A tutoring expert explains the best tips to help your child ace their next test.

Your child may have cruised through the early years of elementary school. Tests and quizzes were rare, homework was a a breeze, ‎and projects involved simply cutting out images from magazines. Yet as students move through school, the testing demands increase rapidly. With these rising demands often comes stress, anxiety, and that how-am-I-ever-going-to-get-through-this feeling. Help your child build confidence and ace exams with the ideas detailed below.

Create a ‘big picture’ plan

Your child may feel overwhelmed by the quantity of material she needs to learn for a test. With terms to memorize, notes to process, and articles to read, the task of studying can seem downright insurmountable. To combat this feeling, help your child come up with a ‘big picture’ plan, with each topic she needs to learn for an exam detailed on a single sheet of paper. She can start by drawing a large bubble in the center of a page and writing the class name and date of the exam inside the bubble. Then, surrounding the center bubble, she can branch out with a series of smaller bubbles, each containing a topic she needs to learn for the test. Once she has effectively learned a given topic, she should cross out that bubble. The more bubbles she crosses out, the more accomplished she will feel, and the closer she will be to learning all of the material for the exam.

Break down studying into steps

Many of us know students who feel they can squeeze all of their studying into the night before the exam. Yet that “strategy” rarely works, especially as the quantity of material to learn increases.‎ Instead of this no-win plan, help your child learn to break his studying into steps, then put each step in his assignment book. For instance, if he has a science test to study for that covers five text book chapters, have him create a five day plan that includes studying one chapter per day (reading the chapter, taking notes, and perhaps creating flash cards on the material), and designate the fifth day as a review day to review all of the material from each chapter. Creating an organized, daily plan can help him feel fully prepared come test day.

Integrate memory strategies

Your child may feel overwhelmed by the quantity of vocabulary terms, names, dates, and facts she needs to memorize. Encourage her to use memory tactics to learn and retain this information. For instance, she can learn the acronym PEMDAS (Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally) to remember the steps involved in solving math equations; the letters of the acronym stand for parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, attraction. You can also try encouraging her to draw visual diagrams to visualize and remember information (like a diagram of a heart with its individual parts) or retell material aloud to tap into the auditory modality. Additionally, try having her teach the material to someone else (even a parent) for another layer of memory and understanding.

Integrate technology

Students can now choose from a plethora of online resources to help them study. ‎Quizlet, for instance, is an online option that helps students create virtual flash cards, then test themselves and play games using the material. They can also create study guides using Power Point, where they create a virtual presentation on material they need to learn for a test. This interactive tool taps into the kinesthetic learning modality and can help engage students in the process of studying. Students can even have the computer read the material aloud to them as they listen and (hopefully) retain the information.

Limit distractions

Almost all students—not just those who have ADHD—can have difficulty at times staying focused and on-task. Let’s face it—distractions are everywhere. Many students have not just computers, but often also tablets, phones, video games, and access social media and chatting apps. Let’s also not forget “old fashioned” distractions, like hunger, boredom, and sounds of nature. Help your child learn to anticipate these distractions and come up with solutions for each possible one.‎ She can create a list on a sheet of paper before she begins studying with two columns—distractions and solutions. On this sheet, have her list each potential distraction in the distractions column and a corresponding solution in the solutions column. For instance, if her phone is a potential distraction, a solution might be setting it to silent mode or turning it off entirely. If she thinks she may become hungry when studying, she might want to eat a small snack before she begins. The more she anticipates and solves these potential distractions, the more on-task she will remain.

As students progress through school, they will inevitably encounter increasingly complex tests. Encourage your child to try these strategies to effectively prepare for exams and ultimately achieve academic success.

The post 5 Strategies To Help Your Child Study For Tests appeared first on EBL Coaching.

Set your child up for school-year success by getting organized during the summer

Moving from the sun-filled days of summer to the cool, brisk days of fall can bring back-to-school jitters to almost all children. During the summer, planning out tasks, organizing notebooks and backpacks, and turning in completed homework assignments all fall to the back burner. Yet with the start of school just around the corner, these organizational skills will quickly become paramount. Try the five tips below for helping your child become organized for the new school year.

1. Create a Working Notebook and a Filing System

When you embark on your annual school supplies shopping trip, ‎help your child select a working notebook, or a notebook he will take to school with him on a regular basis. The working notebook should include only essential papers he needs to carry with him daily. To create an at-home organizational system, he should also pick out an accordion file which will stay at home for filing. Inside the file, he should label three tabs for each class: homework, notes, and tests/quizzes (for example: English homework, English notes, English tests/quizzes; math homework, math notes, etc.). Then he should designate one day per week to be his “clean out my working notebook” day. On this ‎day, he will remove any papers from his working notebook that he doesn’t absolutely need to be carrying with him and file them into the correct section of his accordion file. Those at-home papers can later be used to study for tests and quizzes.

