Interviewing Dr. Levy, an educational expert, business owner, public speaker and author that specialized learning needs in grades Pre-K to 12, you will sure be inspired by this short interview.

Coming from a family of educators, she finds her calling at her young age and started her teaching journey since 1993 as a speaker of an event hosted by Ministry of Education.

We journey with her on her 31 years of teaching journey to become the founder of her own education business in 2004 helping kid and young teens learn better using research based multi-sensory techniques, and here is her story.

The post Dr. Emily Levy: Founder of EBL Coaching & Expert in Student Success appeared first on EBL Coaching.

EBL Coaching Offers Specialized ADHD Tutoring To Help!

Does your child with ADHD have difficulties at school? Do they struggle with time management, organization, task initiation, note taking, or planning? If so, your child may benefit from specialized ADHD tutoring to help build these critical skills. ADHD tutoring can help your child thrive with the strategies detailed below.

Time Management

Students with ADHD often struggle to effectively manage their time. They may over or under estimate how long they think a task may take to complete. They might start working on their homework later in the day, only to find that they aren’t able to finish it or must stay up very late in order to do so. They may be tardy in turning in their homework assignments or might forget to turn them in entirely. ADHD tutoring can help your child build stronger time management skills. One strategy that may help them is the ET/AT strategy, where students are taught to predict how long they think a task might take to complete (and write down the ET, or estimated time), then compare it to the actual time it takes to complete (and write down the AT, or actual time). Students who struggle with time management typically find that there is a big discrepancy between these times when they start using this strategy but the more they practice this strategy during ADHD tutoring sessions and on their own, the more these times will start to merge.

Create a Study Space 

Students with ADHD often lose their belongings and can’t always find the supplies they need in order to complete their homework. They might sit down to start an assignment, only to find that they don’t have the necessary materials at hand and spend ample time wondering around looking for pens, pencils, paper, or highlighters. ADHD tutoring can help your child create a study space that has all of the supplies they may need to complete their homework. This space should include their computer, writing tools, paper, scissors, and so on. If you notice your child’s supplies are running low, encourage them to refill the supplies or help them do so, so they always have the supplies they need in their study space.

Prioritization 

Prioritizing tasks can be a challenge for students with ADHD. They may start a less important assignment only to find that they run out of time and aren’t able to complete a more important assignment or study for a critical upcoming test. ADHD tutoring can help your child evaluate all upcoming assignments and tests and come up with a plan for completing them, prioritizing the more important tasks first, followed by the less important ones. ADHD tutoring can also integrate the ET/AT strategy for deciding which tasks to prioritize, building time management skills along with prioritization.

Note Taking

Students with ADHD often have trouble taking effective notes. They may lose focus during a lesson and miss key elements that they needed to take down, or they might scribble down disorganized notes that they may not be able to read or understand later. ADHD tutoring can help your child develop more effective note taking skills. One strategy they may learn from ADHD tutoring is the column style method, where students learn to write the topic of the lesson on the top of their page (like “World War 1”), then divide their page into two columns: one for main ideas on the left side and one for notes on the right side. In school, they should only take notes on the right side of their page, in the notes section. Then when they get home and look at their notes, they should categorize their notes into  main ideas and write those main ideas in the left column, like “Causes of World War 1”, “Battles of World War 1”, and so on. Students can learn to effectively use this strategy with ADHD tutoring to help them become more effective note takers. 

Hire a tutor

ADHD tutoring can help your child tremendously with developing these key skills. Building stronger time management, studying, note taking, and prioritization skills with ADHD tutoring can help your child excel in school.

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It’s more than just putting pen to paper: How writing by hand helps students learn better.

