Tutor Fi Blog » Child Development

Fewer Preschool Programs Foretell a Bleak Future

Deborah Williams — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:00:20 +0000

Low-income kindergarten students who have not been enrolled in a quality preschool program tend to be about 18 months behind their peers. For this reason, public education has expanded the number of preschool programs across the nation until they became one of the casualties of the budget cuts that school systems have had to address.

Kimberly Hefling writes on The Huffington Post website in her article, “Public Pre-Kindergarten Programs Slowed, Even Reversed, by Recession,” that the current budget cuts mean that many three- and four-year-olds are not going to preschool.

Research shows that many of these students will start far behind their peers, never catch up, end up in exceptional education classes, and often drop out of school. Usually, students are eligible if they qualify for free or reduced lunch, but in this economy more students fall into that category; however, there are not enough slots to accommodate them.

The future is bleak for these children because, according to Billy Easton, executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education in Albany, New York, “more of them will end up out of work or they will make less money than they would’ve otherwise and more of them will end up in prison.”

Here’s an example of how this situation is hurting Michigan preschoolers:

Kindergarten Math, Key to Academic Success

Deborah Williams — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 12:00:16 +0000

Eleanor Yang Su, writer for Huff Post Education, posted a recent article about the ongoing debate within kindergarten curricula: “Is it more important for kindergarteners to focus on academics and learn their ABC’s and numbers? Or spend more time on social and emotional issues, like how to play nice and pay attention?” She writes that research done by University of Irvine education professor, Greg Duncan, shows that an important predictor of academic success for kindergarteners is to learn math skills. He and his colleagues found that kindergarteners who learned the most math “tended to have the highest math and reading scores years later. Duncan reports that children’s later achievement is best served by these key factors (in order of importance):

math skills
reading skills
attention skills

Duncan suggests that kindergarten teachers teach more math—“simple things like learning shapes and numbers and the concept of smaller and bigger numbers along a number line.” He suggests that parents “point out shapes to their kids and play cards and board games to help them get comfortable with counting.”

Electronic Text or Printed Text – Which Is Better?

Deborah Williams — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 12:00:40 +0000

Parents will be interested in knowing the results of the world’s first reading study to determine the differences between reading printed text and electronic reading. Science Daily reports in the article, “Reading a Book Versus a Screen: Different Reading Devices, Different Modes of Reading?” the Research Unit Media Convergence of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz found that “This study provides us with a scientific basis for dispelling the widespread misconception that reading from a screen has negative effects. There is no (reading) culture clash—whether it is analog or digital, reading remains the most important cultural technology.”

The majority of the participants indicated that they preferred reading a printed book over any other mode of reading, but the researchers point out that tablet PCs actually are more advantageous than “e-ink readers and the printed page that is not consciously perceivable: the information is processed more easily when a tablet PC is employed.” Further, the results show that there is no difference among the three media used in terms of reading rates for younger participants, but older participants had faster reading rates when they used the tablet PC.

According to the lead researcher Professor Schlesewsky, the preference for printed text “is not an indicator of how fast and how well the information is processed.”

Good Television for Girls

Deborah Williams — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 12:00:30 +0000

Part of the negative fallout from television programs has been the rash of programming that depicts girls as competitive, mean, and bullying others. A recent post on the Common Sense Media site laments this relentless trend and acknowledges that parents may find it somewhat difficult to steer their daughters toward positive viewing. In the post “Beyond Catfight: TV That’s Good for Girls,” Common Sense Media lists several good options for parents to consider for their daughters, especially those aged 7 to 14:

SciGirls (ages 7+)
iCarly (ages 8+)
Picker Sisters (ages 10+)
Born to Dance (ages 12+)
Tia & Tamera (ages 13+)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (ages 13+)
2 Broke Girls (ages 14+)
Parks and Recreation (ages 14+)

Waiting to Begin Kindergarten, A Good Choice or Not?

Deborah Williams — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 12:00:30 +0000

According to the authors of Welcome to Your Child’s Brain: How the Mind Grows From Conception to College, Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang, redshirting your young child may not be a good idea. Redshirting is a term taken from sports in which parents choose to delay their children’s entry into school in the hopes that the child will be more mature and ready for school and, later, more competitive in high school and college. In a recent New York Times “Delay Kindergarten at Your Child’s Peril,” the authors cite research that indicates that the only group who really benefit is teachers because older children tend to be more mature and easier to handle in the classroom, but redshirting parents are hopeful that their children will have the academic advantage in their later years at school.

