Monday 28 November 2011

The Process of Teaching for Slow Learners

The ability to read is indispensable for students to complete whole of their education. They must have to read in order to get succeed in all areas of the school and college curriculum and to function wholly in the after school world, viz., society, culture, work place, home and all walks of life. But reading is not so simple for many of the children. For almost one-third of the children, reading is a very complex and integrated activity, which scares away them.
As Shakespeare wrote that “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” So many children are good readers and they don’t need too much effort of parents to make them read and learn. But, there a many children who are slow learners, and parents have to put down too much effort to make them read. Getting over the following components of the reading process is necessary if students are to become expert readers.
Appreciation and enthusiasm for reading
There is no denying the fact that the children who are fervent about reading are more adroit readers. Reading is more stimulating to students when they are allowed to read frequently, liberty to choose their reading material, and exposure to an extensive range of interesting reading materials.

Phonemic awareness
The base of the successful reading is relied on the understanding of the individual sound and how they constitute a word together. Children require direction of their parents and teachers to enhance the skills of breaking words into their constitutive sounds and in combining individual sounds together into proper words.  Reading and having the phonemic awareness in the early stages of a child development is one of the basic and most significant skills. Those who have poor awareness of the phonemic are at greater risk of becoming poor readers. So parents and teachers should try to make their children aware of the phonemic. There are many good books, puzzles, flash card games, etc., available through which you can help your child build his skills in phonemic.
Phonics and Decoding
Letters of the alphabet are symbols representing the sounds in words. In reading man decodes or translates the written words in their spoken equivalents. The emphasis is made on correspondence between individual letters or pairs of letters and the sounds they represent in the early stage of decoding instruction. In the next stage emphasis is put on rapid identification of larger units such as syllables. A student can become a proficient decoder and correspondingly a proficient reader once he or she understands the correspondence between sounds and print.
Fluent, Automatic Reading of Text
The decoding process must be fast and accurate in order to be an efficient reader. Once a child becomes efficient enough in decoding his attention and memory processes are strong enough to comprehend what is being read. However, the training of fluency is imperative in order to strengthen the comprehension skills of a student. Children should be given enough practice material which they can decode without much difficulty. At a child’s independent level, where child reads himself, frequent reading and supporting reading material builds automatic word recognition and unblocks a child’s mental abilities for comprehension.
Background Knowledge
However, it is a fact worth considering that a child’s ability of comprehension is heavily dependent on his worldly knowledge. So it is obvious that the reading comprehension skill in a child begins long before he starts going to school. Children those who have more worldly knowledge are likely to have good in reading and understanding of the written material. Even when the children visit to parks, museums, or store they learn something new.  In order to stockpile of information that will facilitate children reading comprehension parents and teachers should read to them. The students learn to access background knowledge while reading when they are taught with best reading instructions.
Vocabulary
The children who have a good bank of vocabulary are good at comprehension as comprehension is dependent on vocabulary. Children who are in habit of reading widely use to learn more word meaning speedily than those who read limited for example, just reading their textbooks. Children must learn thousand of new words every year through various sources like textbooks, comics, novels, newspapers, story books, etc., during their school years. It helps them build a strong vocabulary.
Written Expression
As it is a widely known fact that reading and writing are two faces of the same coin.  So parents and teachers should always keep in mind that effective reading instructions must be included while training the child in expressing his thoughts in writing. Children must be brought in practice of organizing and expressing their knowledge through writing on daily basis. Through this they become able to decode and comprehend the thoughts of other writers.
In order to help children who experience difficulty in learning to read the basic formula is to identify the child’s specific reading problems and to tailor programs which focus on enhancing a student’s unique learning strengths. So devising and preparing a curriculum that specifically focuses on appropriate and practical learning strategies will best help children in slow learning become proficient and efficient readers.

