Developing Early Literacy by in Young Children by Deborah Williams

Today’s youth were born into a high technology world; they have always been around electronic screens and had instant access to information.  It is not surprising, then, that many children have been exposed to sophisticated graphics and animations at a very young age, but a recent report on the Science Daily website explains that a new study shows,  “…early writing, preceding any formal education, plays an instrumental role in improving a child’s literacy level, vocabulary, and fine motor skills.”  These findings suggest that parents probably should shift from teaching letters of the alphabet to also helping their children to connect the sounds to the letters on paper.
The study was conducted by Professor Dorit Aram of the Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of Education of Tel Aviv University and with Professor Samantha W. Bindman of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and other US colleagues.  Professor Aram studied adult support of young children’s writing.  One type of support, “grapho-phonemic mediation,” involves the adult being “actively involved in helping a child break down a word into segments to connect sounds to corresponding letters.”  Professor Aram studied the levels of parental support for 135 ethnically-diverse, middle-income preschool children during a writing activity at a semi-structured birthday party.
Researchers found that parental support was most useful in developing early literacy skills in young children.   “The thing is to encourage children to write, but to remember that in writing, there is a right and a wrong,” said Prof. Aram. “We have found that scaffolding is a particularly beneficial activity, because the parent guides the child. And, if that parent guides the child and also demands precision in a sensitive and thoughtful way — i.e. ‘what did you mean to write here? Let me help you’ — this definitely develops the child’s literary skill set.”

SAT or ACT

By Deborah Williams

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Adding to the confusion and anxiety of applying to college is the entrance exam.  A recent post on the Edweek College Bound blog reports, “Some students are opting for the SAT over the ACT because they mistakenly believe that the College Board’s exam is favored by colleges.”
A survey of Kaplan SAT students found that one-third thought that colleges accepted the College Board’s SAT exam results more than the American College Test (ACT).  Both tests help colleges to determine an applicant’s readiness for college, but the SAT is more popular in the eastern United States while the ACT is more popular in the western and southern parts of the country.
That probably explains the primary reason for the regional disparity in America: peer influence.  The survey shows that 24 percent of SAT test-prep participants admitted to taking that exam because their friends were taking it.  Paul Weeks, vice president of client relations for ACT, Inc. confirms this in an email:  “Test-taking patterns and behaviors are regional and can be impacted by different influencers ranging from peers to parents. There are still many myths and misrepresentations out there, but we’re glad to see them diminishing.”
The tide is changing because the ACT has surpassed the SAT in recent years and “is now the most popular college-entrance exam.”  The myth has been dispelled:  “…all four-year U.S. colleges equally accept results of an ACT or SAT exam for consideration in the admissions process.

Surprising Keys to Your Child’s Lucrative Careers By Deborah Williams

Let’s face it: Shuttling children from activity to activity and monitoring homework sessions are exhausting parts of parenting.  It’s no wonder that some parents wonder if they shouldn’t cut out some of it.  New research suggests that perhaps all of this activity is helpful to their child’s future—as long as the child has good math skills!
Harvard Business Review assistant editor Nicole Torres reports the findings of University of California, Santa Barbara researchers compared two groups of white male high school seniors—1972 and 1992—to see the impact of their social and math skills over time.  “The analysis found that while math scores, sports, leadership roles, and college education were all associated with higher earnings over the 1979-1999 period, the trend over time in the earnings premium was strongest among those who were both good at math and engaged in high school sports or leadership activities. In other words, it pays to be a sociable math whiz, more so today than thirty years ago.”
It seems that the social skills that children develop through participation in extracurricular activities help to make them more likable.  These extracurricular activities include “teamwork, communication, and general interaction with others.”  Developing these skills when they are children make it more likely that they will be employed “in an occupation requiring higher levels of responsibility for direction, control and planning.”
Technology may be the reason for the demand for math skills in the workplace; however, employers need workers who can work with others well.  So, parents, make sure that your children have good math skills, and know that your children’s extracurricular activities will most likely benefit them in the workplace.

