What can a parent do to help the child with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)?

Kids will be kids. They will play, make noise, and make a mess.

Is your child quite and aloof when alone? Does he tend to seek extra attention when others are around? Does he forget things he just did learn or revise? Is his handwriting a total mess?

If answer to more than one of the above questions is “YES”, your child might be subject to Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder. Seek opinion of her pediatrician or your general family physician. If the need be, the doctors will help diagnose the ADHD.

Here are a few common suggestions for parents to help child suffering from ADHD:

• Encourage discipline and draft a daily schedule: Try to design a daily pattern of workflow and follow the same. Make this schedule available for the child’s easy reference, for e.g. paste it on his closet. Ask him to go through it and thus, the child will be clearly aware of the different timeslots to study, play, meet friends, pursue his hobby, or finish the chores. If your child does participate in the scheduled tasks on his own, do appreciate him.

• Appreciate organized behavior: Encourage the child to put all things back at their own appropriate places after using them. Books should be placed back in schoolbags, toothpaste – brush and comb should go back at their own dedicated spaces, dishes should be put in sink, pen-pencils must be placed back in pen stand or pencil pouch, etc. 

• Eliminate the distractions: While doing the homework or while painting or doing the hobby activity eliminate all distractions. The distractions can be 

          Visual: Any moving object, TV, the view from the window, etc
          Auditory: Music, radio, parental conversation, etc

          Sensory: Smell of food, strong perfumes, too cold or too hot atmosphere, presence of someone else around, etc

          Make the child sit alone at a peaceful place with no distractions. Schedule the time. Make him aware that he is suppose to finish off the task in the allotted timeframe.

• Keep the interaction clear: Communicate in brief and clear words. Do not use long story buildup or explanations to remind the child of the task or responsibility. Have faith in his ability and display the same, precisely. 

• Do not confuse or over-stimulate the child: If you are not clear in your thought, pause and form it correctly and concisely in your mind before you communicate. Keep the number of choices limited. The more number of choices can move the child towards hyperactivity.  

• Remember he is special and still a kid: Yes, it takes a bit of an extra effort to manage a special child, yet he is just a child. He will not show progress overnight. Set goals or aims that are realistic as per his capability. 

• Engulf yourself with tons of patience: He is hyperactive and thus, you must engross yourself in a bit extra amount of patience. Keep yourself vented and charged enough to keep your calm when you deal with him. Never use harsh words or spanking out or cut off privileges out of frustration. This can turn off his entire effort and progress. Remain optimistic at all times.

• Sort a Hobby: Music has been found to be having a calming effect and so does painting. As each child is unique so is his talent. Help your child discover his passion and encourage him to indulge in it.

• Find out more about concentration tips and techniques and try to implement them.

• Do not be shy: Find support groups and take professional help as and when required. Schedule the medication and follow it religiously. Take help from friends and family as well.

• Keep in touch with the school authorities and teachers. With help of the teachers, you can sort things better. 

Above all, appreciate him and respect him. He is an individual like each one of us. Keep his moral up and help him build up his self-esteem. 

Talk to professional to find if he has any other disorder as Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) can mask other learning disorders too.

PracTutor 

12806 Townepark Way 

Louisville, KY 40243-2311 

http://www.practutor.com 

News Media Contact : press@practutor.com

How would Common Core Standards Affect Your First Graders Writing Skills?

As a parent you must have felt amazing when for the very first time your child scribbled something on paper. What is more amazing is how quickly children grow up. If your child entered first grade this year, you will see him/her not just write words but will be amazed at his/her capability to use daily vocabulary. 

The first graders will learn to organize entire sentences and form paragraphs too as per the Common Core Standards.

As per the standards for writing skills in English, the first graders need to learn formation of spellings and basic grammar. They will learn to express themselves through language. They will also learn to organize, reorganize, revise and edit their thoughts in writing with help and guidance from adults.

The Common Core Standards lay a clear guideline on what students should learn in which grade. They carry a detailed description on the Mathematics and English teaching. The Common Core Standards have been adopted by 45 states across entire United States.

My child has yet not mastered all that was taught in kindergarten

If your child is a bit weak and still needs more practice with alphabets or sounds, you need not be tensed or worried. Though the guidelines for the first graders do set the standards seemingly high, grade one is a progression to the kindergarten.

The year begins with scoring the alphabets and the sounds combined to create the words. He/she will be able to refresh a few words that are used on daily basis (we, me, he, now, etc) that were taught in the kindergarten as well. 