In our tech-centered world, some argue that the physical act of writing is becoming archaic. Pencils and lined paper seem old fashioned, while typing, swiping, and pressing seem more relevant and nouveau. Those who favor eliminating handwriting from our schools’ curriculum feel that time can be better spent on other, seemingly more important, topics. They may argue that learning handwriting does not lead to greater college and career-readiness. While these arguments certainly have merit, the value of learning and practicing handwriting goes well beyond the simple act of tapping a pen to a sheet of paper. Here are some of the important benefits of handwriting:

1.) Brain stimulation. The physical act of handwriting stimulates parts of the brain,  helping us learn and retain information. With the kinesthetic motion of writing, information shifts into our long-term memories. Thus, students who are studying for exams are more likely to remember key information that they transcribe. Those who take notes from lectures or hand write data are more likely to remember these details for the long haul. In fact, research tells us that certain areas of the brain art activated when writing, but not when typing.

2.) Idea elaboration. Many students struggle to elaborate their ideas when writing. They often write the minimum amount needed to complete an assignment, and struggle to add details and further descriptions. For most students, writing by hand, rather than typing, actually enables them  to write faster and to put more information on a page. Typing just might further inhibit students’ abilities to elaborate when writing rather than enhancing it.

3.) Helps those with learning challenges. Cursive writing helps students minimize reversals, reduce spelling errors, and increase speed when writing. Students with dyslexia and learning challenges tend to need help in all of these areas, and cursive makes spelling and written expression much easier for them.

4.) Improves note-taking. Students who take pen-to-paper notes must complete multiple processes in order to take effective notes: listening, processing information, and rewriting the information in their own words. Those who use computers, on the other hand, often try to capture every word when taking notes rather than listening and processing the information simultaneously. Thus, pen-to-paper notes may lead to a better understanding and retention of information.

5.) Sentimental value. In the business world, hand written correspondences tend to have more value to the reader than typed ones. Everyone loves receiving a hand written note or card; there is a personal touch that can be lost in a typed note. Furthermore, so ‎many of our historical transcripts, such as the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, are written in cursive. Without learning cursive and practicing with it, students will be unable to read these significant documents.

There are now many apps that allow users to hand write on their tablets, helping to fuse “old-fashioned” handwriting with modern technology. Yet the benefits of writing by hand are still bountiful, and can help foster academic and personal growth.

The post Why Handwriting Is Still Relevant appeared first on EBL Coaching.

New York City learning specialist Emily Levy has developed this set of fifteen workbooks, best for late elementary and middle school students in need of highly structured training in reading comprehension, organizing ideas, and writing. They are structured on sound principles to support student mastery: integration of the same techniques throughout the various workbooks, and the opportunity students to work through many examples of each skill.

The teaching of highlighting in color is the premise on which the series is based.
Highlighting for topic, main idea, and details is explicitly taught, first using pictures and then paragraphs of text. Students use the same three colors for the same elements throughout the workbooks on summarizing text and note taking. Later, students can choose their own highlighting colors as they structure their own paragraphs and essays.

Each of the excellent note taking books develops skill in a different technique: webbing, column note taking, and outlining. The three books on writing–two on paragraphs and one on the 5-paragraph essay—integrate the skills of webbing and color highlighting. In all the books on writing skills, checklists appear after each student writing page, based on COPS (Capitalizing, Organization, Punctuation, Spelling) and paragraph structure (Topic Sentence, Detail, Detail, Detail, Concluding Sentence).

While the series is subtitled A Multisensory Approach, in fact most of the work exercises a student’s visual and motor skills. Nonetheless, the emphasis on teaching students to use color coding is a wise way to enrich visual processing of language structure. Two books explicitly teach auditory analysis of text, integrated with visual and motor representation: “Visualizing Text”, which employs fiction passages read aloud to the student who then draws a series of pictures; and “Summarizing”, which presents nonfiction passages that can either be read to the student or read independently by the student for summarizing in writing. In appearance, these books are unadorned and non-distracting.

Learning disabled students are likely to come away from this series feeling more confident in their capacity to analyze and structure text.

The post Strategies for Study Success: Book Review appeared first on EBL Coaching.

Has your child ever come home with a blank page of class notes?  Has he complained of not being able to listen in class and jot down information fast enough?  Has she ever missed important facts from a teacher’s lecture?  If so, then your child may be in need of some tools for listening and taking well-written notes.