Tricks to Help Your Child Learn Better

By Deborah Williams

A recent radio broadcast on NPR’s Science Friday program centered on techniques to improve memory.   The guests shared their expertise on the brain:

• Distraction helps when you try to solve a problem or remember material.  When you are focused, you can’t think of the answer, but when you relax, the answer comes to you.  Professor Barbara Oakley, Ph. D., author of A Mind for Numbers, explains that when we try to solve a problem, our brains go into a focused mode that “actually blocks the neural networks that we might need to actually answer that problem.”  She further explains that our brains have two states:  a focused neural state and a resting neural resting state.  Just as Salvador Dali and Thomas Edison used to do, it often helps to take a short break to relax a bit; this puts your brain into a neural resting state.
• New York Times science writer Benedict Carey, author of How We Learn, explains that forgetting is learning’s best friend.  It acts as a sophisticated spam filter.  Once you retrieve what you forgot, it becomes more firmly ingrained into your memory.
• Both authors assert that repetition helps us to learn. Oakley explains, “You need to practice and repeat in order for it to become one protected, neural chunk.” Using flashcards is still a great technique.
• Get away from the problem for a while. It is not helpful to study a subject “hour after hour.”  Doing something else allows the brain to work on the problem “offline.”  We can eliminate a tendency to see or approach a problem in one way only; we can gain a new perspective to learning or to solving a problem.  Often, when you come back to the problem, the new brain connections will give you a fresh mind to tackle a problem or new learning.  This is also why you need at least six hours of sleep before a test since sleep shrinks the brain and permits fluid to flush the metabolic toxins in the brain as you sleep, and you wake up with an “upgraded” mind.
• Study in a different place. Learning is enhanced when you move around.
• Incorporate regular physical activity. Exercise allows the new neurons to be better implanted into your brain.  As a matter of fact, it helps to move around (e.g., pace, walk, etc.) when studying or trying to solve problems

The Reading Shift

You may have heard of “The Fourth Grade Shift.”  It’s the developmental milestone that typically occurs in the fourth grade.  It is when students no longer learn to read but switch to reading to learn.  The Shift includes “a change in automatic word processing, a crucial component of the reading shift theory.”  The report on the Science Daily website seems to shut this theory down.
Dartmouth researchers have analyzed elementary students’ brain waves and have concluded that the word processing of fourth graders does not automatically change at that time.  “Automatic word processing is the brain’s ability to determine whether a group of symbols constitutes a word within milliseconds, without the brain’s owner realizing the process is taking place.”  Actually, the researchers found that some of the word processing becomes automatic before fourth grade while others happen after the fifth grade.  That means that fifth and sixth grade students are continuing to develop their “neurological reading system.”
Lead researcher, Donna Coch, found evidence that “…at least through the fifth grade, even children who read well are letting stimuli into the neural word processing system that more mature readers do not.”  She asserts “teachers and parents should not expect their fourth-graders, or even their fifth graders, to be completely automatic, adult-like readers.”
Many states and localities use this time in children’s education to establish policy and interventions.  This video speaks to the issue and provides some tips for parents to help their children read better:

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Mandatory Summer School for Young Students in some School Districts

Gary Stern, writer for Lohud the Journal News reports that the Middleton (New York) school district has issued an unusual mandatory requirement for some of its students.  It has identified 600 of its kindergarten through second grade students and is requiring that they attend summer school.  The students were chosen based on their scores on their most recent MAP tests.  Students who do not attend the classes or who attend but do not progress face possible retention or promoted with extra help.  Superintendent Kenneth Eastwood explained that the district is trying different approaches in an effort “to help students who are in danger of never reaching academic standards.”
This requirement is being met with resistance from some parents.  Some complain that this policy is unfair and shocking since it is based on results from one test, and many had been assured of adequate progress throughout the school year at parent-teacher conferences and report cards.  The district’s officials face greater challenges with the implementation of the Common Core and new state tests for grades 3 to 8.  Superintendents from nearby districts are divided on this policy.  They, too, have similar populations that they have offered summer school remediation, but those were not mandatory,

