Eat the Frog

Eat the Frog

Your child tells you they have a big test in three days. If you are concerned that your child won’t focus enough to study well and make a good grade, use our tips listed below to give him the best chance to do well!

Get organized.

Even if you or your child aren’t a type A personality that loves a good to do list, getting organized is very good use of your time. You can avoid reviewing that last chapter at 10 p.m. if you know what has to be covered for that big test. Write out all the items needing to be reviewed or learned and the time period allowed.

planner

source: Clipart.com

Eat the frog.

(What?!) Prioritize your study list with the most difficult items first. Doing the most difficult task (eating the frog) first gives the harder activities your most energy and effort before you start to get tired. Many will want to do easy tasks first to get them out of the way, but research shows the rest of the study session will be smooth sailing with the frog gone. We start with corrections at Gideon as this is the least favorite task for anyone. Who wants to look over where they have gone wrong?! Everyone would much rather start fresh, but this is one of the most important things we do, so we found doing it before the child gets tired is best.

Eat a frog first thing in the morning

Is the frog really hard to swallow? Don’t let your child give up.

Remember the growth mindset. Our brains are not fixed at a certain intelligence. They continue to grow through practice and training.

Can’t sit still? Have your child run around and play for 15 minutes.

Light exercise before difficult tasks gets the blood to the brain and helps them think better afterwards. However, don’t let this extend into hours of procrastination and then exhaustion.

Same time, same place. Routine is very good for children.

They know what is expected of them and what to expect from caregivers. The closer you stick to the routine, the less they will ask for deviation from it. If spelling tests are every Friday, set up a schedule for write out the words every Thursday afternoon in a certain place. We encourage Gideon students to come the same time and day each week. Develop a routine that works for your family and do your best to stick to it. Decide which things in the schedule are prioritized and try to not move them around.

Create distraction free zones.

Find a clean, clutter-free area for her to study where the TV is not seen or heard, the dogs cannot get in, and the siblings are unable to pester. Fewer items on the table and reduced noise help keep the student focused on the task at hand. We are all looking for reasons to stop working on something difficult so remove each one you can. Many people believe watching or listening to a TV is fine as they believe they are great multi-taskers. However, studies show that multitasking is really just slowing you way down. Make TV the reward AFTER the studying. However, non-lyrical music such as classical can help concentration so feel free to play some background music. This is useful also to drown out other noises or conversations.

Write it out to memorize it.

The act of writing by hand greatly aids memorization. While typing is faster and easier for editing, hand writing helps you remember what you wrote better. Remember how we memorize spelling words? Flash cards and other mnemonic devices such as: PEMDAS – Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally (for order of operations – parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction) can be very useful as well. Many adults remember those phrases years later.

PEMDAS - Order of Operations

Source: GMR

Take breaks.

Try to avoid cramming so breaks won’t seem wasteful. If possible, divide a large study session into several days or a weekend. Doing it all at once can lead to burnout. The Gideon curriculum and structure divides difficult concepts into several booklets which are then divided into small chunks for each day.

Why memorize and master the lower levels of math?

Why memorize and master the lower levels of math?

Sleep on it.

It seems like a better use of time would be to stay up late or all night to study, but a full night’s rest is necessary for our brains to retain all that we just learned. Sleep does amazing things for us physically and cognitively. At a certain point, just call it a night!

Need more tips?  Look through this checklist to get other ideas.

Want focus and concentration skills built into your child’s life?

Contact us today for a free diagnostic testing!

Stronger Math Students in 5 Steps

Stronger Math Students in 5 Steps

We hear that having good math abilities leads to more opportunities and higher salaries. But did you know there was an actual study done that confirmed that households with solid math skills had an enormous net worth advantage over those who didn’t? Not surprising.

“A study by the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit think tank, showed a direct correlation between numeracy (a fancy word for math skills), delayed recall (the ability to remember something you’ve seen after some delay) and your future wealth (net worth). Researchers gave a basic numeracy test to participants, and matched scores to household wealth. The results were stunning. For households where both spouses scored zero correct answers on the test, the average wealth (net worth) was $200,000. For households where both spouses got all of the answers correct, the average wealth was $1.7 million. That’s an 850 percent increase for the highly numerate families compared to the innumerate families.”

Many people believe they just ‘aren’t math people’. We would disagree. Learning math is just like learning a sport or an instrument. While some students will have more natural ability, it doesn’t mean others can’t learn the skill as well.

What is required to master anything? Usually you’ll need general knowledge to be memorized, direct instruction on how to improve, and practice, practice, practice. Oh, and more practice. We see struggling students every day who are only struggling because they haven’t repeated the operation enough to know it well. Gideon works because we place students into the area they need to master and then let them practice until they do. Some parents wait too long to get help for their children. High school can be tough for remediation with all the material needed to cover, and many schools are removing those classes. The best time is in elementary school. However, it is never too late to get started on a solid math foundation. Here are some ways to improve at any age:

1) Memorize the 4 basic operations.

If basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts are not memorized, all the other higher operations will suffer. The time it takes to do 20 homework problems escalates quickly if thinking through each step is required. How can you learn fractions well if you still are unsure what 8 x 9 is? How can you score basketball goals regularly if you struggle to dribble? Memorization frees up brain space for the more complex items needing to be learned.

2) Do repetition – oral & written and not just on a computer.

Practice until it is mastered. Until the hesitation is gone. Until it seems easy. Until the facts come as quickly as your name. Also handwriting aids in memorization. Forget the grocery list at home? If you hand wrote it, you are much more likely to remember the contents. Pushing a button on a computer, while more fun, does not. Many phone and computer games can engage the students with interactive graphics but will fall short of the goal – mastery – due to lack of writing. We also have students warm-up their brains by using oral facts, which are similar to flash cards, but have all the problems listed together. We have seen great success in using these two methods.  Download all our oral facts cards here!

3) Ensure accuracy. The right answer does matter!

Corrections. No one enjoys them. However, everyone benefits from doing them. Simply being told what the correct answer is does not help either. Students do best when required to figure out the right answers. While revisiting the problem, they have to think through where they have gone awry. This aids in remembering for the next time the problem is encountered.

How can we encourage a growth mindset in students?

“The main way is to help students value MISTAKES. They — and we — need to see MISTAKES as something very valuable for math learning.”

4) Encourage.

Have a student who has no confidence in math? Start to encourage regularly. Praise the effort in the wrong answer and the correctness in the right answer. Start just before the student struggles in order to build up confidence and to advance at a pace comfortable for him. Show your belief in his ability to master the subject even if frustration has overcome him for a moment. Then recognize his growing skills to promote more interest. A study showed that students who pursued math later did so due to acknowledgement they were excelling.

“Participants included over 9,000 college students enrolled in calculus courses across the country.  Researchers discovered that students who were enrolled in higher-level courses were doing so mainly due to an interest in the subject that evolved from some form of recognition of their abilities previously given to them, as well as finding the topic interesting.”

5) Practice daily.

Most people don’t become pianists by playing the piano once a week. With homework becoming less common, ensure your student is getting practice every day – especially if they are struggling. There are internet resources abound, or simply buy a workbook at the store. Anything is better than nothing. This avoids becoming rusty and having to relearn skills constantly. Brains perform better with short periods of rest.  However, a month break does more harm than good.

Use these suggestions on your own or contact a local Gideon Math and Reading center. At Gideon we apply all five of these methods (and more!) to creating confident math students through our step-by-step mastery learning program. We offer free diagnostic evaluations to determine where your student would start in our expansive, well-organized curriculum ranging from learning numbers through high school geometry. Our goal is always to take your student beyond grade level at his or her pace to learn new concepts in a stress-free environment.

Ready to get started?

Contact us today to schedule your child’s free placement testing!

10 Tips for Easy Back to School

10 Tips for Easy Back to School

Maybe you are wondering how to get your kids from lazy summer days of sleeping in and staying up late to early school mornings of being dressed and out the door or in front of the computer for virtual learning by 8. Not to worry! We have scoured the internet to find all the best tips for transitioning back to school for you.

1. Ease back into a school based sleep schedule. Those early mornings will be here soon so start putting the kids to bed and waking them earlier a week or two before school starts.  Kids aged 5-12 years need 10-11 hours of sleep. WebMD recommends:

“Begin with a wake up time that is about an hour earlier than usual. For example, if your 6-year-old goes to bed at 9 p.m. during the summer and needs to get back to an 8 p.m. bedtime for school, begin by waking her up at 7 a.m. instead of letting her sleep until 8. Then try inching her bedtime back the next night to 8:30 p.m. On day two, wake her up at 6:30 a.m. and aim for an 8 p.m. bedtime.”

2. Get your family’s calendar organized.  All the soccer practices, school holidays, and Gideon center visits or online classes need to marked clearly on one calendar where you can see everything coming up to avoid surprises and missed appointments.  Organized Home suggests:

Add other calendars to Calendar Central: lunch menus, class assignment sheets, sports practice schedules, virtual classes, Zoom parties, etc.

3. Go visit the school and meet the teacher OR join the virtual meet the teacher night.  If your child is able to get to know his new in-person or virtual classroom in advance, this make him more comfortable when he returns or logs on.  This is especially important with a child who has any back to school anxiety or if he is attending a new school.  Familiarity breeds confidence!  WebMD also give this tip:

“These are good opportunities for you to meet the key players: your child’s teachers, school counselors, the principal, and most importantly, front desk staff. “The secretaries know everything and are the first people children see when they arrive at school every day.”

4. Create a structured morning routine.  Is there anything more crazy than trying to get out the door or logged into the virtual lesson in the morning while trying to find last night’s homework, pack lunches, and finish your own breakfast?  Oh, and did the kids brush their teeth?!  Do yourself a favor and write out a morning to do list.  You could even laminate for the kids to check off each morning as they complete tasks.  This helps them remember what is still needed without you repeating yourself 8 times.  Here are some printable options from Family Education.com and PinterestLifehacker offers this protip:

“Once you have picked a morning routine for kids, go through all of the steps with them, talking about each step as you go along your morning. This will help you recognize any glitches or perhaps the need to re-order some of the steps.”

