Easter Egg Hunt with Learning Styles

Easter is upon us. Many of you will be looking forward to all that chocolate the Easter Bunny has promised.

But did you know that your Learning Style can tell you how you will most likely go about the search? Will you be patient? Systematic? Will you look everywhere at once? Will you prefer a map or verbal instructions or no guidance at all?

Do your Learning Style Assessment on http://www.clc.co.nz/ and find out.

For a chance to win a free assessment, please send in your best Easter Egg design (.jpg form) or your favourite treasure hunt experience (.rtf or .txt form) to competitions@clc.co.nz.

Homework the right way

Step Press: Centre for Public Education in Alexandria, VA claims that homework overload does not raise student achievement. Their spokesman sys: "Information from international assessments shows little relationship between the amount of homework students do and test scores. Students in Japan and Finland, for example, are assigned less homework but still outperform U.S. students on tests."

And we agree, to an extent. It is true that students don’t need hours of homework for homework’s sake - that would simply take up their time and raise their frustration levels. What they do need instead, is a smart way of doing homework in such a way that it is fun, productive and time-efficient, a way which allows them to learn.

If you want a practical strategy to improve your child’s success at school, use the long proven Learning Style Analysis from Prashnig Style Solutions, www.pss-styles.com. Find out how to create a home study area conducive to doing homework the right way. Discover whether the teachers know how best to access your child’s potential. Confirm that your child is safe when doing homework on the Internet.

www.pss-styles.com - doing homework the right way.

Learning Styles and Homework

(Continuing the Homework series - please see previous posts.)

What’s better, a good education or a carefree childhood? Is it better for a child to do homework or to enjoy other activities? Is there an acceptable compromise? Can you have both?

The most important thing to realise when asking such questions is that homework, when approached correctly, is not a horrible waste of time which tortures the minds and souls of school children. Quite the opposite, in fact: homework can be FUN!

How? That will depend on the child’s learning style. A holistic child will want to know why they need to do homework, an analytic child will have to approach it step-by-step from the beginning, a routine-oriented child will need a degree of sameness around the homework ritual (same time, same place, same favourite toy sitting next to the textbook), and so on.

Every child will also need their own learning area. Again, depending on the child, that may turn out to be the bedroom or the family room, with a desk or a comfortable bean bag, with soft learning-friendly music or without, with just the right degree of lighting, with or without a friend.

To find out what your child needs in order to turn homework into something as enjoyable as swimming or watching TV, please visit us on http://www.creativelearningcentre.com/products.asp?sub=LSA and order their own Learning Style Analysis.

Speaking of TV... it all sounds good when the proponents of abolishing homework cry for our children to have more time to do the things in life that children should do: climb trees, so fishing, spend time with the family. But in reality, where would that extra free time really be spent: in the tree house or in front of the TV?

Homework - too much and too little

(Continuing the Homework series - please see the previous post and its comments.)

My first school experience was in the Communist Poland of the 1970s. We started school at 6 or 7, and by the end of the first year we were expected to have mastered:
· reading a book with more than 1000 words of text,
· writing a page-long essay about topics such as what we did during the holidays,
· addition,
· subtraction,
· set theory.

Our homework in primary school began with about 1 hour in the first year, and increased by about 30 minutes every year, so that teenagers would often come home around 4pm and sit down to do homework which would easily take till 10pm by the time you hit year 10.

That’s clearly too much. And yet, when I left Poland at the age of 12, I could write a 3-page essay about the influence of the Renaissance on the art of the period, I could analyse a work of literature in terms of symbolism and foreshadowing, I knew my Greek mythology and non-binary systems of counting, I understood photosynthesis and could recite all the major rivers of Europe together with their tributaries.

In South Africa, I experienced a shock. Although my English was next to non-existent at the time, I couldn’t believe that the only homework we ever got was to learn a list of words for a spelling test or to colour in a map. The maths syllabus was about 3 years behind what I was used to... and all the tests were in the textbook, just begging the students to do them ahead of time in order to get better scores (that, however, would have been homework, so they didn’t do it).

When I challenged my parents about the discrepancy between the two education systems, I was told: “perhaps teachers in South Africa teach in such a way that no homework is ever necessary”. Well, I suppose in a way they were right. Teachers in South Africa taught a very minimalist curriculum compared to the Polish one.

So, what’s better, a good education or a carefree childhood? Is there an acceptable compromise?

We’ll look for the answer together next week.

Meanwhile, if you’d like to know what your child’s personal assessment says about their homework, please have a look at http://clc.co.nz/default.asp?page=lsas.

Homework not working?

“Homework should be abolished for small children as it serves no purpose,” screamed a line in USA a few weeks ago. It was reprinted with relish by a New Zealand newspaper.

The proponents of abolishing homework state that:
· There is no evidence that doing more homework leads to finer academic achievement.
· Children are wasting their precious time that could be spent on hobbies and family.
· Working parents are unable to supervise and support children in their homework.
· Too much homework erodes the love of learning.
· Too much homework may have long-lasting psychological effects.

We will hold off judgement for a week before we present our side of the argument. Meanwhile, we invite you to comment on this blog and let us know what you think about the issue of homework.

Some points to comment on:
· What do you remember about doing homework when you were at school? Was it useful or a waste of time?
· If you have children, how much time to they seem to spend on their homework? Is it more or loess than you expected? More or less than when you were their age? Do your children seem to benefit from it?
· If you’re a teacher, why do you assign homework?

If you have a pressing homework issue, please visit our website on www.clc.co.nz or email us on info@clc.co.nz.