Keeping Kids in High School

America is celebrating the nearly 80 percent high school graduation rate (the highest rate ever), but parents will appreciate the insight gleaned from Edweek’s College Bound blog writer Caralee Adams.  Adams shared significant findings from the America’s Promise Alliance at Tufts University in Boston.  The report examines the reasons that students drop out of school.
Researchers found that there are multiple reasons that  students drop out, and, typically, it is not just one reason.  Contrary to some beliefs, it’s not that school is boring or that they are not motivated.  The “cluster of factors” includes the following:

• Growing up in “toxic environments” with unstable families
• Living in violent neighborhoods
• Attending unsafe schools
• Being the caregivers for parents, siblings, or their own children
• Being homeless
• Being victims of abuse

Unless these students have “strong relationships with family members, teachers or peers, many give up.”  Even if they re-enter after dropping out, these students require a strong support network even more.
The report’s authors urge that the significant adults in a student’s life can turn things around or decrease the chances that a student will drop out of high school.  They specifically recommend the following actions:

1. Listen to young people. Take time to understand their struggles and circumstances when figuring out how to respond.
2. Surround the highest-need young people with extra supports. Early-warning systems can pinpoint problems based on attendance, grades, or behavior.
3. Encourage leaders from faith-based organizations, schools, and the broader community to help students stay in school.
4. Use proven and promising, evidence-based approaches to drop-out prevention, such as ones that look at the holistic needs of students. (The report contains a list of examples, such as Youth Opportunity Baltimore and Youth Build Providence.)
5. Give young people a central role in designing programs and coming up with solutions to staying in school.

Education has moved Online

Free Online STEM Tutorials

By Deborah 
The explosion of growth for Khan Academy continues.  According to the Science Daily website, it has teamed up with NASA to create a series of online tutorials designed to increase interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, or STEM subjects.  The lessons include things that NASA does routinely:  “…to measure our universe, to explore…the engineering challenges of launching and landing spacecraft on Mars, and to learn about other space exploration endeavors and destinations.”
These online tutorials are interactive lessons that use a number of ways to engage users in NASA’s scientific and mathematical protocols.  The lessons are “exciting and realistic simulations, challenges and games transport students deep into STEM subjects.”  The lessons are self-paced and free.
Access these lessons at the following link:  https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/nasa
Learn more by viewing this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CcM2R6vIvfw

Be Literate in what you buy

Benefits of Duplexes, Single Family Homes and Condos Investment

Duplexes / Multi-family
Duplexes are basically normal houses which are split into two housing units, and are separated by a common central wall. Each unit has discrete entrance door usually mounted at each frontage.
Whatever your purpose in acquiring these duplexes, herewith are some benefits which are inherent in this type of home as follows:

• If you have an eye for an investment, duplexes are better option because these generate more cash flow over the time you own the property.  With two housing units as source of your monthly rental income, USA Advantage confirms that you have higher probability of a continuous income because of the greater number of units as compared to single family homes.

• The home values of your duplex in the neighborhood in which you live have generally higher values than the single family home. A recent study made by Moxie Realty Group of Austin showed that duplexes have about 25% higher selling price than single family homes in the same neighborhood.

• On living in one unit of your own duplex, you can sustain your daily living expenses by having one unit rented. This set up will allow you to supervise the tenant as well as the maintenance of the building.

• Duplexes have great advantage especially in running its operation and maintenance. These structures have only one roof, one set of gutters, one basement and one yard which needs termite and pest control. This arrangement will make your maintenance activities easy to manage.

