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Comic books and graphic novels can be effective tools to spark an interest in reading, especially for kids reluctant to pick up a novel.
The visuals help the story come to life. Some students have trouble connecting words on the page to mental imagery (what the writer describes isn’t being deciphered). Students who struggle with the reading process may be so focused on decoding or interpreting the words themselves that comprehension of the material itself is lacking. Due to the convenient format of comic books and graphic novels, readers always have a visual reference for the events that are taking place in each scene. In addition, comics and graphic novels often rely heavily on character dialogue and visual storytelling rather than descriptive text, which can be highly beneficial for younger students experiencing difficulties with reading comprehension. They’re easy to get into. As it turns out, many popular movies, television shows, video games, and animated series are originally based on graphic novels! This makes them a convenient entry point for kids who already enjoy other similar media. This transition also works the other way around – several popular movies and shows have been adapted into graphic novels and comics, often extending the lore and universe of a series far beyond what the films could accomplish. If your child is a fan of a particular movie, television show, or cartoon, see if there’s a graphic novel or comic series available to go along with it! Comics and graphic novels inspire creativity. Comics and graphic novels are quite literally works of art, and this style of storytelling has inspired countless writers and artists alike. Comics can be a great resource for aspiring artists to learn how to draw in different art styles. The same can be said for budding writers that want to create their own stories. Whether your child is interested in writing a graphic novel themselves or learning how to draw, comics are an excellent place to start letting their imagination run wild. They encourage continuity. Comics and graphic novels are often smaller parts of a series, meaning there’s more issues available! Fans of a graphic novel series often collect volumes to make up a set, and currently produced comics give readers something to look forward to in the next issue. This is especially helpful for reluctant readers because if they find a series or subject they really enjoy, it shouldn’t be difficult to find more content! The zone of proximal development is the sweet spot for personalized learning, where the subjects and rigor are ideally suited to an individual student’s optimal learning. Ideally, this is the point where the new knowledge is not too confusing, but also not so easy.
This concept comes from the work of a Russian psychologist 100 years ago named Lev Vygotsky. Towards the end of a life that was tragically cut short by tuberculosis at age 37, Vygotsky postulated and coined the phrase “zone of proximal development.” Vygotsky was interested in improving child development, and along with the zone of proximal development, he recognized the importance of culture-specific tools and social collaboration. “The zone of proximal development is the sweet spot for personalized learning, where the subjects and rigor are ideally suited to an individual student’s optimal learning.” Since Vygotsky’s death, many child development and education experts have adapted and expanded his initial ideas into education to provide a better understanding of personalized learning. Viewed simply, a student’s current state of knowledge can be divided into three stages:
To make learning appropriate and worthwhile, parents and teachers need to target the right level of instruction so that they can find the zone of proximal development. The best way to do this is to assess a student’s level of knowledge and understanding before teaching begins, and to continue assessing periodically to make sure the student is on track with what is being taught. Let’s Go Learn provides diagnostic assessments that do just that. Here is a 5-minute video that explains more about the zone of proximal development and how Let’s Go Learn’s assessments help you find the ideal level of instruction for personalized learning. Learn more about Let’s Go Learn’s Ed-Facts Series in this short 5-minute video called “Explanation of Different Types of Educational Tests” By M McCorkle of Clear Choice Test Prep Remember January? Remember that feeling of a new year full of new possibilities?
