Field Trip to the San Diego County Fair Plant*Grow*Eat Program
We just arrived at the Fair with our plants.
On Wednesday, June 7, four of my students, their parents, and I took a field trip to the San Diego County Fair for the annual Plant-Grow-Eat Program. We came from different locations around Southern California and met each other there in person for the first time.
Blue Ribbon Time. Congratulations Jameson and Abel.
Each of the students from around the San Diego area were provided with materials (seeds, soil, and a planter pot) for growing a radish plant. At the fair all of the students presented their plants and the judges handed out awards for the biggest, healthiest plants. Twins Jameson and Abel were awarded first place blue ribbons for their plants. Maverik was also awarded a blue first-place ribbon, and his sister, Iliana was awarded a second place ribbon.
In the Petting Farm.
We were able to walk around the fair during pre-fair hours and see many farm animals including a petting area where we could feed and pet the goats and some other animals. It was a fun, enjoyable learning experience.
Iliana feeding the goats.
Maverik petting a pig and feeding a goat.
We had a fun day.
Ways Children Learn →
Have you ever wondered about the different ways children learn? For instance, some children are good listeners and have good organizational skills while other children have trouble listening and appear disorganized, but they learn best through visualizing the material and have their own way of organizing their world. Traditional classrooms tend to favor the good listener/sequential (organized) learner, but students who do not fit that learning style tend to miss the learning moments and may exhibit problematic behaviors in the classroom (i.e. daydreaming/not paying attention, disorganized, etc.).
Linda Kreger Silverman, Ph.D., a licensed psychologist who has been studying learning differences for over 40 years, is a noted author, researcher and popular international speaker. She has compiled a chart of information describing the difference between an auditory-sequential learner and a visual-spatial learner. Please follow the link to her website for a close look at her informative chart: http://visualspatial.org/vslasl.php
Gifted Learners Reaching for the Stars →
By Jenelle S. Miller, Ed.D.
Children should have the opportunity to stretch their minds and increase their capacity for learning every day. They should be allowed to follow their curiosities and encouraged to wonder. A learning environment, whether public, private, or at-home, should inspire children to reach for the stars rather than always having to wait until others catch up. Children who stand out as gifted among their peers should be given opportunities to accelerate at a pace that reflects their abilities and motivation to learn.
The National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) reprinted an article by Carol Ann Thomlinson, Ed.D., of The University of Virginia titled, What it Means to Teach Gifted Learners Well. In this article, Dr. Thomlinson discussed the difference between good instruction and inappropriate instruction for gifted learners.
Maximizing What Works For Your Child: A Recipe for Success
What makes a recipe successful is the customization and enhancement of the ingredients by the cook for the enjoyment and health of the consumer. What makes a learning plan successful is the customization and enhancement of the learning opportunities by the parent/teacher for the socio-emotional health and academic engagement of the child. All children are different; and no one book of instructions is able to provide all the answers for successfully raising and educating any individual child. However, just like in a recipe book where a number of key ingredients are needed to create a delicious meal, a number of key strategies exist that can help you know and understand your child more thoroughly, thus enabling his or her success in life. At times, some of the ingredients in a recipe need to be adjusted in order to eliminate adverse reactions which might negatively affect certain customers. Sometimes specific ingredients need to be added to the recipe in order to enhance the flavor to suit an individual's taste or provide an additional level of enjoyment and nutrition. By exploring and understanding the learning styles, interests, reasoning abilities, and achievements of a child, one is able to create and customize an individualized learning plan (ILP) that will enhance, enable, and maximize his or her success.
Learning Styles
There are several different learning styles, meaning there are several different ways to learn. Knowing a child’s learning style allows the parent/teacher to adapt or modify the curriculum or curriculum delivery in a way that will maximize his or her learning potential. Types of learning styles include:
- Visual/Spatial: pictures, images, and spatial understanding
- Aural/Auditory-Musical: sound and music
- Verbal/Linguistic: words in speech and writing
- Logical/Mathematical: logic, reasoning, and systems
- Physical/Kinesthetic: body, hands, and sense of touch
- Social/Interpersonal: prefers to work and be with others
- Solitary/Intrapersonal: prefers to work and be alone
A child’s preferred learning style represents his or her strength. It is important to spend time working in his or her preferred style as well as working to develop the child’s least preferred or weaker style of learning.
Interests
Engaging a child in meaningful learning opportunities often depends upon the ideas and interests that he or she would like to pursue. Parents/teachers are important to the process of helping children think about and discover their own personal ideas, interests, and passions. Children as well as adults are more able to learn and retain information when they are studying things that are meaningful to them.
Reasoning Abilities
Children have varied levels of cognitive skills, many of which will change, grow, and adapt over a lifetime. Therefore, assessing a child for their cognitive reasoning abilities is a means to provide parents/teachers with insight into his or her learning potential. The results of such an assessment can help to identify learning disabilities so that instructors can provide remediation; or to identify giftedness and academic potential so that instructors can provide enriched learning experiences designed to develop a child’s gifts and talents.
Achievement
Assessing and evaluating a child’s achievement level provides parents/teachers with important baseline information that will help determine the academic level in which to start in order to reach maximum success. What does your child know? What does your child still need to learn? Does your child perform at the top percentile of the grade-level standardized achievement test in relation to same aged peers? If so, what is his or her true grade-level equivalency? Does he or she need to accelerate in some subjects or are there areas where he or she needs to catch up? These questions can be answered with the proper assessments and evaluations.
Children are unique and require an individualized approach to their education. Accelerated Academics, Inc. offers parents/teachers a number of evaluative tools that will provide information about their children’s strengths and weaknesses, how they learn, what they know, and how they think. This information is essential for creating a successful learning atmosphere that will nurture the socio-emotional health and academic engagement of the “whole child.”