The reality is not what those parents had in mind. In one study one group of first graders who were young for their grade level made much more reading and math progress than redshirted kindergarteners. Interestingly, the first group was actually only an average of two months younger in chronological age. The authors point out that unless a child is significantly behind his or her peers, delaying entry into school is not a good idea.

The following video offers a balanced presentation of these authors’ assertions:

Essential Early Math Skills

Deborah Williams — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 12:00:28 +0000

The Science Daily website reports that some psychologists from the University of Missouri have identified the essential math skills that young children should have to improve their chances of math success in later years. In the article, “Key Early Skills for Later Math Learning Discovered,” David Geary, Curator’s Professor of Psychological Sciences, commented, “We found that understanding numbers and quantity is a necessary foundation for success as the student progresses to more complex math topics.”

Among other skills, Geary and his fellow researchers found that young children should know how to translate numbers. They should be able to break a number into smaller parts, for example. Further the researchers noted that first graders who could use a number line, where to place numbers on that line, and some basic math facts surpassed their peers over the next five years. For many children, acquiring personal math tutor help may help them to acquire these necessary skills.

ADD or ADHD, Which One Is of More Concern?

Deborah Williams — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 12:00:37 +0000

Most people are aware of ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) and ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder), and often, people use the labels interchangeably. In both labels, there are attention issues, but those with the ADHD label have hyperactivity concerns as well. Hyperactivity includes “…behavior such as restlessness, running around, squirming and being fidgety…” However, the United Press International website reports that in a recent study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, researchers found that those with inattention problems were less likely to graduate from high school than those with hyperactive issues.

According to Dr. Sylvana Cole, the leader of the study, “In the school system, children who have attention difficulties are often forgotten because, unlike hyperactive kids, they don’t disturb the class.” Fortunately, students with attention concerns can be taught to improve their ability to pay attention. Since schools have their hands full addressing the issues of hyperactive students, an online tutor can help with that.

The Apgar Score: Your Childs First Test

Deborah Williams — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 12:00:18 +0000

A child’s first test is given when he or she is just a few minutes old. The Apgar score is an evaluation that can earn up to two points each in considering a child’s heart rate, muscle tone, skin color, and reflex irritability. MSNBC reports that a new study of 877,000 Swedish adolescents compared their grades with their Apgar scores as newborns. The results suggest that those with Apgar scores below 7 have a higher chance of ”having cognitive deficits later in life.” Most children with scores below 7 are fine, but the chances are increased with scores below 7.

How We Speak to Children Helps Them with Number Sense

Deborah Williams — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 12:00:16 +0000

A new Science Daily article reports that researchers from Stanford University found that the way we speak to young children may help them to develop better number sense, the foundation for future math success and possible implications for helping children with dyscalculia, or learning disability in math. According to the researchers, changing the order of a statement with numbers in it can better help children grasp number sense in the future. Because we learn by figuring out what leads to the next thing, it might be helpful for children to understand numbers better if the number is mentioned last. For example, instead of saying, “Look at the three bears,” mention the number last: “Look at the bears. There are three.” In the first statement, the child will focus on the “bears” and give no relevance to the number “three.”

Of course, this is helpful for parents or guardians of small children, but older children will need help for weak number sense. The one-to-one attention from online math tutoring can help with that.

Is Self Regulation the Key to Academic Success?

Deborah Williams — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 15:27:22 +0000

Parents and teachers of young children might be able to improve those children’s chances for academic success by teaching self-regulation skills to them. That is what new research suggests. The study’s researchers, Claire Cameron Ponitz from the University of Virginia and Megan McClelland from Oregon State University, found that kindergarteners with high levels of self-regulation at the beginning of the school year performed better on reading, vocabulary, and math tests near the end of the year than did those children with low levels of self-regulation.

Self-regulation, the “ability to control and direct one’s own feelings, thoughts, and actions,” can be improved with interventions from teachers and parents. These children need organization, consistency, and structure. It requires the adults to follow through with rules so that children have the chance to practice controlling themselves.

Additionally, the researchers suggests that certain classic games that require children to follow directions and wait to take turns can help children to self-regulate:

Red Light, Green Light
Simon Says (Science Daily also reports on the effectiveness of this game in helping children in different countries to improve academically.)
Hide and Seek
Role Playing