common, at which point he was able to pass the spelling test. She said he seems to need to be able to find a pattern in learning in order to succeed. Again, a global, visual child.

I found the conversation very interesting because of the particular combinations of strengths/needs this child displays. It is pretty common to find children who enjoy both the body movement and the visual elements, but rarely have I come across a child that also required the auditory piece as well as visual and kinesthetic elements in learning.

My discussion with Oliver's teacher then went to our resource The Illustrated Book of Sounds & Their Spelling Patterns and how this approach to teaching spelling, phonics, comprehension, etc., is very multisensory as well. The approach is simple and frankly entertaining, but the power behind the simplicity of the approach lies in the multisensory aspects of the lessons. Here are just some of the multisensory elements:

• Pattern-seeking. Each lesson focuses on one sound spelling, and every target word in the lesson contains that letter combination so the child can naturally see that element in every word with one glance at the sheet.

• Color-coding. The child uses a yellow highlighter or crayon to color only the letters that use the sound spelling (for instance “OW” or “AI”) and when they have finished coloring the target spelling, you can tell them, “Each time you see yellow, just say ‘OU’ (or ‘AI’). The color makes the sound spellings pop from the page visually.

• Hooks. The words are arranged in sentences to tie them together in a way that is easy for the child to remember. Imagine handing your child 10 puzzle pieces that have no connection to each other. Will it be easy for him to remember what each one looks like? Or what if you handed him 10 puzzle pieces that when joined together showed the image of a river? Which would it be easier for him to remember? The sentence is the glue that connects all the words that use the same sound spelling. Example of a group of words hooked together: “Say, I may play in the spray all day.”

• Visuals. Each sentence is illustrated with a cartoon that shows the meaning of the sentence which contains the words with the spellings we are teaching. The visual draws in the visual learner, provides yet another means for embedding the learning in the child’s mind (but in a different region of the brain from the auditory).

• Auditory. The child reads the sentence to you or with you.

• Tactile. The child writes the words as you dictate them.

• Multisensory – it happens all at one time. The child sees the color-coding, the illustration, and the global collection of words containing the sound spelling. He hears himself reading the words and sounding out the words as he writes them. He writes, watching himself write, hearing himself speak and sound, all of it a combination of pathways to the brain and to learning that is occurring at one time.

While no one child is a purist, we can generalize that some children are strongly visual, others are strongly auditory, while still others are predominantly kinesthetic learners. It is good practice, however, when teaching any young child to use as many pathways to the brain as possible. This is true multisensory teaching/learning. What will happen if you do this is that the child will have a richer learning experience. There will be fewer chances for something to slip by him, or for him to not understand a concept. If you are teaching a class full of children, it makes no sense to try and teach specifically to one type of learner. You cannot teach the same lesson in multiple ways; you just won’t have time to do that! So it makes perfect sense to teach to the modalities and have the child’s experience be multisensory as well.

Child1st has done so much for you by the very design of our products. We combine visual, kinesthetic, and auditory elements in our product design, and the process of learning becomes more effortless for so many children. Children can enjoy the color, the activity, the humor, the sense of accomplishment and competence that they need to fuel even more success in learning!

Let’s help our children love learning!

Strategies for Struggling Readers... That Work!

For the past few months, we've been sponsoring live online classes for parents of children who have special needs or who just need a different way of learning than what's traditionally done in the classroom. Pamela Jarvis, M.Ed., of Shady Oak Learning has been doing an amazing job teaching the classes.

This past Monday, she led a class called "Strategies for Struggling Readers... That Work!" where she provided ideas and resources to help struggling readers succeed. After the class, an attendee shared with us: "Pam was a wonderful source of information. I am so glad that you presented this class and that I attended, I got so much out of it as a parent trying to help my child. I loved that she mentioned the Snapwords. My daughters school was using a horrible program and she struggled with it, I have been using her Snapwords all along and she does wonderful with them. Thank you." --Lora F.

Pam is leading 3 more classes this spring: Creating an Effective Learning Environment, The Three M's: Movement, Mnemonics, and Multisensory Strategies, and Personality and Learning. In all of these classes, Pam will discuss strategies for teaching each the way that they learn best and helping them reach their full potential. They're all super affordable and high quality. Sign up today!

How to design units that access each student’s giftedness…

…and turn on their excitement for learning

It would be amazing to take a protracted field trip and visit the schools across the nation, walk the hallways, and peek in the classroom doors to see what we can see. Doubtless what we would witness would be incredibly varied. We would see everything from classrooms in which students are engaged, participating, and energized, to classrooms in which children are passive, indifferent, and checked out. In some of these latter classrooms, behaviors are out of control, while in others, students are silent.