For many people, January means setting New Year’s resolutions - lofty personal-growth aims to guide a year-long metamorphosis into your best you. It’s July. We are in the middle of a global pandemic, and 2020 is likely not going as any of us had planned. So, are you still sticking to your resolution? According to modern research, only 8% of people accomplish their New Year’s resolutions (and that’s under normal circumstances). Let that sink in for a minute. So, naturally, the question is: why make New Year’s resolutions at all? The answer: don’t. Instead, experts suggest transforming the vague fantasy of the New Year’s resolution into goals. Unlike resolutions, goals can be a Goals can become specific enough to include steps and, ultimately, a finish line. So rather than coaching your students to make grand declarations of self-improvement, help them set a few attainable goals. From there, help them construct the frameworks to reach those goals and follow up regularly to help keep things on track. After all, when it comes to college admissions, it will be the small changes your students make (and stick to) that will deliver the biggest results. Helping your students to understand the importance of sleep should be near the top of the list. Not only is it an important goal in its own right, but it will make accomplishing other goals much easier. Teenagers Need More Sleep Than They GetResearchers at both John’s Hopkins and the UCLA Sleep Disorders Center suggest that teenagers need between 9 and 9 ½ hours of quality sleep, per night. It is a safe bet that most of your students fall well short of this number. It’s no surprise. Teens are busy, which means they spend a lot of time awake. They have earlier school start times than their younger peers. Under normal circumstances, they have schedules jam-packed with priorities like friends, studying, jobs, sports, clubs, test prep, and college applications - to name a few. With so many demands placed on the average teenager’s time, something has to give. Unfortunately, sleep tends to be the first thing to suffer. The problem is that sleep is one of the few things in life that provides a universal benefit. Being well rested improves the quality of nearly every aspect of life - even during these uncertain times. Getting an adequate amount of sleep is a corner your students can’t afford to cut! To start with, sleep is when both the body and mind restore themselves. For teens in the throes of puberty, sleep is a crucial part of physical development. More importantly to those of us in the test-prep world, the deep stages of REM sleep are where our brains sort through the day and consolidate memories and learning for future recall. Teens who sleep better will learn better and score better. Furthermore, a lack of sleep can be dangerous. The independence that comes with being a teenager – driving, a job, increased self-reliance – poses its own set of dangers as is. Facing those dangers in a sleep-deprived state can lead to severe, if not grave, consequences. Actionable Steps to Help Teens Get More SleepWhile we know sleep matters (and deep down your droopy-eyed, yawning students probably do, too), how do we help teenagers actually improve their sleep habits?
Subscribe to our blog for more of our goals to help your students in 2020 and beyond! 3/21/2020 0 Comments How to make a zineLearning should be fun. When a tutor needs a student to explain what they've learned, consider having them make a zine. They'll have fun making their own comic, it will help them recall what they've learned in their session, and they can keep it to refer back to later. Solid win for fun learning! 2/25/2020 0 Comments What Can You Learn From the Best Maths Tutors When it Comes to Online Tutoring? by Dr Scott R. Dempsey on 22nd January, 2020CategoriesAll Student Related Teaching Tips Tutor Doctor Values Are you a tutor or student who currently uses online tutoring? Perhaps you currently have lessons in-person but are looking to move online? Maybe you teach maths and are seeking a wider platform to share your skills and passion for the subject? Well, to help you get started, or really ramp-up your online tutoring efforts we asked 60 of our top tutors (who between them delivered over 6,000 hours of online tutoring just last year) to share some of their top tips. We asked them to be subject specific, so we could give you better insights into how online tutoring might be adapted for different subjects. Given that 75% of those tutors teach maths, we thought that would be a good place to start. Furthermore, maths is a core subject at GCSE and the most popular subject at A-level with over 90,000 students sitting the exam in 2019. The majority of our top tutors have been tutoring for 2-4 years and are a mixture of full-time and part-time tutors ranging from university students to retired teachers. Almost unanimously, they have seen an increase in the proportion of students they tutor online as opposed to offline. This is a trend that is only likely to continue - so there has never been a better time to learn more about teaching online. “I now tutor all my students online, which has evolved dramatically from an offline only basis just 3 years ago. I am thoroughly happy with the change and my students are as well.” Owen (Maths and English tutor, 160 hours on Bramble last year) “I'm 100% online now, but a year ago it was 1 online to 5 offline. I recently dropped all my offline students because I moved to a new area, but was able to continue with my online student. Interestingly, my online student used to be offline until his family moved. We've been able to continue our relationship because of Bramble!” Stephen (Maths, Science & Languages tutor, 64 hours on Bramble last year) Top Tips for Tutoring Maths OnlineTutoring online requires a slightly different approach to tutoring offline. Many tutors spoke of the importance of frequently checking understanding with the student when teaching online. They talked about doing this verbally by simply asking but also about the importance of getting students to complete work on the whiteboard. Online tutoring offers a great opportunity to ensure the student is more actively engaged: drawing figures on the whiteboard or solving exam questions. Tutors also mentioned that their students often feel more comfortable working through problems online as they are able to think things through without someone looking over their shoulder. This gives students space to check their understanding