5. Plan out lunches in advance.  Here are ton of lunch ideas from 100 Days of Real Food.  Or search Pinterest.  Batch as much food prep together as possible.  Giving out a bag of baby carrots each day? Create each day’s portion as one task and then you only have to grab a bag later – whether staying at home or going to school.  Here’s some money and time saving bonuses from Cometogetherkids.com:

Also, by taking a few minutes to portion everything out before the week starts, I know that I we’ll actually eat the food and those strawberries or cucumbers won’t go bad sitting in their original cartons in the back of the fridge.

Involving the kids has really made a difference this school year.  Many of the softer fruits like strawberries can be sliced with a not-too-sharp knife and the kids don’t mind helping to slice and package if they can sample a few.

6. Stay positive about any stress or anxiety your children are expressing.  They take their cues from you.  School family.com says:

“A parent’s attitude has a strong influence on how children view the beginning of school, says Kennedy-Moore. Children pick up on their parents’ feelings, react to them, and often magnify them. “You have to have faith that they’ll be able to get through [changes], even if it’s hard. It’s a powerful message to give kids,” she says. “We don’t want to dismiss their feelings, but we do want to normalize them and say ‘Everyone feels a little nervous going or logging into the classroom, but I really think you’re going to be fine.’”

7. Create a launch pad!  This is where all the next day’s needed items are gathered such as school bags, coats, shoes, and basketball uniforms or just the needed assignments if staying virtual.  When your have a place for everything, your child knows how to stay organized and where to find it the next morning. Do as much the night before as possible. WebMd offers this extra reminder to “have your child make a list of things to bring to school and post it by the front door.”

8. Nuture independence.  Your children can help with many of the above named tasks to make these go faster and easier.  It may slow you down at first, but don’t bypass teaching them life skills for a short time gain.  Once they are capable, it will be faster overall.  Involve them in some of the smaller decisions to create ownership by letting them decide between two acceptable choices.  The more your child does for herself, the more confident she will be.  Maria Montessori says in The Absorbent Mind:

Any child who is self-sufficient, who can tie his shoes, dress or undress himself, reflects in his joy and sense of achievement the image of human dignity, which is derived from a sense of independence.

9.  Do a practice run.  Try it the morning routine and route to school a few mornings on time.  Then you can determine how long it really takes to walk to school or gather everything and get out the door.  As we say at Gideon, practice makes perfect!

10.  Keep your Gideon math and reading work routine going.  Our students who have been working all summer have avoided the summer slide.  If you took the summer off, re-enroll to get those brains warmed up.  Students doing Gideon work are already in the homework habit and will ease back into schoolwork easily.  The school year is a great time for Gideon as we first solidify the foundation, filling in any holes and gaps, and then we allow your child to go beyond grade level at his own pace.  We are building confidence through academic mastery step-by-step which will translate into all areas of your child’s life.

Contact us today to enroll!

Gideon Grammar One with Videos

Gideon Grammar One with Videos

Grammar knowledge is the foundation to good writing and speaking. Poor grammar can lead to confusion.

Poor grammar skills are not well received by employers and college professors.  It is important to have proper grammar to get your point across properly in a speech, essay, or simple email.

This is why Gideon takes a direct approach to grammar to teach concepts using a separate curriculum from the reading comprehension and vocabulary.  While we have always had a grammar program, we have recently updated our Level One to include better explanation pages at the front of the booklets AND videos explaining the concepts covered.

The video form of these explanations can be easily accessed through the QR code on the cover or by using the given link shown there as well. All the Grammar One videos are in a playlist on our youtube channel.

After reading through the concepts, the students then practice these throughout the booklet to gain mastery. Practice makes perfect!
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As with all Gideon booklets (except math drill), all pages are graded by an instructor and corrected by the student.  If the student made too many mistakes, the booklet will be repeated at some point in the future.  The instructor can always offer more help if needed, but be sure to use these resources if the student needs extra help at home.

Many times the only thing the student needs to do is to reread the instructions and go a bit slower.

What are you biggest questions with grammar?  Leave a comment below!

10 Ways to Avoid Summer Slide

10 Ways to Avoid Summer Slide

Summer slide is the term used to describe the loss of skills many students experience during the time off from school. This article reports that a Duke University professor’s study found students may lose one to three months of learning.

Cooper’s study also showed that summer loss was greater in math than reading and had the biggest downward trend in math computation and spelling.

If your student is currently attending a Gideon Math and Reading center, you are already ahead of the game and keeping his or her brain sharp!  We can make incredible gains in just a few minutes each day.  If not currently enrolled, we consider summer a great time to address issues from the year before OR to get ahead as the stresses from the normal school year are eliminated.  If you are off on vacation or looking for other ways to engage your children, check out our links below. (more…)

https://youtu.be/mk_JiwIjzXU