What makes the difference in classrooms?

I have a theory: if we access each child’s area of giftedness, we will turn them on to learning. In reality, the brain is already wired to learn. What remains is for us to figure out how to create a learning environment in which brains can learn, want to learn, and do so without a ton of effort on our part as teachers.

How can we do this?

Some ideas need to be in place before successfully designing units of instruction that engage students and access their best abilities. We should assume that:

• All children are gifted in varying ways.

• Students don’t all learn the same way.

• The ultimate best means of conveying what they have learned will vary from student to student.

• Lecture/verbal instruction is the least effective way to teach.

• Listening to verbal instruction is the least effective way for students to learn.

• It IS possible to teach one lesson and reach all the students in a classroom.

• Children can perform far beyond what we view as their ability level.

• Children rise to the occasion when they are given control over their own learning.

• Children don’t always learn concepts in the order we view as “the correct order,” be it sight words or math facts.

• Most children learn by sorting through a wealth of ideas and making order out of them in their own minds.

Planning a unit

As an example, let’s use the topic of European influences on the settlement of North America – 6th grade level.  The unit includes the history of the first European visitors and settlers to America as well as what animals and plants were introduced from Europe. I actually prepared this unit back in 2001 and taught it to two sixth grade classrooms in a rural, at-risk population of students with marginal home support. Suffice it to say, the topic was not on the list of “burning issues I need to know about” for my students. Decide ahead of time exactly what you want all the students to come away knowing and understanding, and be prepared to share this with the students.

Prepare your unit in ways that speak to the modalities of the students. It is not the time to say “read pages 225-228 and answer the questions at the end of the unit.” Speaking to the modalities of the students means that you will show more than you will tell. As you are sharing the food stuffs that originated in Europe, create a huge map (on the whiteboard or smartboard) showing images of the various foods/animals; use arrows or put the items in little ships that are headed towards the new world. Use rhyme and color-coding. Encourage the students to use their hands to reflect the lessons you are presenting, even if it is to draw the map in their notebook and draw or cut out images of the influences from Europe.

At the end of the unit, share that you want to find out what they each understand. There will not be a test to study for; there won’t be a certain way for them to show you what they know. Each of the students will be able to choose a way to share what they have learned with you and the class.

Give them the list of concepts or questions you want them to be able to respond to. At the same time, give them some ideas for options they can choose from just to prime the pump.

1. Verbally gifted students could choose to do a TV news report or write an article. 

 

2. Interpersonally gifted students could do a TV or radio interview, do a game show where the host asks questions and the contestants answer the questions, etc.

 

3. Intrapersonally gifted students might choose to create a diary from the point of view of a young person traveling over to the colonies for the first time, recounting their experiences. Or, they might choose to make a scrapbook with cut outs illustrating their entries.

 

4. Visually gifted students might choose to collaborate on a mural/map complete with key, illustrations, etc. They might elect to create a product using color-coding to show source countries of different plants and animals or customs.

 

5. Rhythmically gifted students might make up a song or chant or  poem or ditty about various aspects of the lesson.

 

6. Kinesthetically gifted students might create a choreographed play and act out the content of the unit.

 

7. Logically/Mathematically gifted students might recount the events, focusing on the challenges of the expansion into the Americas and the way these challenges were overcome. They might be interested in the data and numbers surrounding this period in our history. They might create graphs and other numerical charts as a way of sharing data.

The rubric

The teacher’s rubric must focus not on the means of conveying learning but on whether the substance of the unit was understood and communicated. Did each student show they understood the unit? Did they convey the concepts that were central to the unit?

Consider having a simple rubric for students to use to rate each presentation, prepping them ahead of time to focus on content more than on the means of presentation.

The structure of the rubric should include the major concepts and have a place for rating maybe from 1-4 the excellence of communicating each concept. The student rubric should be simpler and focus on the main elements and the extent to which they were communicated.

Taking it further

As you teach more and more frequently using this model, encourage your students to learn all they can from each other about what each child finds easiest to do. Encourage collaboration, not by teacher-led grouping, but instead by giving the students the liberty of planning future presentations drawing on the skills and gifts of students who are different from themselves. For instance, a visual spatial student could team with a verbally gifted child to create a presentation that showcased both of their abilities. The mathematically gifted child might team with a body/kinesthetically gifted child. The resulting projects would be so diverse and amazing for the class to enjoy as their learning and their understanding expands with each new presentation.

