Slideshow

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Kid-Friendly Search Engines

In keeping our students focused when internet browsing, I have some useful sites that are very kid-friendly.  Try these out the next you are browsing online at tutoring!





These sites will also be located on the homepage of our Porta Portal for easy access while in the computer lab!

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Dear Student.....

There are only three weeks left of tutoring.....three!!  Where did this year go??  I can't believe we are winding things down for the year and getting ready for summer....although the weather makes that hard to believe, but our students are already looking forward to those long summer days ahead.  It might be hard to get them to stay focused, especially as the weather hopefully turns nicer, so I thought this would be a great time for you and your student to talk about this past years happenings.  You could start by looking up information on important news events that have happened since October.  Make a list together and talk about your favorite ones (I know one of mine would be the Royal Wedding taking place on Friday).  Look back at their assignment notebook and see how their assignments have changed over the year and how their work has become more challenging.  Allowing a young learner to see their accomplishments and acknowledge all that  they have learned this year will bring a big smile to their faces, and yours too.  And last, I think writing an end-of-year letter to each other would be a great way to sum up the end of the year and let each other know your favorite parts together and how proud of them you are.  Taking the time to remember all that has happened since the fall will bring back great memories and help jumpstart great end-of-year discussions.

Word Helpers

What should you do when your student reaches a word in a story that seems challenging for them?  Don't just tell them what the word is....help them attack it and come to the end result on their own.

Here are a list of fun and funny ways to help student get through those tougher words, bare with me, these are silly:

1.  Chunky Monkey:  Look for small "chunks" inside bigger words 
2.  Stretchy Snake:  Stretch out the sounds in the words and blend them together
3.  Lips the Fish:  Get your mouth ready.  Make the beginning sound of the word
4.  Skippy Kangaroo:  Skip over the word and read the rest of the sentence, then try it again
5.  Flippy the Dolphin:  Flip the vowel sound.  If you tried the short vowel sound, try the word with the long vowel sound.  Which one makes sense?
6.  Fly Bye:  Look at the picture carefully.  Use the picture clues to decode tricky words

**I did not make these up, teachers have been using strategies like these for a long time.  These just make it a bit more fun to teach. :-)

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Using Your iPod

I have noticed a handful of times students walking around with their tutor's iphone or ipod's in hand. Sometimes I see a game of Angry Birds or Tetris floating around on the screen, which is all fun and everything, but not so educational.  But, I totally understand....we are living in a digital native world.  Our students are not interested in looking at paper anymore, that does not hold their attention.  Think about it, we as Americans have access to A LOT of technology:

There are 240 million TVs in the U.S.; 2 million are in bathrooms.
Newspaper circulation is down 7 million over the last 25 years. But in the last five years, unique readers of online newspapers are up 30 million.
More video was uploaded to YouTube in the last 2 months than if ABC, CBS, and NBC had been airing new content (with no reruns) 24/7/365 since 1948 (which was when ABC started broadcasting).
MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube collectively get more than 500 million unique visitors per month. None of these sites existed in early 2003.
The computer in your cell phone today is a million times cheaper, a thousand times more powerful, and about a hundred thousand times smaller than the one computer at MIT in 1965.
-Lori Elliot "Teaching Smarter with SmartBoards"

One of the great parts about technology today is that it reaches all types of learners:  the visual learner, the auditory learn, and the kinesthetic learner.  I encourage you as tutors to bring in your laptops, ipods, ipads, etc. and let your students get to know technology today.  They might not have access to these cool "toys" at home or at school.  This is absolutely your choice, you do not have to bring in anything to tutoring, but as the days are becoming nicer and students are becoming more restless, having a tool that is eye-catching and engaging could make all the difference in your last few sessions together.  Check out these FREE applications for the ipod/ipad that you could download and let your student use as free time after their homework is compeleted:

Monday, April 11, 2011

Spring Fever

With our first set of warm weather behind us, I think all of us would prefer to be outside rather than inside on these breezy spring days.  Just as the weather changes throughout the year, so does the school year, and with the end in sight, students will become restless and less focused then before.  Expect behavior to be a bit worse after Spring Break, so you must be prepared.  Try a few of these tasks below for an easy transition into spring with your student:

1.  Accept the behavior and move on.  Don't waste time challenging the behavior, encourage the child to move forward.

2.  Provide more rewards and make privileges easier to earn.  Emphasizing rewards will keep spirits high help your students feel successful, knowing they finished at their best!

3.  Allow for breaks.  Keep your breaks consistent and frequent as it will be hard to sit still when the sun is still shining at seven o'clock at night.

4.  Stay on schedule with what you're doing.  Just because the weather is changing, doesn't mean your routine needs to.  By staying with a routine you are letting your student know that school is not over and

4.    Set realistic goals.  Plan ahead for tests....it's easy to become lazier once the weather becomes nicer.  Break bigger assignments into smaller ones and leave extra room for things to get done.  Students might need more breaks, so better to plan ahead and plan for extra time.

5.  Find closure.  After spring break, students tend to tune out of school, especially this year with Spring Break being so late.  By helping your student find a sense of closure for the end of the year you are gearing them towards a successful end to a successful year.  Help them make plans for summer by setting goals for their summer vacation, make a list of all the milestones they have reached this year, or make a countdown calendar.  The end of the year can be very busy, so create a calendar of all the events happening the last two months.  Write down activites and circle important dates.  Show your student how to cross the days off as they end.  Before they know it, the end of they year will be knocking at their door!

So this year when spring fever shows up, remember there are ways to deal with this change by coping with the situation and making room for the new season to arrive (goodness knows we need it) and for another successful school year to come to an end.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Google SketchUp




For all those innovative kids out there (adults too), I recently came across this amazing FREE website called Google SketchUp.  It's a place where you get to use complete imagination to build and create models of pretty much anything you can possibly imagine!  I think this program is so great, and offers a real-world experience to hands-on designing and creating very simple designs to above and beyond what you could ever imagine.  The possibilities are limitless and that is so very cool!

Check out Google SketchUp's blog for further information and pictures of recent designs that others have created.