2. Set Up (and Maintain) a Planner

Setting up and maintaining an organized planner can help students develop strong homework and time management skills. If your child’s school doesn’t provide one, purchase a planner that has a large amount of space for each day of the week. Then have your child create five columns for each day, labeled as follows: Assignment (where she writes down the assignment while in school), ET (estimated time, or how much time she thinks it will take to complete the assignment), O (order, or the order in which she wants to do the assignments), AT (actual time, or the actual time it took to complete the assignment), and D (done, which she checks off once the assignment is done and put away in the right place to be turned in). If need be, offer your child an incentive at the end of each week for following through on this strategy each day. Practicing this strategy will help your child learn to manage her time and homework more effectively.

3. Designate a Color for Each Subject

Have your child designate a specific color for each subject and maintain consistency with that color for all notebooks, folders, and assignments. For example, he might designate green for science. He should then use a green folder and notebook for science, and perhaps even highlight all science assignments in his planner using a green highlighter. He could use green note cards to study for exams. Math might be blue, English purple, and so on.

4. Time Management: Estimated Time vs. Actual Time 

For all school (and some non-school) assignments, have your child estimate ‎how much time she thinks a given task will take, and then compare it to the actual time it takes. While this technique is integrated into the planner system, it can be applied more generally.  For example, she might estimate that it will take her 30 minutes to complete a math worksheet (ET). She should then time herself to see how long it actually takes and record the AT (actual time). This strategy can be applied to non-school tasks, including cleaning her room, taking out the garbage, eating breakfast, making her bed, and so on.

5. Introduce a Highlighting and Note-Taking Strategy 

Introduce a highlighting and note-taking strategy before the school year begins so your child can apply this strategy as soon as he starts receiving assignments. When he reads, even if it’s a newspaper article, have him highlight the topic (one, two, or three words describing the passage) in blue, main idea (what the author is saying about the topic) in green, and important details (important information describing the main idea) in yellow. Then he can create a two-column note-taking diagram by writing the topic on the top, main ideas (in his own words) in the left column, and important details (also in his own words) in the right column.

Try spending some time at the tail-end of summer helping your child set up organizational systems for the new school year. In doing so, he will start the year off on a positive note and will be well on his way to academic success!

The post 5 Tips For Organizing Your Child For The New School Year appeared first on EBL Coaching.

14 apps for developing children’s reading and writing skills from pre-K through high school

Though many parents lament the distractions that electronic devices can present, much of what makes tablet and smartphone content so engaging and addicting—interactive games, visually rich graphics—can help students develop the skills and enthusiasm necessary for success as readers and writers. To help you sort through all that’s on the market, we turned to Dr. Emily Levy, the founder of EBL Coaching—a local, one-on-one tutoring program for K-12 students—to share some of her favorite reading and writing apps.

READING

Montessori Crosswords (Pre-K-Kindergarten) 

This app helps students develop their decoding, spelling, and writing skills by teaching them to build words with different phonics patterns. Students start by building basic CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words, then move into words with blends, digraphs, silent Es, vowel teams, and other combinations. Students are initially given a picture (like “bag” or “kid”) and are asked to drag letters from the alphabet at the bottom of the screen to spell the displayed word. Later, students spell words following specific phonics patterns in the form of crosswords. Students can also choose themes for the activities, like animals, food, clothes, and more. $2.99, iTunes, Google Play &amazon.com

Short Vowel Word Study (Grades K-1)

This is a great app for reinforcing basic word decoding at a Kindergarten/grade 1 level. The app contains three main sections: Word families, short vowels, and longer words. The first game is “Sort It,” where the child must sort a word into its proper vowel category: I, U, or A. In the “Find It” game, the child must find the “oddball” word that doesn’t belong in the same vowel family, and drag it to the bottom of the screen. The “Spell It” game reinforces spelling by displaying an image (like a hat) and the child must drag letters to spell the word. The “Write It” game teaches students to trace and then independently write words. Other related fun and engaging reading games are also integrated into this app. $2.99, iTunes &Google Play

Super Why! (Pre-K)