throughout the lesson. The fact the student are also able to work from the environment they feel most comfortable in only helps to put them more at ease. One of the more obvious advantages of tutoring online is access to large pools of resources. Using Bramble, there are no fewer than 5 ways to upload resources into a session and almost all of our top tutors mentioned resources as an important part of being successful online. “I often want to point things out on the whiteboard, so I circle and underline a lot of things on the board and draw arrows to things as I am explaining. I take screenshots of past exam papers and put them on the board and have the student answer them as if they were in a real exam, typing or writing in the answer field. Make use of the different colours, they'll make the notes more stimulating for students when reviewing.” Laetitia (Maths and Chemistry tutor, 52 hours on Bramble last year) “It is quite useful to upload pictures of the diagrams and annotate them as you go along, that way they can serve as notes for students to review later! For maths, I often add pictures of the questions we're working on and have the working out on the side so that it can be easier for the student to refer to it again.” Sam (Maths, Economics & Biology tutor, 286 hours on Bramble last year). To summarise, here are the top four tips from all of the maths tutors we surveyed:
A great example of student-tutor collaboration on a geometry exam question which was imported through drag-and-drop. In this example, the student was using an iPad and Chromebook and the tutor a PC with iPad Pro and Apple pencil. In this example the student is working on a probability question with occasional direction and reassurance from the tutor. No resources this time as the tutor and student work through a binomial expansion. Why Maths is the Perfect Subject for Online TutoringMaths is extremely well suited to being taught online. There is a huge amount of problem-solving and most of the revision involves working through papers and questions. This lends itself nicely to the online model, because it’s very simple to upload the resource you need and for all the work to be done by the student next to the questions. 1/19/2020 0 Comments January 19th, 2020Life is busy. It often takes us in multiple directions, usually at the same time. It's difficult for our human minds to easily jump from one subject to another without a bridge of some sort. This is very true in tutoring. Some tutors leave their "day jobs" and go on to meet their students. Others have classes of their own and go from their teachers on to teach their own students. Some tutors go from one student to the next, each having their own subject to master. The scenarios are as numerous as the tutors and students.
This is why it is so very important to take some time before each engagement to re-center the tutor-self. This may be sitting in the car and praying and meditating for a few moments before walking inside. It may be heading out to this site on a mobile devise to look at the upcoming subject matter. It may logging on to Solaro (TD 24/7) before leaving home or work to get into the swing of things. Some like to take an abbreviated practice test the evening before as a warm up. In whatever path each tutor takes, it is important to be one with the subject when walking through the front door. This may prove more difficult for the "what's hot" sessions but a quick text to a parent to see what is hot that day will help. Why does a tutor want to take a few minutes of quiet reflection for the subject matter? There are two amazing reasons! 1) The students! Each student deserves their tutor to arrive on-time and engaged in the subject at hand. They don't know if a tutor just came from a chemistry engagement, they only know the tutor is with them for geometry. Did the tutor just spend the day realigning support beams for an office building their designing? Maybe but the student who is struggling with differentials isn't thinking about support beams. The student is trusting their tutor will be fully engaged for their own struggles and a good conversation on those challenges. This is not selfish, it's a reasonable expectation. And the students are usually kids who may have had their own struggles that day. They may be emotional that the boy they liked asked another girl to prom. Maybe a student didn't get to play in the big game that weekend. Maybe their grandparent is ill and the student is worried. Being fully engaged for each student is exactly what the pupils needs, as well as a possibly empathetic shoulder to lean on. 2) The tutors! When a tutor is prepared for their sessions they can relax in knowing they did their best and brought their A Game each time. The tutors themselves deserve the few minutes of calm (often before the storm) to re-center their minds and hearts. Rarely is the person who goes to their job with the intention of doing poorly. People naturally want to perform well, obtaining solid results. They want the win. Tutors love teaching. They look for the "aha' moments and the epiphanies from their students. Being prepared and fully engaged in each subject allows for these wins. And every tutor deserves the space to bridge into their next assignment. Life is busy and sometimes tough. Being prepared and engaged to each session will bring the win for both students and tutors alike. 1/1/2020 0 Comments X-Skills X-Skills is an amazing tool to help tweens and teens learn to prioritize and organize their lives for the best educational success. All our tutors who work with tweens and teens should take the on-line tutorial on how to execute X-Skills properly as well as review the tutor guide. All this is found in the Tutor Resource Library on this site. The Academic Game Plan (AGP or X-Skills) should be used when students are overwhelmed or need help organizing. There are tips, tricks, and techniques to show them how to study and prepare for projects and exams. This tool is to be implemented along with normal tutoring. While working on AGP, the tutor should think of themselves as an accountability partner or coach more than a subject tutor. AGP helps students break down old, poor habits and rebuild healthy, new ones. This takes an academic coach. Proper and consistent use of the AGP will help the Tutor Doctor circle (teachers, parents, tutor, student) achieve the goal of life-long, independent learners. This sets us apart from other tutoring organizations. This is necessary for success. |