All Articles tagged Testing

The Unexpected Advantages of e-Tutoring

November 12, 2013 Brad Hoffman Leave a Comment

I was once asked to tutor the Royal family back in England. And I turned it down.

I was just too busy. I already had a fully booked timetable. During the decade when I was a tutor in London, I was highly sought-after for my ability to transform my pupils’ math skills. I even had a waiting list.

But when I moved to America, no one knew me. Well, my new wife did. A few fellow actor/comedians did. But here I was, starting from scratch in a new country where no one knew what I had to offer, while at the same time back in the UK there were many people who still wanted me to teach their son or daughter. Ultimately it was actually a parent who insisted that I try teaching her son by Skype: she had decided that I was the only person who had proven able to get her son to understand what he was supposedly being taught at school, and if we had to tutor from either side of the Atlantic Ocean, then so be it.

As it turns out, being in the same room as your tutor isn’t that important at all. It all boils down to the rapport you have together. A good rapport creates great willingness to learn. I make my pupils think hard, but I make them laugh at the same time, and apparently that works just as well online with video 3,000 miles apart as it does when we’re next to each other in the same room. Parents who were skeptical at first tried it out and then recommended it to their friends. Before long I reached families I would never have found while living in London, including several who lived out on the Yorkshire moors far from any major town. Online learning solved a problem for them, and I even have pupils stuck out in the middle of nowhere, whom I have never actually met in the flesh, who only know me as a face in the screen and yet apparently look forward to the online lessons and now consider math to be their favorite subject… or so their parents tell me.

Yet it’s not just long-distance or stranded families who have found that Skype tutoring really works for them: I have Skype-tutored people over here in the USA in states up and down both coasts, several of whom were close enough for me to visit at home, and yet most of the time we would still opt to work online.

Why? Well, I think part of it is that this generation is really at ease in front of the TV or computer screen. Sometimes it even seems to me that I get more attention from some pupils, perhaps because they feel more comfortable or under less pressure when interacting with a screen than with a full-size adult? Perhaps because they just love screens. Who knows? Certainly a lot of homework is done online these days, so the student can look at the screen to do their work and at the same time have my face in a little corner helping them understand what they’re doing. It just makes sense.

However there are several other advantages to online tutoring that neither I nor my clients saw coming. One of the most significant is that, instead of writing on paper, we end up writing on Google Documents, which allow both users to write on the same page at the same time. The unexpected bonus is that we end up with a great set of notes, really well-formatted and available online wherever and whenever the pupil needs to refresh his or her memory. What’s more, since the notes were made together during the sessions, the examples and explanations tap the pupil straight back into the mindset when we were making them in the first place. My pupils now have far, far superior notes (and with much less effort) than they ever had when we met face-to-face.

Another advantage for the parent is that working over the internet like this can allow me to draw attention to the resources that are available online. A well-trained, motivated student who knows where to go online can solve a lot of their own problems. Not only is this a great skill to develop and one that encourages the pupil to take control of their own education… it also means that you as the parent may well not need to pay for as many tutoring sessions!

Ultimately you can use your tutor much more carefully and cleverly when the relationship is set up online. For instance, what happens when your child has homework to do that they don’t understand? Do you arrange for a tutor to come around to your house every week at that time? But then, does that mean your child will end up doing the homework with the tutor rather than learn to deal with it themselves? And does that extra hour of tutoring only serve to make your child even busier on a night when they have homework to do?! With online tutoring you can arrange to have a quick 15 minute chat to go over the concept and then your child can tackle the homework themselves, putting into practice their newly-won knowledge. No tutor is typically going to make the journey to come to your house for a quick 15 minutes, but the tutor available via internet will probably be able to fit in a quick chat and not charge a full hour for it.

I always encourage my pupils to notice the difference between when they truly understand a concept or a topic and when they are merely following the instructions they have been taught. In math, more than any other subject, it is vital to fully understand the concept you are learning if you are going to use it to solve problems or to build further knowledge upon. My pupils are taught to be aware of when the lights go on, the penny drops and the concept suddenly completely makes sense. Which means they’ll know that if they don’t get that feeling then there is still something eluding them… and whenever that happens, they are free to email me or call me. Any time, any day. If I am not too busy I’ll always help. It’s my job to work myself out of a job, to make myself unnecessary. And by working online I can do that more efficiently than ever.

By Nick Thomas, Private Tutor

Explaining Learning Disabilities to Your Child

October 31, 2013 Brad Hoffman Leave a Comment

By Marcia Brown Rubinstein
Original Source: Smart Kids with Learning Disabilities

AT A GLANCE

How and when to tell your child about her learning disabilities depends on your readiness as well as hers • The “right time” is sooner rather than later, never in anger, and always in an atmosphere of optimism and confidence • Encourage ongoing discussions characterized by honesty, clear communication, reassurance, and an emphasis on her unique abilities.

