Writing Archives

Make the Most of Reading Aloud

October 4, 2013 Brad Hoffman Leave a Comment

As early childhood teachers we often tell parents, particularly before their child is conventionally reading on their own, that the best thing that parent can do is read TO their child. For many families, this may seem obvious and they have been doing this since their child was a toddler, if not before.

But just reading to them doesn’t take advantage of the many ways their child could be learning even more. Comprehension is the goal, and the child will be learning this process when they begin to read on their own and work towards fluency.

There are ways the reader (parent) can enhance comprehension for their young learner by doing a few specific things, before the child ever receives explicit reading instruction:

Read the book yourself first. This allows you to be familiar with the story so you can ask informed questions of your child.
Have in your mind the questions you will ask.

Have your child:

Look at the cover first and predict what the story will be about.
During parts of the book where something particularly important happens, make a prediction of what will happen next in the story. They don’t have to be right. Revisit later in the text and examine the prediction’s validity.
How will a character solve a problem?
How is the character feeling right now?
Explain/paraphrase what is happening in this part of the story.
What happened at the end of the story?

At the end:

How did a character change or grow during the story?
Summarize the story. What happened?

Try to avoid questions that only elicit a yes or no response. The questions above encourage the child to stop and really think about the text, and even empathize with the character(s). It is beneficial when using both picture books and chapter books.

The conversations that emerge will greatly enhance comprehension and understanding, and of course, the same techniques will be just as important when the child begins reading on their own. Consider making it a practice of having “book talks” when sharing stories together.

Written by: Editorial Team, My Learning Springboard, Inc.

Top 10 Tips for Enhancing Language Development for Caregivers or Nannies

September 19, 2013 Brad Hoffman Leave a Comment

1. Follow the child’s lead.

Youngsters beginning to speak (around 12 months of age) tend to speak about what interests them, therefore, a key strategy that should guide caregiver language is to follow the child’s lead. In doing so, we are more likely to obtain a spontaneous imitation or utterance expansion from the child if we simply comment on that in which the child appears to be interested.

2. Ask fewer rather than more questions.

The natural flow or turn-taking that characterizes conversations between caregiver and child proceeds more easily when the caregiver asks fewer rather than more questions. In other words, the frequent or rapid firing of questions to a child typically disrupts or interrupts the child’s train of thought and disrupts the flow of back and forth conversation. Rather than frequent questioning of the child, the caregiver will be more successful when providing comments that follow the child’s interest and target the child’s particular topic or focus in play. For example, if the child is building a tower with blocks, the caregiver might say, “Wow that tower is very tall!”

3. Expand or enhance the child’s utterance.

Thus, rather than directing the child’s play and language by telling him what to play with and what to do, the caregiver will get the most bang for the buck, by expanding or enhancing the child’s utterance. For example, if the child is playing and says, “Wash baby!” The caregiver might say, “Oh, the baby needs a bath!”

4. Indirectly model correct forms using upbeat intonation patterns rather than directly correcting errors or incomplete formulations.

Rather than directly telling the child to repeat or “Say…” certain language formulations, indirectly model the correct formulation. Best practice advises us to provide the actions and simple comments in a more naturalistic manner, with a playful and perhaps upbeat intonation pattern. This will often be perceived by the typical toddler as an ‘invitation’ to imitate or practice the spoken form. Even when the child produces a language form that is incorrect or incomplete, the caregiver is advised not to make explicit corrections, but rather to indirectly model the correct formulation. Thus, if the child says, “Look! Two boot!” the caretaker should simply say, “Yes, two boots.”

5. Do not compare your child’s speech and language to his peers, siblings or other family members or friends.

Since children all develop at their own rate, it is not advised to compare one child to his siblings, cousins, or neighbors.

6. Have a professional speech-language evaluation if there are parental concerns about the rate or nature of your child’s speech and language development.

Since children progress according to a unique pattern, if there is concern about the rate or nature of the child’s language development, it is advisable to have a professional speech-language pathologist evaluate the child to determine if the child has progressed sufficiently and whether there is a need for continued monitoring of his or her language skills. If there are continued parental concerns about the child’s language development, and if there is a question about whether progress has been sufficient, the speech-language-pathologist will screen the child again after a specified time, to determine if he or she is making sufficient progress on his or her own. (Younger children need more frequent re-evaluations.)

7. The caretaker or nanny will be better equipped to facilitate the child’s language if there has been a consultation with a licensed SLP.

