10 tips for using Google Tasks and Google Calendar as a student agenda
How can you effectively use Google Calendar as a student agenda? Time management is a life skill that is important to teach students, and I love a good organizational system! Over the years, I have traded my paper calendars and agendas for digital ones. It is helpful to see what events I have have and where I have time in my schedule for tasks. Many of my tutoring clients tell me they do not need an agenda because they can just look at the list of assignments in Google Classroom, but this does not teach them time management skills nor does it help them chunk large projects into manageable pieces. (Nor are most of them capable of keeping all that info “in my head” as their main strategy for remembering all their homework assignments but I do hear that option quite a bit!) This school year when I teach study skills to my middle and high school tutoring clients, I will include how to use an agenda whether it’s a paper one or a digital one. For a simple digital system for students who have Gmail accounts, I recommend Google Calendar and Google Tasks. Use the calendar events to block time…
Back to School for you – for free
What do you wish you could go back to school to learn? Everyone can teach or tutor something. What skill or hobby are you good at? What academic subject do you enjoy talking about? What do your kids or neighbors ask you for advice about? Being a subject expert will help you grow your confidence in tutoring, but honestly, tutoring is just coming alongside someone to help with their academic or skill learning. Almost anyone can do that, especially with a free tutoring workshop. Here’s a little free vocabulary lesson. Teaching is a subject matter expert giving instruction. Tutoring is helping students with academic learning and study skills. It is remediating or enriching a particular subject or school year. Coaching is helping students with problem-solving strategies to improve productivity or effectiveness both now and in the future. Now is the perfect time to get set up to start tutoring this fall. My short free workshop Tutor Toolkit will give you the tools needed to design tutoring sessions no matter what you want to tutor. It’s perfect for anyone who wants to tutor, teach lessons, or coach clients. What’s in the FREE workshop Tutor Toolkit? In this workshop, I lay…
Book Review: Ida B
When was the last time you had a day when things went from righter than right to a million miles beyond wrong? Years ago, my oldest daughter read Ida B… and Her Plans to Maximize Fun, Avoid Disaster and (Possibly) Save the World in a book club in elementary school and got to attend a book signing with the author Katherine Hannigan at a local bookstore. Being a teacher, I read the book and instantly fell in love with the story, all the various characters and the strong emotions the story described when Ida B’s life suddenly goes from righter than right to a million miles beyond wrong. I knew it would make a good read aloud book for my fourth grade class launching many discussions, teachable moments, and language arts examples. The description of how much the dog Rufus drools is a great one for figurative language examples. Ida B is just a great book all around. The book is gentle in some areas: very general description of Mama’s illness and strong in others: Ida B’s thoughts on many topics are bold and self-deprecating. Ida B believes that there is never enough time in the world for all the…
10 Test Taking Tips
How can you help a student confidently take a test? Fear tends to grip students when teachers, parents or tutors talk about testing or preparing for tests. My 10 free Test Taking Tips will help students so that they can focus confidently on the test, not on their worries. Students and parents can smile more and sigh less! Well prepared students will work to the best of their abilities. Read everything! Read everything on the page including the directions, the passage, the questions, and every answer choice. If time allows, rereading the passage, too. Read the question twice. Sometimes you misread or your brain tricks you into thinking something different than what it’s really asking. Rereading will help you understand what the question is really asking. Underline important words or numbers in the questions. These clues might help determine the answer or eliminate wrong answers. Think about what the answer is. Before reading the multiple choice answers or before writing your answer, think about what the right answer is. Eliminate wrong answers. Cross out wrong answers before selecting the correct one. Even if you can only eliminate one or two answers, you will have a better choice of picking the…
Thoughtful Teacher Gifts
What do you consider a thoughtful teacher gift? I really do not want another teacher mug, hand lotion, or note pad, but I would love to hear you say “thank you” in your own way. Some of the best teacher gifts I have received have not been costly ones, but thoughtful ones. One mom hand wrote me a poem and even though she told me she had authored it previously and reused it for her kids teachers, she took the time to hand write it on pretty paper. Another time a client brought me a bag of avocados for my birthday and they ripened more perfectly than any other avocados I have ever had. It upped my healthy eating month and made me grin just to think of how thoughtful this gift was. A very thoughtful and unexpected gift card to my local craft store came in a thank you note from a mom of a sick student that I took care of while waiting for the mom to get off work. My best friend’s husband once gave me a pencil sharpener. THE BEST ONE EVER. A student chose a book for me from the book fair because I had…