As a parent, you must make sure that your child has the right information at the right time so that she can navigate her world with confidence. The same is true for information about learning disabilities.

Parents often agonize about telling a child that she has learning disabilities. But can you imagine not telling your child she has asthma because you don’t want her to feel funny using an inhaler to breathe?

Learning disabilities are just as real and just as disabling as biological differences. The sooner they’re addressed, the better the prognosis for a productive future.

FINDING THE RIGHT BALANCE

In the absence of an explanation, your child will assume that she is stupid if she stumbles in class, struggles with assignments, and sees that others need less assistance to learn. If you haven’t educated her about her unique learning style before that happens, you’ve waited too long.

On the other hand, if you describe all the difficulties that may develop from a particular diagnosis, you may create a self-fulfilling prophecy. She may assume that she is incapable of learning anything, so why bother trying? In that case, you have disclosed too much too soon.

Is there a perfect time to inform your child about her learning disabilities? Of course. But the perfect time is different for every child, in every family, in every culture, in every setting, in every school, for every type of intellectual range, and for every type of learning disability.

So how and when should you begin to educate your child about her learning differences? The answer is simple: When you are ready, when she is ready, when the time is right, better sooner than later, never in anger, and always in an atmosphere of optimism and confidence. Following are tips to help you through the process.

Educate yourself about your child’s diagnosis and her assets and deficits before communicating the scope of the learning disability to her. In your discussions do not lose sight of her strengths and unique abilities.

Reassure her that she’s perfectly healthy, then explain her specific learning disability in detail suitable to her age and intellect. If she has dyslexia, for example, you may want to say that her brain works differently when she reads. If she’s been mixing up letters, point it out as an example of what happens with dyslexia. With older kids, prepare material for them to read and referrals to websites that explain their specific type of LD in language they can understand.

Tell her how you’re going to get help. Reinforce the fact that you and all family members will do everything it takes to guarantee her success. Share some examples of successful people with LD.

Explain tasks she’ll find easy to complete and ones that might provide challenges. Find support professionals to cover areas you cannot manage yourself. This includes emotional as well as cognitive issues.

Maintain an ongoing discussion about your child’s future. Discuss your expectations and hopes as well as hers. Make sure she knows that she can excel as long as she works hard. Don’t downplay the fact that there will be frustration along the way. Reinforce the fact that you and other family members will do what’s needed to ensure success.

Communicate clearly. Make sure your child understands everything you’re saying. Don’t hide behind jargon and clinical terms. Translate those into language she will understand. Help her apply the information in proactive, upbeat ways.
Compliment her often and sincerely. Self-esteem and resiliency are often fragile in a child with LD. Praise her lavishly, but make sure you mean it. Never give empty or gratuitous praise.

Get involved in your child’s school. There is nothing better than your active and obvious presence. You are your child’s primary educational advocate. Make sure that the teachers and administrators know you and know that you are overseeing her entire school program. Don’t find out too late that accommodations were not carried out.

Tell your child at least once every day, “I love you.” This advice works well for kids without LD too, but for those with LD, it’s as critical as food and shelter.

There may be few things more difficult than having these important discussions with your child, but if you get stuck, keep going back to No. 9. It’s more important than all the others combined.

Finding the Missing Piece for Struggling Readers

October 9, 2013 Brad Hoffman Leave a Comment

What is Reading?

For fluent readers, it seems almost instinctual. Words are instantly recognized; stories come to life easily. But for those just learning how to read, it is a complex process that is anything but automatic.

The process of reading involves many visual and mental processes. In order to read and understand, students need a variety of different skills. These skills begin at the most basic level of associating letter symbols with sounds. Next, readers must recognize or decode whole words and understand the meaning of the words within a sentence. Readers must then string words together to understand a complete sentence within the larger context of a paragraph.

All of these processes occur at the same time and understanding can break down at any point in the process.

How can reading problems be addressed?

Students who struggle with reading often complain that they dislike it. Young readers often mask their difficulty with it by saying things like, “Reading is boring!” “This book is too easy!” “This is a baby book!”

The latest research about struggling readers, such as dyslexic students, states that these types of students need systematic, explicit instruction in order to build their sound and symbol recognition. Orton-Gillingham based approaches such as PAF are created to to help these students build vital, basic reading skills. Many explicit literacy programs such as these use simply illustrated or unillustrated texts so that students can fully attend to the print on the page, instead of relying on pictures for help. Programs like these can turn a student’s entire school experience around by helping them to build skills and confidence to tackle these decodable texts.