First grade is the final destination to master ABC fluently along with all the capital letters (uppercase) and small letters (lowercase). Thus, by the end of first grade your child will be able to capitalize names of people and hyphenate dates.

With the clear availability of what is expected from the child as a first grader you can get him/her more help and mentoring. You can even enroll at websites such as PracTutor and spend some quality time having fun with your child while he/she catches us.  

What more will my first grader learn to write?

Next he/she will learn to use conventional spelling for common spelling patterns and irregular words. It is believed that irregular words such as ‘nt for not’ or ‘gp for gap’ help children learn better and faster before they begin using sound words.

Once they gradually transit to use of conventional spelling for irregular spellings, you should be able to see him/her write clear and definitive words. If the child has trouble forming or grasping formation of spellings even after ample amount of practice he/she might be facing a leaning disability and might need help.

As per the common core standards a first grader must continue to use the phonemes (letter sounds) and you must not think of banishing them at all. He/she will also grasp use of frequently occurring affixes as a clue to the meaning of a word, identify root words (e.g. look) and their inflectional forms, sort words into categories to gain a sense of the concepts, define words by category and by one or more key attributes, identify real-life connections between words and their use, and distinguish verbs differing in manner and adjectives differing in intensity.

He/she will also learn to use sentence-level context as a clue to the meaning of a word or phrase.

The leap ahead - From words to grammatically correct sentences!

In grammar, he/she will learn to use 

• Common, proper, and possessive nouns
• Singular and plural nouns with verbs in sentences
• Personal, possessive, and indefinite pronouns (e.g. I, me, my)
• Verbs to convey a sense of past, present, and future
• Frequently occurring adjectives
• Frequently occurring conjunctions (e.g. and, but, or, so)
• Determiners (e.g., articles, demonstratives)
• Frequently occurring prepositions (e.g. during, beyond, toward)
• Declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory sentences

You can think of first grade as a ‘complex year’ as your first grader will learn to make compound as well as ‘complex sentences’. He/she will also get to know the use of proper punctuation marks as he/she learns about statements to questions to exclamations!

You can expect more joined sentences by the end of first grade as he/she masters his/her conjunctions with use of ‘but, so, because, etc.’ 

See him/her go from alphabet to sorting of separate single words in a series, all in just grade one!

PracTutor - The Personalized, Fun Way to Master Math and English

We crossed 15,000 active users this school year who use PracTutor to learn and practice Grade 1 to 8 core Curriculum standards for Math and English.

PracTutor

·         is an online Math and English learning and practice solution

·         designed to help students in Grades 1 to 8

·         master every concept of Common Core Curriculum

More than 15,000 students, teachers and parents are using PracTutor since the start of the current school year.

Each student is unique and we strive to make the PracTutor experience personal for each one of them.

We customize content for each student based on the student’s skills by taking a pre-test from past, current and higher grade and then provide detailed learning and practice. This helps the teacher identify the strength and weakness of students and focus on those to reach their full potential.

With infinite questions in Math generated from 4200+ unique question elements and 40, 000+ questions in English, PracTutor covers every standard of the core curriculum. Common core curriculum trained teachers have developed the content of PracTutor.

It connects students, teachers, parents and administrators on the same platform.

PracTutor was developed to ensure the student enjoys learning in an exciting and rewarding game based environment to make practice fun. Various Themes and PracCash (rewards) keep the student involved and motivated.

If students needs help at any point, they can learn through PracTutor’s videos available for each standard.  Each video is carefully chosen and is of a different pedagogy to suit the unique learning needs of every child.

A trial-free version of PracTutor gives you a chance experience PracTutor and join the network.

Join http://www.practutor.com as a parent, teacher or student today!

PracTutor

mike@practutor.com

12806 Townepark Way

Louisville, KY 40243-2311

(502) 400-9374

Practutor v1.2 - The Gen-Next Buzz Word in World of Blended Learning

Kentucky, October 29, 2013 A few good teaching and learning online tools deliver satisfactory results and the world of blended learning is yet evolving. One such blended learning tool that is being highly appreciated by teachers as well as students and parents is PracTutor.

PracTutor, the online tool for Math and English tutorials has been making waves among the teaching industry for a while now. It was initially launched in Jun2013 with the exclusive purpose of providing quality education to all who desire to learn with zest. PracTutor is serving the teaching industry with constant research and innovation.