Once the caretaker has consulted with a certified speech-language pathologist, and has gained a better understanding of the child’s language capabilities, he or she will be better equipped to guide the child and facilitate his or her language. Thus, the caretaker will know whether to focus on vocabulary enhancement, syntax or sentence formulation, meanings in words and sentences, or the practical or pragmatic functions that language can serve.

8. Share books with the child in a playful way that models word and sentence meaning, as well as language use.

This is an exquisite way to enhance the child’s language abilities.

9. Caretakers or nannies can benefit greatly from sessions with a competent speech-language pathologist.

For children receiving speech and language enrichment from a certified speech-language pathologist, the youngsters will benefit enormously if the caretaker or nanny is present during language therapy sessions.

10. Follow the child’s lead in play.

This is an invaluable way to help enhance a child’s language. Most importantly, play and language are the foundations to literacy.

Written by: Editorial Team, My Learning Springboard, Inc.

Economics and Fiction: An Unlikely Pair

September 9, 2013 Brad Hoffman Leave a Comment

$Econ and Fiction$ It’s cliché but true: a great teacher can change your life. In college, I majored in economics, a discipline which attracts me because it provides a rigorous quantitative framework that can be applied to examine any type of social or political problem. But on a whim in my junior year of college, I switched out of a mathematical economics class and into a class about King Arthur, Robin Hood, and Joan of Arc. The professor had an excellent reputation, and I’d always loved reading. At the time, I felt that equations were valuable, but on their own, they didn’t always spark my interest.

Suddenly my worldview changed: reading assorted tales of medieval adventure, I realized that literature tackles many of the same problems I’d always assumed that I needed an economics degree to examine, and that the ways books investigate these problems is vivid and imaginative in a way not always permitted by the strict rules of economic analysis. The mechanisms used by the books I was reading – language and narrative structures – are more communicative, more descriptive, and more seductive than numbers; they animated the economic and political principles at stake.

My economics research focused on trends in contemporary U.S. income inequality. A thousand years ago, tales of Robin Hood examined similar disparities between rich and poor; tales of Arthur and his knights explored concepts of democracy and tinkered with the idea of placing political power in the hands of the populace. Deep in the midst of feudalism, progressive taxation and democracy were impossibilities in England, yet there they were, staring at me in attractively heroic form. I was—and still am—hooked.

Reading literature forces me to re-examine my analytical assumptions as an economist; economics grounds my study of literature. But I might not have figured that out if I hadn’t taken a chance and switched into a class very different from the ones offered in my major. Most people encourage you to streamline your interests and focus so that you become efficient at one thing. Efficiency is important, but it also pays off to resist this process of narrowing down. Being able to think in multiple ways will allow you to come up with creative solutions that you might miss otherwise. And of course, it’s also more fun.

By Elias Leight, Private Tutor

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.

With Practice, Any Child Can Learn to Reduce His or Her Stress

May 9, 2013 Brad Hoffman Leave a Comment

All children experience stress, but some are never taught effective methods to reduce it. Unfortunately, these children gradually learn to recognize anxiety as their “normal” state.

Fortunately, there are simple and effective methods to reduce anxiety. These work equally well for children and adults, but the instructions here are tailored to children:

A Calming Method: Counting Your Pulse

(do this to reduce stress at any time, e.g. before a test or presentation)

Sit or stand with your back straight but relaxed
Close your eyes
Place your hand on your chest, your neck, or your wrist and feel your pulse
Count your pulse while you breathe normally

Count your pulse to at least 20. You can use this calming method any time you are feeling stressed.

Another Calming Method: Counting Your Breaths

(do this to reduce stress at any time, e.g. before a test or presentation)

Sit or stand with your back straight but relaxed
Close your eyes and begin to pay attention to your breathing
Breathe in/out normally and mentally count your first cycle of breath (“one”)
Continue to breathe in/out normally, mentally counting each cycle of breath (i.e., “two,” “three,” “four,” “five”)

Count your cycles of breath (in/out) to at least five. Make sure to mentally say the number to yourself after each cycle.

Breathing Meditation

(at least one minute a day, ideally before getting out of bed in the morning)

Sit in a quiet place with your back straight but relaxed
Close your eyes and begin to pay attention to your breathing
Pay special attention to the sensation of breath as it enters and leaves your nostrils
Focus on this sensation and allow your other thoughts to subside

If you notice your mind wandering, calmly return your mind to the sensation of breath.

Do this meditation for at least one minute a day, ideally first thing in the morning before getting out of bed.

With practice, any child can learn to reduce his or her stress.

A tip for parents: After your child has had some experience practicing these methods, ask him or her to show you how to do them!

By Eric Sanders, Private Tutor