Tuesday 22 November 2011

ADVANTAGES OF BUYING BOOKS AND SCHOOL SUPPLIES ONLINE

Online shopping is the method whereby people can directly buy goods and services from a seller in real-time, without the help of an intermediary service, over the internet. It is a form of electronic commerce.
There are a number of benefits which the customer can get while shopping online: 
  1. You can do it 24/7: You can shop at whatever time you want. If you want to buy a school bag or school shoes for your child at mid-night, you can buy that easily sitting at your home.
  2. You can shop from the comfort of your own home or office: If sun is shining hot outside, you need not go out in the heat, if it’s raining heavily outside you need not put on your rain coat and take umbrella and stroll through the rain flooded streets. If there is quite cool outside and you don’t want to go out to buy anything, you can still shop. Also, if you are not well and lying home to take rest, this is definitely the best way to shop.
  3. Wide variety of stores within a few clicks: This is the most important factor for shopping online. As if you are living in an area where there are a very few stores, or even if you are living in a metropolitan city you can’t get everything and every brand’s product near your home. But when you are shopping online you can search over a wide range of products from different brands and prices. Another factor is that it’s not necessary that the store in your city would have the product available with them you are looking for. But when you are shopping online you can get your required brand’s product from one or other website.  Even you can buy products which are not manufactured in your own country. On many occasions it also happens that the product reaches your local store after weeks or months of its release, and you have to wait for that, but you can get them right with their release through online shopping.
  4. Comparison shopping is simplified: Let's say your five years old daughter has told you that she would like the Barbie Puzzle set for her birthday. Comparing the prices of this puzzle set is much easier online than by running to a variety of stores selling the Barbie Puzzle Set. The easiest way is to search online and get the discount on your product which the websites offer you.
  5. Discounts on products are more readily available online. For instance, if you want to buy a book at a local bookstore, you are unlikely to find discount to reduce the cost of the book. Whereas, many online bookstores offer handsome discounts on the products and books. This way you can get your book or any other product cheaper than the market and save your money.
  6. No lines to wait in, nor irritable people to deal with: A number of people find this to be very great, mostly during the festival seasons or holiday when crowd in the stores and tempers can both blaze up. While shopping online you need not face such people and save your time lining up in the stores to get the product you want to buy.
  7. You don't have to drag kids all over the place. To buy school supplies, books, bags, lunch boxes, stationery, uniforms, shoes, etc., for your child you need not drag them to the stores to make them select what color or brand they want. You just can do that sitting at your place along with them. 
  8. Greet and Cheer your relatives sending them gifts online: If you have to send a gift to your relative or friend residing far away from you on any occasion, you can do this easily with the online shopping. You can choose a product from the website and buy it, and give the shipping details of your friend or relative and the online company will deliver your gift to your friend without any hassle. Buying and sending gifts online is quite convenient since you don't have to wrap the gift, properly package it, and then run to the post office to send it. Most of the online companies will wrap your gift on your behalf. Company even informs you when your gift is delivered.

Tuesday 15 November 2011

WHY SHOULD CHILDREN LEARN TO DRAW?

Painting, drawing, sculpture, miniature, wood art, sand art or art of any kind are all the different forms through which people express their creativity and thought. There are various reasons for which people create art, like for personal expression, public exhibition, or for earning. All these reasons are for getting back something either name, fame or money, what people want from their creation of art. But, here we are discussing about the children drawing. But now the question arises why should children learn to draw, especially at a time when the attention and focus of most of the educators is moving back to the basics – reading, writing, and math? Everyone will say that art helps children show their hidden ability and develop their special talent. Many parents think that painting and drawing is a wasteful and time taking activity, and instead of it children should give their time to studies of other subjects, like language, science and math, etc. But this is a wrong way of thinking. There are other benefits in drawing and painting besides, just revealing the inner hidden ability. There are two chief reasons why children’s should be encouraged to draw and paint.
The very first reason why children should be encouraged to draw and paint is that art helps children discover the joy of creating. In this age of technology most of the children spend plenty of their time surfing internet, playing online games, watching television or in video games. Their inclination is just to sit and watch. Whereas God has created us to create, and in the today’s environment, especially, young people require good opportunities to bring their imaginations live. And no other mean will be better than to art to make this possible.
Secondly, when you encourage your children learn to draw, you are help him develop his or her self-esteem and self-confidence. It is a great feeling for a child when he says “See, what I have created” or “I can draw many more things you can never imagine.” Children have a sense of achievement when they see back at what they could create and paint.
Now when you have understood the value of art education you might be thinking, how can I get my children learn art? The obvious answer is teaching the art lessons, Hands on art,  the art of colorama, Easy draw, can help you out.

