Organization is critical for success in school. 

There are five key questions that every student needs to answer and every parent needs to ask about daily homework and project assignments. These key questions will help students to organize information so that they can do their projects and assignments independently, accurately, efficiently, and promptly. And they will help parents to hold their children accountable and to fully understand what the children have to accomplish before Report cards, or tests, or quizzes. We will be going over these five key questions at our back to school review and giving children an organizational method  and chart to get their minds and materials ready before and during school.   If you think you know what these key questions are just drop a reply to this blog. I'd love to hear from you.

Confidence is the key to excellence. It unlocks and liberates every child's God-given capacity to learn.  When children know and believe, they can achieve. 

Confidence is created by small systematic accomplishments in subject areas of substance. 

It is created by achieving incremental successes in important subject areas. Confidence is gained, however, only when consistent success requires the constant exercise and growth of cognitive abilities over progressively increasing levels of difficulty. 

Consistent achievement stimulates the mind to desire--and to expect--more achievement. Success breeds success. 

When that achievement occurs in a fundamentally important area of learning--when kids are learning the skills and content that form the necessary foundations for building and obtaining skills and knowledge in other essential areas, then it can be truly said that education is occurring. 

So whatever you do, make sure that you are building your child's confidence. 

Do you want to help your kids improve their reading comprehension so that they can get better grades in school and achieve success on all standardized tests?

Reading is the key to everything. And vocabulary and grammar are the keys to reading--even in mathematics.

Math is not simply calculating numbers. It's reading in order to gain the information that you need to reason towards a solution. This is why calculators don't help. Math requires reasoning and analysis. These are the same skills required in reading, vocabulary, and grammar. If you cannot read, you cannot reason. And if you cannot reason you cannot succeed in math or any other subject. 

The way they teach reading is wrong because it doesn't require or enhance reasoning skills. 

Words must be learned from context and from etymology since both of these approaches if done correctly sharpen and create a host of transferable metacognitive skills. 

Reading comprehension is the ability to understand the many words and ways that writers create meaning and communicate their thoughts to us. 

Reading comprehension is the key to everything. Kids cannot succeed unless they understand what they read.  A lack of reading comprehension limits their learning ability in every area.  They can't complete their homework independently because they can't acquire the knowledge from the textbooks  on their own. Students struggle with math because word problems require the ability to decode the words and to understand how they are organized in the sentence. In every subject, whether science, literature, or history, students struggle because they aren't able to accurately acquire knowledge from the texts that they are required to read. 

Writing is also dependent on reading comprehension. Students are required to answer questions from and write critical responses to academic texts.  But how can they respond to what they don't understand? How can they answer questions about reading material that they don't comprehend?

And schools (whether they be charter schools or public schools) don't make it any better for the students. So much time is spent on test preparation that reading comprehension becomes a matter of giving the students shortcuts or strategies based on answering certain types of questions. But none of this prepares the student to read independently, to think analytically, and to respond critically. 

Comprehension is the key that unlocks the door of knowledge to every subject area. A lack of reading comprehension is an insurmountable barrier to knowledge. Students who cannot read can never succeed.

So then if we agree that comprehension is the key to everything, we must ask: what are the keys to reading comprehension? The answer is simple: vocabulary and grammar are the keys to comprehension. Students need to understand words and the ways that writers organize those words to communicate meaning. A rich vocabulary deepens students understanding of the many ways that words can be used and the multiple meanings and nuances which words can have in different contexts. Mastery of grammar allows students to see how writers use the various parts of speech such as adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, verbs, pronouns, and nouns, to organize and structure both what they want to say and the way they want to say it. When students understand what words mean, and the way words create meaning, then--and only then-- are they are able to comprehend what writers are saying and to respond in mature and eloquent ways to various texts. Students learn to write best by analyzing, imitating, and creatively taking ownership of  the words, sentence patterns, and paragraph structures which they have been learning to comprehend through their study of grammar and vocabulary. 

So if you want your students to become independent learners and critical thinkers, if you want them to succeed, then let us help you to teach them the grammar and vocabulary they need to understand--and respond to--everything they read. 

Reading comprehension is the ability to understand the many words and ways that writers use to communicate their thoughts. It is the most important ability because it's the key to unlocking the meaning of academic texts in every area. Whether in science, math, history, or literature, knowledge must be acquired through reading. By the end of third grade, children who have learned to read are now expected to read to learn. Comprehension becomes either the key or the barrier to learning everything they need to succeed.

Do you want your children to improve their reading comprehension and writing skills? Then stay tuned to this blog where you will find simple, exciting, and effective ways to teach them what they need to understand everything they read.