Helping Your Kids Improve Their Grades

Helping your child do well in school is one of the best investments that a parent can make. With the future of employment growing ever so competitive, our children will need every advantage they can just to compete in our global economy. The following are 5 ways to help them improve their grades.

1. Create an environment in your home that encourages learning.
This will be a major influence on how well your children do in school. Provide them with many different opportunities to become excited about learning. Make sure that appropriate materials from puzzles to paints to computers are available to stimulate their curiosity.

2. Provide your children with a well-balanced life.
A stable home, filled with love, serves as a solid foundation for getting straight A's. Establish routines so your children get enough sleep, eat regular nourishing meals, and receive sufficient exercise. Limit excessive TV-viewing and the playing of video and computer games.

3. Read to your children every day.
Most of the learning your children do in school involves reading. Read to your kids to teach them about reading, expand and enrich their vocabularies, and broaden their experiences. Reading aloud exposes them to materials that would be difficult for them to read on their own.

4. Encourage them to read extensively.
As your children progress through school, as much as 75 percent of what they learn will come from the printed page. The more children read, the better their reading skills become. Make sure there is a wide variety of interesting reading materials in your home to encourage the reading habit.

5. Show your children how to be organized.
Children who are organized find it much easier to succeed in school. One of the best ways to teach organizational skills is through example. Show your children how to use such organizational tools as assignment pads, calendars, notebooks, binders, and backpacks.

Academic Coaching

Academic coaching services play a vital role when it comes to shaping a student's career. They help students analyze their short comings and motivate them to get better. Academic coaching is all about ensuring that students fair well in the examination and show improved results. It is also the responsibility of an academic coach to ensure that students develop interest and passion in a subject and begin to enjoy studies a lot more than before.

Academic Coaching | What to Look for in a Learning Center
(taken from "Ending the Homework Hassle" by John Rosemand)

• Look for a Learning Center that:
• Comes highly recommended by other parents and professional
• Has been in business more than two years
• Employs teachers who are state-certified and have classroom experience
• Uses a variety of learning materials, thus enabling adaptation to a broad range of learning styles
• Uses computer-assisted instruction as a supplement to teacher-based instruction, rather that as a primary instructional technique
• Retests your child periodically to check his/her progress
• Guarantees they will contact and continue to communicate with you child's regular classroom teacher
• Promises to keep you regularly posted concerning your child's progress in their program

What services will Academic Coaching provide?

• Professional staff and teachers who understand the learning process
• Diagnostic assessment of your child
• On going conferences with the parents and teachers
• Progress testing
• Personalized program to help your child
• Prevents students from falling through the cracks

Improving Your Child’s Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension is a crucial learning skill for children to master. One proven technique to teach reading is to have them make connections with the text. At home, there is a fun and informal way to increase your child's learning of what they read. All that's needed to teach reading is your child's favorite book and some open ears.

Nothing is more important to academic achievement than being a good reader. Parents know their children best and can provide the one-on-one time and attention that will lead them to success in reading. Here is a list of 5 ways to help your children become more effective readers.

STEP 1:
(Set aside a regular time to read to your children every day)
Studies show that regularly reading out loud to children will produce significant gains in reading comprehension, vocabulary, and the decoding of words. Whether your children are preschoolers or preteens, it will increase their desire to read independently.

STEP 2:
(Surround your children with reading material.)
Children with a large array of reading materials in their homes score higher on standardized tests. Tempt your kids to read by having a large supply of appealing books and magazines at their reading level. Put the reading materials in cars, bathrooms, bedrooms, family rooms, and even by the TV.

STEP 3:
(Have a family reading time.)
Establish a daily 15 to 30 minute time when everyone in the family reads together silently. Seeing you read will inspire your children to read. Just 15 minutes of daily practice is sufficient to increase their reading fluency.

STEP 4:
(Encourage a wide variety of reading activities.)
Make reading an integral part of your children's lives. Have them read menus, roadside signs, game directions, weather reports, movie time listings, and other practical everyday information. Also, make sure they always have something to read in their spare time when they could be waiting for appointments or riding in a car.

STEP 5:
(Develop the library habit.)
Entice your children to read more by taking them to the library every few weeks to get new reading materials. The library also offers reading programs for children of all ages that may appeal to your children and further increase their interest in reading.

5 Math Tutoring Tips for Parents

1. Counting
The most basic skills in mathematics are counting and grouping (“seeing” numbers in groups). To develop counting skills, help children learn to count from any number, to any number, by any number. Do all counting forward and backward.

2. Fractions
As counting skills begin to develop, fractions can be introduced. Long before introducing words like numerator and denominator, teach children that half means “2 parts the same,” and have them use this knowledge to figure out things like:
• “How much is half of 6? …10? …20? …26? …30? …50? …100? …248? …4,628?”
• “How much is half of 3? …11? …15? …21? …49? …99? …175? …999? …2,001?

3. Problem Solving
Children become good problem solvers when they are asked to solve a broad range of problems early on, at home and at school. Start with easy questions; let the level of difficulty increase as the child’s ability grows.

4. Money
Preschool and kindergarten are appropriate times to begin this training. It is best that parents take care of these things at home, rather than have teachers spend valuable classroom time on them.
By the end of third grade, children should have learned the basic equivalents:
• 20 nickels = 10 dimes = 4 quarters = 2 half–dollars = 1 dollar
• 1 dime = 2 nickels
• 1 quarter = 5 nickels
• 1 half–dollar = 5 dimes = 10 nickels

5. Grouping
To expand children’s thinking processes and help them “see” groups, ask questions like:
• “7 and how much more make 10?” “70 and how much more make100?” “700 and how much more make 1,000?”
• “10 and how much more make 15?” “10 and how much more make 18?” “10 and how much more make 25?”
• “17 and how much more make 20?” “87 and how much more make 100?” “667 and how much more make 1,000?”

Special thanks to Joe Restivo for his contribution on this article.