Listening in class and taking notes can be a challenge for almost any student.  As students progress through school, in-class note taking demands become increasingly more challenging.  Students are required to listen to information dictated by their teachers, process that information, and rewrite it in their own words in the form of easy-to-read notes.  Without proper strategies, this multi-step process can be frustrating and overwhelming.

Luckily, there are some helpful tools for developing listening and note taking skills.  For starters, it’s important for students to learn how to jot down information quickly.  This skill is especially important in class, when teachers often speak quickly and relay an overwhelming about of information.  Students often hear dates, names, numbers, and key names, and scramble to try to capture every bit of information in their notes, usually in the form of time consuming full sentences.  Learning shorthand strategies can help students combat this I-must-write-everything-down trap:

Symbols

Symbols — percentage (%), question (?), number (#), money ($) — save time. For practice, have your child come up with symbols for the following words:  and, equals, star, sun, and circle.  You can then dictate mock sentences integrating these words and have your child write the sentences using abbreviations.  For example: “Jack has a question about problem number one and would like an answer.”  Your child might write, “Jack has a ? about problem #1 & would like an answer.”  Have fun coming up with these symbol-filled sentences!

Abbreviations

Abbreviations — Wednesday (Wed), homework (hwk), people (ppl), school (schl) — help students break down words into smaller chunks of letters. Your child can feel free to make up his own abbreviations – there are no set rules for abbreviating most words!  For example, he can choose to abbreviate therefore as thfr, maybe as mbe, or assignment as asmt.  He can be as creative as he likes, as long as he remembers what the abbreviations stand for.  For practice, have your child come up with abbreviations for the following words:  Thursday, workbook, problem, notebook, lesson.  Then dictate sentences integrating these abbreviations for extra reinforcement.

Contractions

Contractions help save time by combining two words into one shorter, more compact word.  Some examples include: couldn’t (stands for could not), he’s (he is), and hasn’t (has not).  Have your child come up with contractions for the following words:   you are, is not, it will, and they are.  For a bonus practice session, dictate sentences containing symbols, abbreviations, and contractions.  He’ll be writing shorthand in no time!

The Notes

Once your child has learned shorthand techniques, it is important to learn how to integrate these symbols, contractions, and abbreviations into well-organized notes.  What is the best way to organize a well-written page of notes?  Part of that answer depends on your child’s preferred learning style.  Some students are more linear learners, who will likely take an affinity towards Column-Style Note Taking. Others are more visually-oriented and will more likely prefer Webbing.  Try both styles of note taking with your child to see which one works best!

Column-Style Note Taking

Column-Style Note Taking helps students organize information into two different columns.  The left column should be drawn 1/3 from the left side of the page, and labeled “Main Ideas”; the right column should be 2/3 from the right side of the page and labeled “Notes”. He should pre-prepare three to four pages of notes (depending on his grade level and the complexity of the lecture) using this column-style set-up.

In class, when the teacher begins speaking, the only place on the page where the student should take notes is on the right side, under the “Notes” column.  During class, nothing should be written under the “Main Ideas” column. At home, he should re-read his notes and group different sections of the lecture into specific main ideas.  For example, if the entire lecture was on World War I, the first part may have been about causes of the war.  Thus, the student would write “Causes of World War I” on the left side of the page, under the “Main Ideas” column, and next to the information corresponding to that section of the notes.  The student would move through all of his notes in that manner, categorizing his notes into different main ideas.

Column-Style Note Taking encourages students to look back at their notes at the end of the school day to ensure they understand all the information that was dictated, and that there are no information gaps.  If there were any gaps in the notes, students can either ask their teacher or a friend for the missing information, or research that information in their textbooks.  Column-Style Note Taking is a very comprehensive strategy for taking notes and preparing well for upcoming exams.