The result?

Your students will love learning. I can guarantee it! 

How to Choose the Best Educational Environment for Your Child

Recently I heard from a parent on the other side of the world about concerns she had with her daughter’s difficulties in some areas of school. She expressed that her daughter is primarily a right-brained learner and that she struggles with subjects such as writing when she needs to translate information from mental ideas or images into a sequence of words, or in math class when ideas utilizing symbols are called for. All of these present challenges to be overcome.

Subsequent discussions with this parent led to her question, “What is the best educational setting for my child?” She was doubtless considering whether or not she would be able to support her daughter sufficiently from home. This is a huge question, however, and one only parents can answer for themselves and their own children. But I asked this particular parent to describe in more detail what is easy and what is hard for her daughter in the school setting. Here are some of the ideas she expressed about her daughter:

What is hard for her: 

• Spelling. She is able to learn her spelling words for her spelling tests, however the spelling words are not used correctly in her writing thereafter.

• Mathematics. Simple addition, subtraction, division and multiplication take a long time to work out and sometimes when she gets the correct answer, she will write the wrong answer on the sheet.  If she cannot see the picture of the problem at hand, she cannot understand what is being asked of her.

• She is very tough on herself and wants to get everything right.  I cannot reason with her that mistakes are a part of learning.

• Often daydreams in class. She says that she uses the time to process information, however her teacher believes she is not on task.

• Moves, rocks, fidgets all the time; this helps her focus on the task at hand.

• Cannot follow verbal instructions.

• If she verbalizes before writing, her thought process is much clearer and she can write in a sequential manner.

What is easy for her:

• Reading - her reading level and comprehension are at grade level.

• Art - is very creative and thinks outside the box.

• Dance - very expressive in her dance, always getting acknowledged at school.

• Intuition - picks up people’s moods very easily.

• Writing - if helped, she can write some very imaginative and entertaining pieces of work.

• Science - loves science and is very excited to discuss science concepts.

As I read through these bullet points, what struck me was that this lady's daughter truly does sound like a visual/tactile child! [For more information about visual-spatial learners, see this blog post and this one.]

Another idea that struck me is how thoroughly this mother had gotten to know her child. This knowledge of our children is fundamental to truly being able to guide and help them. Once we’ve identified their gifts as well as their areas of challenge, we can choose wisely for them because we will have the information needed.

So how do I choose?

While I cannot answer this question, I will say this: Once you have determined your child’s learning needs and strengths, the next step is to find out what your options are. Is there a school your child could attend where consideration is given in coursework for right-brained or visual learners? If you have various options open to you, take the time to interview and ask specific questions about how your child would be helped through her areas of need.

If you feel there are few options for your child, one idea to consider is to supplement her education at home by using materials that are designed especially for visual or other right-brained learners. Visual learners learn very quickly when the setting is right. If the materials you are using have images and body movement incorporated into them, working with her at home might be all you need to do.

Please don’t hesitate to call (1-800-881-0912) or email (info@child-1st.com) if you would like to chat about your own child and what might help him/her out the most. Or, use the comments section below.

How to Meet the Needs of Many Types of Learners at One Time

Or, teach once and reach them all

One of the biggest challenges for teachers is to find ways to meet the needs of the many types of learners in their classrooms day after day. For several years I experimented by trying various strategies, all while watching the kids to see what helped them, and some things began to stand out that seemed to work very well in reaching a lot of different types of learners. Using multiple strategies at one time was astonishing—children who had been failing for years suddenly had the lights go on. And this was not because the material was dumbed down to their level, but instead because the vehicles that carried the information to the brain were different.

It took me several years of refining before I developed an approach to teaching many kinds of learners at one time that assured that they would all learn. Below is a global map of the various elements that are included in the design of Child1st materials, and following are short descriptors of each of those elements.

Global Whole/Graphic Map:

Many children are global learners who learn by seeing where the detail they are being taught fits into the big picture. For example, if you teach a child 2+5=7, he'll likely be distracted by trying to recall where else he saw numbers that add up to 7 and so not remember that detailed equation. If you tell a global learner that one strategy for reaching non-traditional learners is to embed the learning within the global whole, she will immediately begin wondering what the other strategies are that are good to use. If you tell a global child that LAUGH is pronounced L-A-F, and that TAUGHT is pronounced T-O-T, a flurry of question will be unleashed in his mind, all of which will prevent him from remembering what you told him. What a global learner needs to see is the whole picture. “Where does this fit in the whole?” “What other words are spelled with the AUGH sounding like O?” “What other number pairs add up to 7?” and so forth. The strategy then, should be to show the global whole from within a diagram or chart, and then having done that, teach a detail at a time if need be.