FUN LESSONS IN TEACHING LIFE SKILLS

According to the definition given by the World Health Organization of Life skills is "the ability for positive and adaptive behavior that enables a person to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life." Teaching the Life skills is not so tedious job, however, it can be taught using fun lessons. The teachings of those lessons which are much more enjoyable are more likely to be retained, for the reason that people keep remembering the nice moments and events of life.
School Skills
During a brainstorming session good study habits can be highlighted by creating posters. In order to do this, for instance, divide students into groups and assign every group a poster, with themes such as "Excellent Study Habits" and "Techniques to Make Learning a Fun Activity." Talk over with the students what kind of words and pictures could be shown on the posters and then have them show the posters to the rest of the class. Hang the posters in the classroom, it will be beneficial for the students as they can have glance over it whenever they can and could learn the good skills and good habits.
Home Skills
Doing a few of necessary household chores what the children can do and self-care are the life skills that can be taught in various ways that make them appear a fun activity. Hygiene routines can be turned as games, greeting everyone in the morning, such as singing the alphabet song every time a child washes his hands after using the bathroom and before eating, brushing teeth before having the bath and check if your teeth seems same as is shown in the toothpaste advertisements, or counting the number of clothes you can fold and put away in five minutes. You should suggest ways to enjoy a personal care or cleaning routine, such as singing a poem while watering the plants in the balcony or the lawn, singing while washing the dishes or dancing to music while cleaning and arranging a room. With this kind of encouragement children won’t feel bored in keeping themselves hygienic.
Work skills also keep importance as other skills. Children must know the value of hard work and its benefits. So the teacher and parents should highlight the outcomes of productivity and a potent work ethic by having students play a skit comparing two different work styles. Have one man sit and act lazy and apathetic at a desk while another man works attentively and communicates with other workers in a friendly manner. Show the lazy worker clambering to pass the day whereas the hard worker enjoys everything he is getting from his work. The children will enjoy creating workplace characters and they will also understand the values of a strong work ethic when you tell them the benefits for those who are fully engaged in their work.
Money Skills
Money is also an important thing for the present day society, so children must be good in the money management skills. It’s not hard to develop these skills. Money skills can be learned through interactional and fun lessons. Board games, such as "Life", “Business”, “Trade”, “Money Word Games”, “Change Maker”, “Counting coins” and "Monopoly," are enjoyable means for children to learn and to deal with money and transactions. Another significant area to dig into is establishing a budget. For this, you can distribute catalogs of popular products like Ben 10, Disney, Ra.One, Hannah Montana Forever, Dora the Explorer, Barbie, Winnie the Pooh, Scooby Doo!, Maped, Tintin, Tweety, etc., and have the students act as if they have a definite amount of money to spend in their funds. Let them choose the products based on that fund they do have. It will be fun for the children and this way they will learn the money management.