Webbing

Webbing is a sound strategy for students who prefer a more visual technique for taking notes.  To use this strategy, the student first draws a circle in the center of page.   Inside that circle, he writes the topic of the lecture (for example, World War I).  Next, he draws a line branching out of the center circle.  On the line, he writes the first section, or main idea, of the lecture (for example, Causes of World War I).  He then draws bubbles branching out of that line containing important details which describe that main idea.  Once the teacher has finished discussing that section, he draws another line branching from the original center circle.  On that line, he writes the next main idea (for example,  Battles of World War I).  He then draws bubbles branching out of that line with important details describing that main idea, and continues with that pattern until the lecture is complete. Webbing helps students visualize information that they hear, and Web diagrams serve as great tools for test preparation!

The process of listening in class and taking well-written notes can be an anxiety-filled task.  Students will be required to take more and more complex notes as they progress through school.  Learning these techniques for shorthand and different styles of note taking can ease this process and help develop students’ confidence in their own classroom abilities.  So get your note taking gear ready, and start practicing!

The post Great Note Taking Strategies for School Success appeared first on EBL Coaching.

As students progress through school, they are expected to take countless in-class and standardized tests that include essays. Students are often baffled by this type of exam. How do I begin? How do I write an effective thesis statement? How do I organize my ideas? These are just some of the questions that run through the minds of students who are facing these essay exams. Learning strategies for how to write effective essays for timed tests can help students build confidence, ease anxiety, and ace these exams.

Here is a step-by-step process for how to write a perfect timed essay:

Brainstorm
Even if time is limited, it is always important for students to brainstorm before they begin writing. To do so, students can draw a vertical web diagram with a box on top for the opening and thesis statement, three bubbles underneath it, and a box at the bottom for the conclusion paragraph. They can write their opening sentence inside the upper part of the box and their thesis statement inside the bottom part. Next, they can create branches stemming out of each bubble with ideas for their body paragraphs. Look at the following model as an example for an essay on a prompt that reads: Eating Healthy Food verses Eating Junk Food:

Write the essay
For the introduction paragraph, begin with an interesting, unique remark or story. The paragraph should end with a well-constructed thesis statement to set the organization and tone of the essay. Students can start with a question, general statement, quotation, opposite statement, or story. The thesis statement should always come at the end of the introduction paragraph, and should contain the student’s opinion on the topic and his or her plan for the essay. For example, a well-constructed thesis statement might be as follows: Red House Grill is the best restaurant in town because of its food, atmosphere, and friendly staff. Note that for this thesis statement, the opinion is Red House Grill is the best restaurant in town and the plan is because of its food, atmosphere, and friendly staff. Thus, the first body paragraph of this essay would be about Red House Grill’s food, the second body paragraph would be about its atmosphere, and the third would be about its friendly staff.

The body paragraphs should include details, examples, statistics, quotations, and any other specific information. It is important that the student describes information in detail, with concrete backup from credible sources, rather than just “telling” about it. Remember that if any information is taken from other sources, it must be credited as an outside source.

The Conclusion Should Do the Following:

(1) Restate the Thesis Statement
This is where the student should remind the reader of his or her opinion on the topic and restate the three supporting points. For example, for our Rocking Horse Grill essay, we might start our conclusion paragraph with the following: “Because of its delicious Mexican cuisine, convivial ambiance, and energetic staff, Rocking Horse Grill is one of the best restaurants inChicago.”

(2) Lead-out
he next 2-4 sentences should lead the reader to the author’s final, conclusive remark. The student can reiterate some points about each of the body paragraphs. These sentences should, of course, contain words that are different from those used in the actual body paragraphs.

(3) Concluding Remark
This remark should be conclusive, strong, and perhaps profound. It should leave the reader thinking. For example, a concluding remark for our Rocking Horse Grill essay might be: “The next time you are in town, do not bother with any other restaurants since Rocking Horse Grill has it all.”

Self-check
It is very important that students always self-check their essays when they are done writing. They can do so by using the following acronym:

• Capitalization
• Tense
• Organization
• Punctuation
• Spelling

Students should check for each of these elements, one at a time. By practicing this technique of brainstorming, writing, and self-checking, students can learn to master writing timed essays.

