While working on ISEE test prep with a student in Boston, MA, it was important to stress the value of learning test-taking strategies, not just the skills necessary to answer the questions on the test. For example, most of the math questions are made up of a skill set, such as multiplying decimals, but are framed by a word problem. A question might ask, “If a wall is 3.5 meters long and 2.9 meters wide,…
Read More »When working with a Kindergarten student in Chelmsford, MA who was having trouble learning how to read, I started with the basics: what are the sounds that you hear in a word? A child needs to be able to isolate each sound so that he can figure out what letter represents that sound. One of the best ways to begin teaching phonics is to use small objects that begin with each letter. I use these…
Read More »in Early reader, First grade reading, Kindergarten reading, Reading strategies
Maybe you’ve seen those commercials from a competing tutoring company, in which a child tilts over and all of the numbers and letters spill out of his head at the end of the school year? When many children come back to school after the summer, it takes months to get them back to where they were at the end of the previous year. Retention of reading and writing skills is crucial as children move from…
Read More »in Early reader, Kindergarten reading, Letter recognition, Reading strategies
For many Kindergarten students who are having difficulty learning how a letter looks, it is important to try many different types of reading strategies, including one that young children are great at—jumping around! For a Kindergarten student in Chelmsford, MA, I created a variation on the game Twister: I wrote letters on the spots, and when I called out “Put your foot on the letter that makes the sound [sound of the letter T],” the…
Read More »in Early reader, Kindergarten reading, Letter recognition, Reading strategies, Whole-word reading
In many preschool and Kindergarten classrooms, the relationship between how a letter looks and how it sounds is taught by showing the child pictures of objects, telling them the name of the object, and then telling them what letter the object starts with (‘cat’ starts with C, ‘dog’ starts with D). Some children just do not gain language acquisition in this way; what if they just can’t remember that ‘cat’ starts with C? When children…
Read More »Taking the SAT is a stress-ridden experience. There are challenging questions and a clock ticking away. One technique that was helpful for a student that I worked with in Sudbury, MA, was to rearrange the order of how she attacked each Verbal section. The Verbal section begins with five to eight sentence completions, followed by several short passages and questions, and then ending with at least one very long passage with its own set of…
Read More »When working with young students on organizing a five-paragraph essay, a visual analogy is key. Take the cheeseburger. They’ve all had one, they all know the joy that is a greasy, dripping burger topped with melting cheese on a sesame seed bun…that bun perfectly sandwiching the meat and cheese in grilled harmony…And, yes, an essay is stacked just like that cheeseburger. You’ve got the bun–without it, what holds the burger together? This is your introduction…
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