This app is a great one for building reading, spelling, writing, and phonemic awareness skills. It includes four games, each led by a different character: Alpha Pig, Princess Pesto, Wonder Red, and Super Why. In the Alpha Pig game, students find letters on a path to form different words. In the Princess Pesto game, students practice writing letters to form words that are first modeled by Princess Pesto’s magic wand. In Wonder Red’s game, students identify rhyming words, and in Super Why’s game, students build their reading comprehension skills by identifying words that complete sentences in a given story. $2.99, iTunes, Google Play & pbskids.org 

MeeGenius (Ages 2-8)

For a wide selection of interactive, digital story books, MeeGenius is a great app that provides access to more than 700 children’s e-books for children up to age 8, which are accessible on iOS, Android, Windows 8, Amazon, Nook, and online. Free,meegenius.com 

Reading Comprehension at the Paragraph Level (Middle School)

With this app, students read a series of stories on stimulating topics and are then asked various types of comprehension questions, including identifying the main idea and important details and making inferences. At the end of each story, an open-ended question is included to generate discussion. With practice using this app, students will develop critical thinking, reading comprehension, attention to detail, and memory skills. $3.99, iTunes

iAnnotate (High School)

This app helps high school students develop active reading and note-taking skills by reading, highlighting, underlining, striking out, and annotating text to create effective study guides and improve overall comprehension. Students can import Word, Power Point, and PDF documents and use the app’s built-in tools to engage with the text while reading. $9.99, iTunes; Free, Google Play & amazon.com

SAT Vocab By MindSnacks (High School)

This app is a great one for learning SAT-level vocab words or for simply developing vocabulary skills. Students learn definitions, antonyms, and the proper spelling of words by first reviewing a set of words and then playing nine different colorful, uniquely-illustrated games. The app includes 25 levels and more than 500 words, and tracks students’ overall progress. Free, iTunes

WRITING

iWriteWords (Pre-K-Kindergarten)

This app is helpful for developing handwriting and fine motor skills for preschool and Kindergarten students. Students choose from numbers, lowercase, or uppercase letters, and practice writing with their fingers using proper formation. They help Mr. Crab “collect” numbers in order to properly form each letter or number. Students are rewarded with a colorful picture at the end of each segment. $2.99, iTunes

StoryBuilder (Grades 1-2) 

This app gives students practice creating their own stories using picture prompts. Students are asked a series of questions about a picture. Aided by an initial written phrase, they must answer each question in a full sentence while being recorded, creating a well-sequenced narrative. After each exercise, students can listen to themselves telling the story and can then email it to anyone who’d like to hear it. Using this app, students strengthen higher level comprehension skills (including inferencing), sequencing, paragraph formation, and storytelling abilities. $7.99, iTunes

Sentence Builder (Grades K-5) 

This app teaches elementary school students to form well-written sentences in “slot machine” format. To play, students select words to form a sentence that best describes a whimsical picture presented at the bottom of the screen. Through these exercises, students build grammar, punctuation, and pronunciation skills, starting with shorter sentences and gradually moving into more complex ones. $5.99, iTunes & Google Play

Kidspiration Maps (Grades K-8) 

This app is a great one for brainstorming, prewriting, and helping elementary and middle school students organize their ideas. Students create visual diagrams using shapes, symbols, and images that they can connect together in a web-like format to organize their ideas—a great first step before writing! Students can also work on reading and writing, social studies, science, and math skills using pre-set activities. This app develops many skills, including critical thinking, creativity, verbal expression, written expression, and organization. $9.99, iTunes 

Writing Challenge for Kids (Grades 5-7) 

Many students have trouble beginning the writing process. This app is a great one for combating that challenge—it helps students begin their writing and keep their creative juices flowing. After pressing “Start,” students are given a prompt, such as: “Start writing a story that takes place in an evil river. Include the word rabbit.” After every minute (or whatever time is set), the student is given another prompt for adding details, characters, and other ideas to help them form a more elaborate story. $1.99,iTunes & Google Play

Writer’s Studio (Grades 6-12) 

This app is useful for aiding middle and high school students in creating eBooks and presentations. Students can import graphics, photos, music, and clip art, and can also add drawings and paint to their text to create innovative visual stories and presentations. Students strengthen their writing skills while “bringing stories to life” with creativity and color. $4.99, iTunes

Inspiration Maps (Grades 6-12) 

As the “higher level” counterpart to Kidspiration Maps, this app helps middle and high school students plan, organize, and brainstorm their ideas before writing. Students can take notes in a web-like format while integrating icons and different bubbles, and can easily translate their web into outline form. $9.99, iTunes

The post Top Tech Tools to Help Kids Read, Write, and Learn appeared first on EBL Coaching.