Dr. Emily Levy is the author of Strategies for Study Success, a 13-part student workbook series that teaches students research-based strategies for test taking, note taking, organization, reading comprehension, and writing. She is also the founder and director of EBL Coaching, a tutoring organization based in Manhattan and New Jersey. Learn more at www.eblcoaching.com or call 212-249-0147.

The post How To Take Essay Tests: Tips for Student Success appeared first on EBL Coaching.

As summer winds down, the thought of going back to school gives many students the jitters. Homework demands build and staying focused in class becomes an important goal once again. Learning strategies to help your child stay focused, organized, and motivated will allow him or her jump-start the school year on a positive note.

The Multi-Sensory Approach

The multi-sensory approach is a great way to help your child stay focused and on-task. By integrating as many senses as possible, you can help your child learn new information and lock it into his or her long-term memory. This multi-sensory approach, which integrates the visual, auditory, and tactile/kinesthetic senses, can be applied to nearly all aspects of school. For instance, it can be applied to math, by using counters, base ten blocks, white boards, play money, and dice. It can also be used for phonics, with magnetic tiles, colored sand, and shaving cream for learning new sounds. Additionally, multi-sensory teaching can be used with reading comprehension and note taking.

Reading Comprehension

A great strategy to help students become active readers and to build their study skills involves three colored highlighters: blue, green, and yellow. As the school year progresses, students will inevitably be required to read passages with increasing levels of text. This strategy will help them organize this information and identify key elements when reading. The strategy works as follows:

The student should first read the passage without any highlighting.

Next, he or she should identify the topic of the passage, which is one to three words describing what the passage is about. Some examples of topics include: the beach, New York City, and bluebirds. He or she should always highlight the topic in blue.

After highlighting the topic, the student should then look for the main idea. The main idea is a phrase or sentences which describes what the author is saying about the topic. For example, if the topic is flowers, the main idea might be: Growing flowers is an easy process. The student should highlight the main idea in green.

Finally, the student should identify the important details. Note that only important details – not just any details! – should be highlighted. Students should also try to highlight words and phrases (not full sentences) whenever possible. They should highlight the important details in yellow.

To take it to the next level, students can write a one to two line summary in their own words describing what the passage is about. They can either write it in their book at the bottom of the page, or on a post-it note that they can stick in their book. This strategy is a great one for building active reading and overall study skills.

Webbing

Often times, students are not introduced to note taking until middle school or later. By using this highlighting strategy as a basis for note taking, we can introduce the concept of note taking at a very early level. The Webbing Strategy is a great way to do this.

Here’s how it works:
Say, for example, a student has to read the following passage for school: Fires can be harmful and helpful. They can destroy homes and buildings and turn forests into piles of ash in very little time. Yet fire gave humans the first form of light and heat. It allowed us to cook food in unique ways. It also helped us create tools and pottery and harden bricks. Fire became an essential part of our daily lives.

After the student reads the passage, he or she should highlight the topic in blue (in this case, fires), the main idea in green (in this case harmful and helpful), and the important details in yellow (students can highlight words such has destroy homes and buildings, first form of light and heat, etc.). This is where the Webbing Strategy, a great form of note taking, begins. Students should draw a diamond in the middle of the page and write the word fires inside the diamond (the topic goes in the diamond in the middle). Next, he or she should draw a rectangle on the top of the page and write the main idea inside of it. Finally, he or she should draw bubbles branching out of the diamond and write the important details inside them. You can encourage your child to use abbreviations, symbols, and contractions, since this is a form of note taking. A sample Web diagram might be as follows:

Note that students are free to add as many or as few important detail bubbles as they’d like. Also, they can color code the bubbles as follows: diamond in blue (for topic), rectangle in green (for main idea), and circles in yellow (for important details).

These strategies are great tools for helping students stay organized, focused, and on-task. They also build helpful reading comprehension and note taking skills. Try these strategies at home with your child as the new school year begins and remember, the more multi-sensory, the better!

The post Strategies to Help Students Succeed in School appeared first on EBL Coaching.