While explicit instruction helps students build confidence and skills, these students need powerful literacy experiences (such as read alouds) to supplement their instruction in order to build basic motivation to learn to read. Students need to learn that reading is a pleasurable and rewarding experience, and decodable texts are sometimes not enough to teach students this valuable lesson. These students also need to be exposed to literature that is more complex, advanced and in line with their personal interests in addition to working on decodable texts. Read alouds (at any age) help build fluency, comprehension the motivation to keep progressing. Book discussions about these read alouds help students think critically and develop an interest in reading.

Many factors can contribute to reading problems including a lack of background knowledge, phonics issues, trouble with comprehension, vision problems, processing delays, lack of vocabulary, or limited sight word vocabulary, among others. The more parents and educators understand the complexity of reading, the more adept we are at targeting our support to teach children to read.

Contact us to learn more and work with Orton-Gillingham trained Reading Specialists at My Learning Springboard to set up a plan to help your struggling reader.

By Joanna Brown, Reading Specialist

The Five Keys to Unlocking a Successful School Year

September 24, 2013 Brad Hoffman Leave a Comment

Executive functioning skills are essential to succeed in life. Certain executive functioning skills, such as time management and organization, help individuals in their jobs, daily chores, and day to day responsibilities. Students with a variety of learning challenges, such as ADHD, learning disabilities, or autism spectrum disorders, may have deficits in such executive functioning skills, which can, in turn, adversely affect the school experience. Although these deficits may seem insurmountable at times, there are ways to tackle them to achieve success.

As a new school year is beginning, high school faculty and staff, parents, and students themselves, are searching for systems to put in place to develop such executive functioning skills and to maximize the classroom learning experience. To help, here are New Frontiers in Learning’s Five Keys to a Successful School Year:

Start Off (and Stay) Organized:

Having a system for keeping track of all notes, papers, grades, homework, assignment descriptions, etc. is an important start to any school year. Some students find it helpful to have separate notebooks and folders for each class. In this case, all books and folders can be color coded and labeled for easy identification. Another method of organization is to use a single binder with separate sections for each class. Each section should be labeled and should contain loose-leaf paper for note taking. All papers and handouts for the class should also be added to the section on a daily basis. Whichever method is chosen, be sure to figure out which one works specifically for the student early on and encourage them to follow it consistently throughout the year. Organizing all papers and notes daily allows students to be able to find class materials more easily.

Budget and Schedule Time:

We all face difficulties managing our time; therefore, students should set themselves up for success by using and maintaining a daily schedule. This schedule should include all class names, locations, and times, plus any other outside responsibilities that the student may have, such as work hours, sports practice, family obligations, etc. By maintaining a weekly schedule, the student can keep track of not only unchanged repeated responsibilities (i.e., class), but also any one-time obligations for each week (i.e., concert, special afterschool group study session, etc.). Further, following a daily and weekly schedule makes it much easier to see where the student can build in study and homework times, as well as study breaks. Once a schedule is made, students should be encouraged to stick to it! Having a planner that has both weekly and monthly sections allows the student to clearly see and review short and long term expectations.

Ask for Help

Many times, students with executive functioning deficits have a difficult time recognizing when they need help, as well as identifying who and/or where to turn to receive help. Students need to review the help-seeking process in the beginning of each school year: If something is confusing, if they don’t know how to start or structure a project or assignment, or if they have any other questions about class requirements, students should be reminded to ask for help! Students need to understand that asking for help will not make them look bad; rather, it will actually show their parents, teachers, and other professionals that they care about the class and want to be successful. Students should review the protocol in asking clarifying questions; some teachers use the beginning or end of the school day, while others encourage students to email them. Once students know what their individual teachers prefer, they should be encouraged to follow such systems as a resource to clear up any questions that may arise!

Write it All Down

Have you ever told yourself that you didn’t need to write something down because you would remember it, only to struggle to remember what that very thing was just minutes later? You’re not alone – it happens to everyone, especially students taking multiple classes with various responsibilities. To prevent students from forgetting key information in class, they should be encouraged to write everything down – even the things that they think they will remember later. Writing everything down can be difficult sometimes, thus an alternative for students could be to audio record their classes or to use some form of assistive technology, such as a Smart Pen.

Setting Reminders

Having a system in place to help remind students of important dates is essential. Sometimes teachers announce due dates infrequently during a course, or due dates for assignments and exams may be outlined far in advance and then not discussed again. In such cases, it may be the day of an exam or an assignment being due, and the student begins to panic because they are not prepared! To alleviate this, students need to learn to set reminders in their daily planner or on smart phones –students can set a timer to go off several times as the assignment or exam due date approaches. Utilizing reminders can also help students remember when to start studying or when to begin an assignment, preventing the anxiety associated with cramming or unpreparedness.