Single Family Homes
Single family homes are detached houses which are not connected to any other structures, and are intended to be occupied by one family. Furthermore these units do not share an inside wall with any other house or dwelling.
If you are planning for a residential place, and you consider dwelling in a single family home, you may find these interesting benefits which are built-in this type of structure as follows:

• Single family homes enjoy the advantage of having about 15% to 25% lower property insurance premium rates than duplexes.

• When the time comes that you want to sell your property, you will have no difficulty in marketing it because there is a great demand for single family homes.

• In single family homes, you have clear and less complicated parking conditions. Moreover you have the opportunity of building garage or carports.

• Single family homes provide privacy to the dwellers. This is an inherent advantage of this unit because the dwellers are completely disengaged from other tenants.

• Re-sale value for single family homes is superior because these can be marketed to both owner-occupants as well as investors.

Condos
Condos or condominiums are form of housing tenure where a specified part of a piece of a real estate is individually owned. Individual home ownership within the condo is interpreted as ownership of only the air space within the boundaries of the said condo.
If you are looking for a place to reside, and you consider residing in a condo, you may find these exciting benefits which are integral in this type of homes as follows:

• Condos provide low maintenance as you are not responsible for the repair of exterior and common areas.

• Generally condos are built in prime locations which are convenient to city centers, shopping malls, restaurant, etc.

• Living in condominium is much safer and secured compared to single family home or duplex.

• Condos usually offer access to amenities such as swimming pool, gym, tennis courts, reception areas, etc., which provide luxuries you may not otherwise be able to afford.

Teens and Leisure Reading

 

By Deborah Williams
A recent analysis of several studies was made by Common Sense Media.  The nonprofit reports that there is a definite reduction in the number of adolescents who read for pleasure.  NPR’s National Desk correspondent, Jennifer Ludden, reports, “Nearly half of 17-year-olds say they read for pleasure no more than one or two times a year—if that.”

Could the limitless access to technology be the reason?  Common Sense Media founder and CEO, Jim Steyer studied the effects of technology on children, and he believes that technology access is just part of the problem.  Steyer describes several possible reasons for less leisure reading by adolescents:

• Most children have access to e-readers, or other smart electronic devices like phones and tablets.
• Some students say that they would read for pleasure, but they have too much homework.
• The Internet can be very distracting.

Parents can still promote reading:

• Be a reader themselves.
• Purchase or borrow books from the library.
• Schedule a regular time for children to read each day.

Take Notes by Hand or Electronically? By Deborah Williams

Today’s students are very attached to their electronic devices.  That includes their laptops.  Most prefer to type papers and to take notes that way, but is that good for them to do?  A report on the Science Daily website about a recent study by researchers found that taking notes on laptops may not be the best option.  Princeton University’s Pam Mueller, lead author of the study, reports, “Our new findings suggest that even when laptops are used as intended — and not for buying things on Amazon during class — they may still be harming academic performance.”
Mueller and her UCLA colleague, Daniel Oppenheimer, conducted as series of studies that asked college students to take notes on a TED Talks video about topics for which they had little knowledge.  Some were given laptops and others received notebooks.  The only other instructions were to take notes in their usual fashion.  After their viewings, the respondents completed three distracter tasks.  Thirty minutes after completing the tasks, students answered factual-recall questions about the video they watched.  Researchers found that both groups of students performed equally well when recalling facts, but those who took notes by hand performed significantly better than those who used laptops to take notes.
That’s not all the researchers found:

• It may be that longhand note takers engage in more processing than laptop note takers, thus selecting more important information to include in their notes, which enables them to study this content more efficiently.
• The researchers also found that longhand note takers still beat laptop note takers on recall one week later when participants were given a chance to review their notes before taking the recall test

Not convinced?  Technology has created a compromise platform that combines both:

Is Now a Great Time for Investors

Jacksonville ‘a gold mine’ for real estate investors

JACKSONVILLE — To achieve financial security by age 30, Adam Wolbarst of New York City is investing his money in the Jacksonville real estate market.