Strategies to Master Multiplication
How old were you when you learned your multiplication facts? Knowing basic math facts and skills is the foundation of strong math progress, yet multiplication seems daunting to many children and parents. I often tell students that if they do not know their math facts they can still get the right answer, but their classmates who know their math facts will get the answer faster. In elementary school the time gap is not as apparent as it is in middle school and beyond. Start with conceptualizing the facts, add some counting and reasoning strategies, and then work on fact mastery. Mastering multiplication facts does not have to be a painful experience. Most schools try to have students be fluent in the one by one digit multiplication facts by memory by the end of grade 3 as they conceptualize multiplication and division. Fluency is as important in math as in reading no matter the access to calculators and audio books. However, straight memorization of math facts without a concept of multiplication is like memorizing the alphabet without understanding that the letters represent sounds that blend together to make words. How can parents and tutors help children learn to master the multiplication…
10 Read Aloud Books for the Younger Years
What is your favorite picture book from your childhood? Reading aloud is so important in the younger years. It teaches a love of reading, models fluency, introduces vocabulary, builds curiosity, and opens the door for great discussions. These picture read aloud books I like for the writing and the illustrations, especially the colored pencil art in Albert and the watercolors and postcards in Toot and Puddle. Several stories are about overcoming fears, making friends, travel adventures, and family. Some have sensitive topics that will take careful discussion, but what better place to have these conversations than in your own living room. I took a walk down memory lane and pulled these off my bookshelf. Some I read to my own kids and some were from my classroom. Below are 10 of my favorites for read aloud books for the younger years (or actually for any age!). Just pulling these favorite books off my shelf has brought me joy and a flood of memories from my classroom and my own children in their younger years. I am looking forward to reading these to my grandchildren! A Pig Parade is a Terrible Idea by Michael Ian Black and Kevin Hawkes…
Gutsy
Which friend of yours is gutsy? gutsy (guht-see) adjective with courage, pluck, or determination adventurous; undaunted, fearless I created this gutsy adjective art design for my youngest daughter. I was inspired by my daughter’s gutsy approach to life in spite of having a chronic disease. I wanted some art to remind her of how proud I am of her. Now I love seeing it in the background of her video chats and weekly family video calls. Adjective Art is a great gift for a friend, child, coworker, or teacher. This piece of art highlights and defines a specific adjective. Choose from 10 adjectives. Adventurous. Artsy. Capable. Classy. Determined. Generous. Gutsy. Inquisitive. Resourceful. Social. Adjective Art is available to download in my Etsy shop immediately upon purchase. The file is an 8×10 jpeg which can be downloaded and printed at home or at a printer of your choice. Grab a frame of your choice and you’ll have a quick, easy, and personal gift. Which adjective best describes your significant other? Print one for the desk. Which one best describes your child’s teacher? Print one for a thoughtful and personal teacher gift. Need a fun secret Santa gift? Adjective art is a…
Small Business Saturday
What small businesses can you support this week? The week of Thanksgiving is all about turkey and transactions. It’s the rush of getting all the dinner supplies (or at least the few things you were assigned to bring plus a hostess gift to apologize for not wanting to go to all the trouble to host this year) and weeding through all the Black Friday ads in your inbox and phone. In the age of online shopping, Amazon has been bookmarked and bots are hired to do your searching. Too bad there is not yet a robotic maid, housekeeper, and cook to take care of Thanksgiving dinner. Actually there are plenty of ways to support small businesses in your Thanksgiving week. Instead of ordering it all online or purchasing at a big box store, try getting a few items locally from small businesses. Buy local produce. Pick up a fresh pie or flowers from a local business. Hire a friend to help cook or clean this week. This Saturday is Small Business Saturday. It follows Black Friday and comes before Cyber Monday. Sometimes the joy of shopping is lost in the rush of Black Friday. Think about how you can support…
Four in a Row Game Board
Was Connect Four a favorite game in your childhood? Four in a Row is a simple game where the goal is to score four boxes in a row in any direction, yet it becomes a complex game when you apply strategies to keep the other player from scoring four in a row first! The supplies are minimal – a four in a row game board and two colored pencils. To help one of my tutoring clients be more engaged in reading and comprehending his spelling word patterns instead of just memorizing the letters, I pulled up a four in a row game board and typed in his spelling list. In order to score a box, he had to correctly pronounce the word on the first try. He likes a good competition so this challenge pulled him right in! Soon he was thinking more about a word and sounding out in his head before saying it. Typically I like students to go ahead and attempt hard words and process them aloud and ask for help when needed. However, this was the perfect challenge to push my client to the next level! If he said it wrong, he did not get the…