Draw/Write:

From the very beginning, we need to provide immediate writing practice for what we teach a child. For example, if you show a child a SnapWords™ image such as the one at the right, talk about what it says and what the image conveys in terms of story or situation, and then be sure he understands what the word means. The very next thing to do is ask him to study the word, then close his eyes and “see” it in his imagination. When he says he can see it, have him open his eyes and draw or write what he saw in his mind. This practice is very simple, but will do a number of things. It will teach the child to rely on his strong visual sense, teach him to rely heavily on the pictures his brain snaps when he sees something, and give him a chance to use other senses to deepen learning when he draws or writes what he saw. The cycle of learning is complete when the child has drawn or written what he learned. Finally, this approach is very important as a means of showing you what the child really grasped. Many children can seem super attentive, when in reality they are staring at you but dreaming of something else.

Metaphor:

Whenever we liken a new piece of learning to something tangible and known, we are utilizing a very powerful tool that will help a child remember the new learning. For example, we can tell a child that M is Mmmm or we can say “M is Mmmmountain.” The shape of the known object reflects the shape of the letter M and also carries with it the sound of M. If you add to this a visual of M being mountain, you have tripled the learning potential for the child. Other metaphors: “Your circulatory system is a huge system of roads and highways…” “You brain is a very complicated computer.”

Color:

Color is a powerful aid to learning, sorting, and remembering. When used thoughtfully, color coding can make learning easy. One caution, however: if your coloring system gets super complicated (such as a distinct color for every sound) the child will be forced to try and memorize a color coding system before he can use it. This is going to be counter-productive! But if you use a color to highlight a target sound spelling, the different color will make the target letters/sound pop visually and the child’s brain will snap a picture of the lesson.

Gesture:

I cannot say too much about the teaching power of gesture. Many children can learn only when moving, and gestures that reflect the detail being learned are also hugely important. I have personally seen children who unconsciously made slight hand motions as they were reading—either motions for letters, or body motions for sight words they had learned using gestures. It became clear to me that while the gestures were vital for carrying information into the brain, they were also utilized to retrieve the learning!

Music:

Music makes a wonderful clothesline to clip learning pieces to! Can you see it? No detail will get lost if you have tied it to words in a song! Collaborate with your child in coming up with a tune to accompany some lesson they are learning. Music will make it easy to learn and recall the information.

Acting:

Acting out learning is another form of gesturing, but is definitely whole body and brain! When you are teaching the science concepts of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation, have the children act out the movement of the water. It will be unforgettable! If you are teaching prepositions, have the children act out where they are in relation to their chair or a table. For learning fractions, act out the action in the math equation using real, concrete objects and a table or desk.

Rhyme:

The use of rhyme or jingles will help children learn and remember details. For example, in our SnapLetters™ Card for the letter A, we have the visual of A (anthill with ants crawling up and down it) and also have a jingle that ties the shape of the letter to both long and short sounds of A. “Amy’s ants on an anthill, actually.”

Rhythm:

Marching in a line to learn odd and even numbers is so great. If you are learning to count by 2’s for instance, march in a line, counting out loud. Each time you get to an even number, lean over to the side dramatically so that children subconsciously relate the deep bend with the even numbers. Rhythm can be linked to gesture if you clap or stomp in rhythm. If you are learning your 5’s table, use each hand to represent a 5. So if you say “4 x 5 is (slap both hands together twice to represent the four 5’s) 20” you will combine rhythm and gesture. The learning will be absorbed by the child’s body.

Story:

Story is one of my all time favorite tools. Once you let go of your inhibitions (mildly), you can really get imaginative with the stories you make up on the spot to explain learning concepts. For instance, see our previous blog posts about the story that explains inch, foot, and yard, and the story that explains contractions. Also, Alphabet Tales is a book of stories that explains how letters came to have their shape and sound. Once children hear a story and learning is embedded in it, they will not forget!

Visuals:

Visuals are incredible in their ability to transfer learning to the brain in an instant. Everything we create at Child1st utilizes visuals for sure. When right-brained learners, visual learners, active learners, and children who struggle see a learning concept embedded in an image, their brains will usually snap a photo of it, and it is there… forever in memory.

All of Child1st products utilize as many of these elements in their design as possible. In this way, we can be sure to not neglect any learner! Go check the materials out and help your children love learning!