The 24-year-old bought a home — with a tenant in place — on Jacksonville’s Westside in October. Since then, he’s collected just more than $500 per month on the investment and plans to buy another property in April.
Properties such as Wolbarst’s, as well as a projected increase in rental demand, make Jacksonville a desirable market for investors. While the U.S. median sale price of existing family homes was $177,900 in the third quarter of 2010, the median sale price of an existing family home in Jacksonville was $137,000, according to the National Association of Realtors.
To make the market even more attractive, the median gross rent in Jacksonville is $903, compared with a nationwide median gross rent of $842, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Jacksonville is one of only a handful of markets that’s a cash-flowing market, which buys and renovates rental properties to be sold to investors. People in Jacksonville don’t know what a gold mine they’re sitting on.
Wolbarst, who works as a district manager for a chain of convenience stores in Manhattan, the Bronx and central Long Island, bought the home through Progress Home Buyers.
“I’m very familiar with the financials of running a business, and I run my life the same way,” Wolbarst said. “It’s about what decisions can I make — how can I make my money go further?”
Wolbarst bought the home for $82,600, with a down payment of $19,284. The property earns $1,220 per month in gross rent, and after paying the mortgage, taxes, insurance and property management and maintenance fees, Wolbarst earns $538 a month, for a return on investment of 33.5 percent.
Good, cash-flowing neighborhoods can be slightly below middle class, where you can feel comfortable as a landlord. Investors, it’s not about where you’d want to live; it’s based on the numbers. 
The attractive rental market is stoking investment activity in multifamily housing as well.
There was demand for about 3,700 apartments in Jacksonville during 2010, said Greg Willett, vice president of research and analysis for MPF Research Inc., which tracks apartment markets throughout the U.S., while about 1,000 units were completed, causing occupancy to rise 3.6 percentage points, to about 90 percent.
“Jacksonville is one of those places that, I think, is going to be attractive for investors because where it is right now is so far under its long-term trend,” Willett said. “And you know it’s going to get meaningfully healthy again.”
Willett said most of the multifamily investment activity is in high-end properties. On Dec. 29, Magnolia Village Apartments, a Class A gated community on Bartram Road, sold for $14 million. Atlanta-based Apartment Realty Advisors brokered the deal; in early January, ARA opened an office in Jacksonville.
“Jacksonville is an important market in the state of Florida, in terms of the number of apartments there,” said Marc deBaptiste, a founding principal of the ARA Boca Raton office. “Our buyers want to be in that marketplace, and we decided we’d be better served having someone local there.”
Ray Rodriguez, president of the Real Estate Strategy Center of North Florida Inc., said there is opportunity for short-term investments — paying cash for a house and immediately reselling it for a profit — in the Argyle area, as well as outside the city, in the Trout Run and Paxon areas.

The New Kindergarten Experience By Deborah Williams

Researchers from EDPolicyWorks, the center for education policy and workforce competitiveness at the University of Virginia have compared the changes in expectations for kindergarten students in the 1990s and for kindergarten students today.  The Science Daily article, “Kindergarten Is the New First Grade, Researchers Find,” summarizes their work and reports that the increase in accountability has created a more rigorous curriculum for kindergarten.
The most prominent change is in literacy.  “In 1998, 31 percent of kindergarten teachers indicated that most children should learn to read while in kindergarten.   By 2006, 65 percent of teachers agreed with this statement.”  It is not surprising, then, that the amount of classroom time spent on literacy increased about 5.5 to seven hours a week of instruction time.
The increased academic focus has caused some problems, too.  Less time is available for “play, exploration and social interaction.”  Additionally, there is more “homework, worksheets, and pressure to learn to read as early s possible, and heightened levels of stress.”  With the increase in time spent on literacy, other subjects receive less time.  Time spent in physical activity, very important for kindergarten students, is also greatly reduced or eliminated in some cases.
It is possible to address the increase in literacy instruction while incorporating the hallmarks of kindergarten curriculum, but it requires a new, creative restructuring to achieve a workable balance.