By Samantha Feinman, Program Director, and Casey Schmalacker, Coach, from New Frontiers in Learning

When Kids Refuse to Go to School

September 2, 2013 Brad Hoffman Leave a Comment

How to recognize what’s called ‘school refusal’ and how to get kids back in class.

By Rachel Busman, PsyD,
Original Source: Child Mind Institute
Originally posted September 26, 2014

The term “school refusal” used to be more or less synonymous with truancy, invoking a picture of kids hanging out on the street corner, or holed up in their bedrooms playing video games.

While it is true that some game-playing might well be involved, it’s important to understand that school refusal is not the same as playing hooky. It isn’t driven by the allure of having fun outside of school, but rather by an aversion to school itself.

Everyone resists going to school once in a while, but school refusal is an extreme pattern of avoiding school that causes real problems for a child. It is distinguished from normal avoidance by how long a child has been avoiding school, how much distress she associates with attending school, how strongly she resists it, and how much her resistance is interfering with her (and her family’s) life. Including all these aspects is important, because a child can still have school refusal even if she attends school most days. I’ve worked with kids who have missed only a day or two of school, but they’ve been tardy 30 times because their anxiety is so extreme it keeps them from getting to school on time. Kids with school refusal might also have a habit of leaving early, spending a lot of time visiting the nurse, or texting parents throughout the day.

Often kids with school refusal will start reporting unexplained symptoms like headaches or stomachaches. Anxiety does manifest in physical ways, so their symptoms could be indicative of that. As a parent, the first thing you want to do in this situation is get your child checked out by a pediatrician; you don’t want to overlook a medical problem. But it may be that going to school is her problem.

Sometimes resistance to attending school is just a little blip on the radar, and it can be easily remedied. Maybe your child had the flu and was out for a good amount of time, and now she is having a hard time making the transition back to school. Suddenly she’s getting clingy and anxious about all the homework she missed. In this scenario, it is important not to prolong time at home. Instead, you want to have a conversation with the teacher and with your daughter. You want to be able to tell her, “We’ve talked to your teacher, and he knows you were sick. I know you’re worried, but he understands. It’s time to get back to school.” Then she returns to school and often things go relatively smoothly.

These are mild situations. Similarly, some kids experience blips of anxiety after vacations. The key point is to get children back in school as soon as possible.

When school refusal starts to become a bigger problem—it’s going on for numerous days, weeks or even months—you should reach out and ask for help. This includes kids who go to school but only attend partial days because they are spending a lot of time in the nurse’s office and getting sent home early from school.

For more serious cases of school refusal, the first step in treatment is getting a comprehensive diagnostic assessment. While school refusal is not a diagnosable disorder, it often accompanies disorders like separation anxiety or social anxiety. A complete assessment helps treatment professionals understand what is underlying school refusal, allowing them to tailor therapy to your child’s particular situation.

It’s also possible that something specific is happening at school, like bullying or a difficult class. This doesn’t mean you should immediately jump in and ask your child who doesn’t want to go to school, “Who’s bullying you?” But it is important to know what is going on in your child’s life. You should expect to hear what her teacher is like and how homework is going. You should also have a sense of the kids your child is hanging out with. These are all things that should come up in everyday conversation. And if your child mentions that something happened that day, perk your ears and put down whatever you were doing and listen in a nonjudgmental way, because it could be important.

Treatment providers working with kids who have school refusal will often use cognitive behavioral therapy, which helps kids learn to manage their anxious thoughts and face their fears. While kids who are anxious might disagree, the best way to get over anxiety is actually to get more comfortable with feeling anxious. Kids need the chance to see that they can attend school and their worst fears won’t happen. Exposure therapy, which reintroduces kids to the school environment gradually, is very effective at this. In the very beginning of treatment, this might mean driving by the school or walking through its empty halls on the weekend. From there kids can work up to attending one or two classes and then eventually attending a full day towards the end of treatment.

It’s best to be proactive and catch school refusal as soon as you can. Unfortunately, the longer a child misses school, the harder it is to get back in the routine, because being absent is very reinforcing. I have worked with families that describe getting ready for school like it’s a battle complete with huge tantrums. Sometimes the morning gets so challenging and exhausting that mom and dad just give up and say, “Fine, stay home; I’ll go pick up your homework.” It’s a very understandable situation, but again, letting it continue puts kids one day further from being back at school. It is important for parents to know that the sooner the child gets back to school the better, and reaching out for help is an important first step.