Monday 14 November 2011

ADVANTAGES OF EARLY MATH EDUCATION

Teaching the children math in their early ages has spectacular benefits in their later life. But, it has been seen that people put emphasis on teaching children language rather than math. No doubt that language is also significant because it is the medium of communication which is essential for a human being to live in the society. But, math is equally important, because everyday we do a lot of things which is based on math, like shopping and doing money transactions, counting a lot of things, for example, children’s notebooks before keeping them back in their school bags. The advantages of early math education to the children are far reaching through and cannot be ignored at all.
Natural Curiousness
By nature all children are curious to know and learn about the things. They do have interest in almost everything they see around them, by using this trait parents and teachers should make wide strides in getting mastery on number concepts to the children at a very young age.
Indicator of Future Success
It has been found in various studies conducted by the Society of Research in Child Development that a child’s knowledge of number concepts in their school going age is a good indicator of their future success. So, all parents and teachers must work hard to impart math education to the children in their early ages.
Build Confidence
At a young age understanding of numbers, shapes, colors, patterns and counting builds confidence in the children. As the knowledge of language helps child know his surroundings, similarly, the knowledge of how to manage the items in their world builds a sense of ownership with their surroundings within them. An important building block for the children is deciphering the language of math and relating it to themselves.
Capability
Children do have much more capability of learning the math concepts than they are usually assumed. The opportunity given to the children to learn math skills at a young age creates essential connections in their spatial awareness. As everyone knows that everything in math is both concrete and abstract, so learning and understanding these concepts takes time to develop and mature not only in children but in all age groups. Early knowledge of children about the math allows their minds to process the skills required to proceed in their later life.
Easy Incorporation
Fortunately introducing math to the children at a young age is not that difficult as we generally use to think. Asking them to hand each person at the table one napkin or putting two shoes in the shoe rack properly easily introduces the concept or counting or one to one correspondence. The knowledge of counting is the first level and learning to relate the numbers to concrete items is another stage in their math skill development. Simple home exercises can help them enhance their skills in math. For example, when you open refrigerator you can ask your child count and tell me how many bottles are there in this refrigerator, or how many dogs our neighbor have, etc.
You can also keep continue this activity of counting during their playtime; for example you can ask how many crayons they have in their color pack or how many blocks are in their tower etc.
Helps in Language Development
Math is not only the subject in its own but it is related with the language and other sciences as well. So, the activities done to develop math skills in the children, also promotes language and literacy skills in them. For example if you give them 10 words of English language to learn it means that they also learn counting up till the number 10. These skills are quite essential when they begin to learn math or any other subject. The knowledge of numbers; shapes like square, rectangle, triangle; “more than” and “less than” provides them with a new way of narrating stories and understanding them told by anyone else.
Progress
Learning at an early age, can minimize the failure rate due to gaps in knowledge progressively. These gaps are those which make a number of children give up mathematics as their subjects in later years.
Matching and comparing are important concepts in mathematics, for example, analyzing equal and not equal. You can ask children to match their pair of socks, gloves, toys, or coins. There are lots of preschool versions out that might be more fun that the traditional set.
Classifying and Sorting
While when the children are matching their concentration is only on what is alike, whereas sorting focuses on what is different. You can ask them to sort their dolls according to size, or to put their toy cars in groups according to color or type of vehicle. Developing these basic skills by playing help children progress much faster in both math and languages.
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TEACHING COLORS & NUMBERS TO PRESCHOOLERS

The activities which make preschool children learn both colors and numbers do not need too much time and preparation in real. Only a few basic items for these activities, like crayons, markers, coloring books intended for such learning and plain papers are required. Children learn through visual aid, by the process of repetition and hands-on practice. So, everyday you should spend a few minutes going over colors and numbers
Following items will be required for this project: an easy outline drawing book for children to color in, and red, black and green crayons. Make enough copies of the coloring page for each student. Number each individual section of the picture, alternating the numbers 1, 2 and 3. Do not use the same numbers in spaces that are next to each other. Assign a different number to each color. For instance 1 = red, 2 = green, and 3 = black. Now ask the children to use this number formula to color in the pictures.

With this activity you can teach children about the primary and secondary colors as well as numbers while counting the different colors of the rainbow. Showing a picture of rainbow, ask children to count how many colors the rainbow have. Give each child a large sheet of paper, a pack of crayons, or a pack of pencil colors. Assign all the colors of the rainbow a different number. For example 1 = red, 2 = orange, 3 = yellow, 4 = green, 5 = blue, 6 = Indigo, 7 = Violet. Now ask the children to paint each number in the color that it correlates with. Now you can describe them how the three primary colors make the secondary colors by mixing them.
Get a worksheet that has a theme by illustrating an animal or object, a number and a color. An example of this is "one red rabbit", “two black bulls”, “three green grasshoppers”, etc. Now in this worksheet first ask the children to color the rabbit in red color, the two bulls in black color, then the three grasshoppers in green color, and so on. This way the children will learn numbers and colors both by counting the objects for coloring and filling colors in them. Now you have taught your children 10 colors like red, green, blue, black, yellow, orange, white, grey, purple, and brown for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 respectively; but children will get confused what color they will fill for 11 or 12. Because 11 has two one’s and similarly 12 have one 1 and one 2, so they can’t fill red and green both for one number. So tell them to fill pink for number 11, magenta for number 12 and violet for number 13 and so on. You need to get a little creative for some of the letter/number variations; nevertheless, through this children can learn about a wide variety of colors.

Flash cards are also a good mean to teach children about the numbers and colors. For this you need 20 flash cards, ten with the numbers on each of them 1 to 10 with different colors and another ten cards with objects 1 to 10 on them. Care should be taken that the color of the number and objects should be correlating. For example if your card which shows number 3 is written with green color, the card which have three objects on it should also be in green color. Now, shuffle the picture cards so that they are not in sequential order, then show each picture card to the children and ask them to tell you which number it goes with and what color it is. This way children will recognize the color and also learn the numbers.