News — learning

Recently, I read Frank Sesno's "Ask More: The Power of Questions to Open Doors, Uncover Solutions, and Spark Change".  Many of the tactics can be applied to dialogue with our children too.  Here are five ways we can use questions to get our children to tell us more about their lives and also teach our children in a more effective way.    1. Use Echo Questions "Echo questions enable me to use the other person’s own words for emphasis and as a follow-up question. I add inflection to suit the mood—sympathy, surprise, and humor. Henry says, “The way they treated me...

For years, we have been admonished for letting our children have screen time.  Every time I, for one, took out the iPad for the children, I felt a pang of guilt.  Well, no more! New studies are proving there are iPad applications that can help advance your child’s future academic success. Why Reading Independently This Summer Is Critical The most important thing you can do this summer with your children to improve your child’s academic success is reading and practicing writing skills at home.  A new study from Harvard researched 4000 students and their summer holiday activities, specifically “how various summer...

Did you know too much noise hinders your child's ability to learn? In Dr. Robert Cialdini's Pre-suasion, he cites several studies demonstrating how children learn less - lower reading ability, for example - in noisy classrooms. What do we mean by "noise"?Noise = loud road traffic outside the classroom loud airplane traffic AND lots of busy posters/distractions on walls in the classroom. What does noise do to learning? Studies show that only ~20% of children in noisy classrooms learned to read.   When the noise was eliminated in these same classrooms, ~80% of the children learned to read. What can you do? Be aware of the noise...