School Attendance Has to be Compulsory

The Case for Regular School Attendance

By Deborah Williams

It is universally understood that children can’t learn if they are not at school. Regular school attendance is required for all students, but a study of the results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress reinforces this idea.  Sarah Sparks, writer for Education Week’s Inside School Research blog, reports, “Missing even a few days of school seems to make a difference in whether eighth graders perform at the top of their game.”
The findings of the study are compelling.  Because more time is being spent on instruction in reading, math, music, and the visual arts, missing time from school has a greater impact than ever before.  The data showed the following:

• 58% of 8^th graders who performed at the advanced level in NAEP reading in 2011 had perfect attendance in the month before the test, compared with only 39% of students who performed below the basic level.
• Nearly 20% of 8^th graders at the basic level and more than 25% in reading had missed three or more days in the past month.

Alan L. Ginsburg, a research consultant for the NAEP governing board and co-author of the report explains that if a student misses an average of three days each month, he or she is missing five weeks of school for the year.   “You’ve got more than a quarter of the below-basic kids who are going to miss five weeks of school a year or more,” he said, noting that only 8 percent of students at the advanced level had missed that much school. “That, to me, would be something that if you are a chief state school officer or a superintendent, you might worry about.”
This study supports the idea that chronic absenteeism “puts those students at greater risk for poor academic achievement and eventually dropping out of high school.”
Poor school attendance is a concern in other countries as well:  Every Day Counts from Mark Waddington on Vimeo.

Reading with Your Child is very Important

Reading With Your Young Child

By Deborah Williams
Most parents realize the importance of reading to their young children regularly.  Bradford Wiles, early childhood development professor at Kansas State University, has led research focused on emergent literacy, part of the developmental process that begins at birth and continues until preschool and kindergarten.  An article on the Science Daily website reports that Wiles found that parents should read with their young children and not just to them.
Children aged 3 to 5 years old were the focus for this study.  Even before they can say words or form sentences, this is a prime time to help them become better readers later and increase reading comprehension.  The parents of children in this age group should do the following for their young children:

• Read with them as a family at anytime during the day, not just before going to bed.
• Read the same book over and over again because the child can learn new things every time.
• Pay attention to their reading style by using engaging voice, tone, and the way they read to their children.
• Engage their children—figure out what the child is thinking and get them to think beyond the words on the page.
  • Ask open-ended questions.
  • Offer instructions.
  • Give examples.
  • Give feedback about what the children are thinking.

Reading with young children helps to increase their vocabularies substantially—one of the keys to future success in school.
Listen to Dr. Wiles discuss emergent literacy:

Is Your Child Afraid of Math?

Challenge to Traditional Mathematics Curriculum

By Deborah Williams

Researchers have uncovered one reason why American high school students may not perform as well as their global peers around the world.  The researchers, professor in the College of Education at the University of Missouri-Columbia, James Tarr, and professor emeritus, Doug Grouws, found “high school students in the United States achieve higher scores on a standardized mathematics test if they study from a curriculum known as integrated mathematics.”  An article on the Science Daily website reports that this finding was the result of their study of more than 3,000 high school students across the country.
Integrated mathematics is a combination of mathematics topics—algebra, geometry, and statistics, for example—into one course.  American high school mathematics courses typically include one yearlong course for each topic (e.g., Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, pre-Calculus, etc.).  Like students in many of the high-achieving countries who study math from a more integrated curriculum, Tarr and Grouws found that American high school “students who studied from an integrated mathematics program scored significantly higher on standardized tests administered to all participating students, after controlling for many teacher and student attributes.”
Tarr acknowledges that these findings challenge the traditional high school mathematics curriculum.  He asserts that those views simply are not supported when student performance is measured as it was in this three-year study of educational outcomes for students studying from different types of mathematics curricula.