With PracTutor’s latest verson 1.2, students and parents get additional benefit of watching educational videos and participate in certain practice tests even without registering onsite. However, the registration has an entire bouquet of benefits attached to it. This blended learning tool is super handy and now parents can even check and the grade of their kids as and when required.

An additional feature that teachers find handy is that they can upload the present record of students via various simple. Some simple and standard methods such as uploading a present excel sheet with student data makes task of teachers a cake walk for continues track of each students progress. Teachers appreciate that they can print the student roster and can even generate ‘parent permission letter’ with a few clicks.

Students have been demanding more application based questions and the latest PracTutor v1.2 fulfils that demand too.

The lessons and practice as well as tests of PracTutor have been carefully crafted after through research. PracTutor is a result of many experts, professionals working in educational institutes and child psychology connoisseurs and it is obvious from its present innovative form. 

A few more exciting aspects of the latest PracTutor v1.2 American teachers and tutors as well as students and parents is that each one of them can review the answers of the tests taken by the student. The repots of student/s can be printed in tabular format along with the original graphical format too.

Do check the new revamped sign up process at PracTutor.com and enjoy the trial version absolutely free!

To find out about the more emerging features such as iPhone/Galaxy app version of PracTutor, school administrator facilities, correlation of assessment with PARCC, SAT and ACT, etc, get in touch with Hardik Parikh, the Co-founder of PracTutor.com

You can read more of Hardik Parikh’s views on his blog at hardik.practutor.com

PracTutor

hardik@practutor.com

12806 Townepark Way

Louisville, KY 40243-2311

(502) 400-9374

How to enhance the student potential through online resources?

If we want each child to have the chance for sharing his full and equal part in citizenship and shaping his destiny himself, we can make it happen only through correct education. Of course, education is not limited to the knowledge gained at schools or colleges; still academic education has got high level of just significance in our society. It helps an individual in choosing a fulfilling job; shaping the society and enriching the inner life.

Almost everyone accepts the value of education and Governments of all the major countries treat education department in a respected approach. It gets all kind of support from funding to encouraging system reformations with changing needs. Still many challenges are being faced and lot many parents admit that educational cultivation of their child has become a challenging task for them.

According to a report [Problems Facing American Education, Focus on colleges, universities and schools Volume 2, number 2, 2008] prepared by Ashley Boyer and Burnette Wolf Hamil, PhD [Associate Professor at Mississippi State University] states that the following are the major challenges faced by the American education.

• Attrition Rate of Teachers
• Lack of Parental Involvement
• Reading Epidemic [Students don’t like or they don’t prefer to read at grade level]

Many intellectuals will consider that these challenges are not only limited to America. Many other countries face same or similar kind of issues that really need to be worked on. Highly qualified individuals and teams including educationists carry on continuous research work to sort such issues. Alternative education supplement options kind of products or services are also popular i.e. personal tuitions, online educational portals. Parents prefer to keep possible efforts so that their child can achieve desirable educational goals.
Our society is always in need of an additional system that develops interest for education among students. Sometimes; due to tender age, they don’t like to study more. What they need is personal care, special attention and structured practice. Structured Practice matters a lot because too much repetition leads to over confidence and loses of interest. Structured practice covers varieties of topics with easy explanations; questions – answers.
PracTutor was mainly launched as an initiative to help students, parents and teachers in handling such challenges and providing the best support during school days and holidays.  Attrition Rate of Teachers is something that is not in control of any individual or an organization. There are many factors affecting this issue. Apart from that, PracTutor is considered as an ideal solution by its users.
Following are the special features of Practutor:

• Structured Curriculum
• Personalize Learning
• Unlimited Math online practice
• Unlimited English online practice
• Unlimited Math and English offline practice
• Training Videos
• Detailed student analysis, Periodic progress report
• Game based environment
• 1-to-1 mentoring (Parents and Students)
• Platform to connect with teachers and school

As a result of quality focused approach, Practutor is one the fastest growing services in the USA that really makes difference in a career of a student. Parents, teachers and schools also can actively participate and monitor the performance of students. Please visit following links to explore more about the revolutionary concept and know how to utilize it for betterment.
http://www.practutor.com

Back to school – implementing common core

A lot has been said about Common Core Curriculum in the past 2-3 years.
How it helps the greater good -This article from NY times and NEA today-
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/22/opinion/blow-the-common-core-and-the-common-good.html?_r=0
http://neatoday.org/2013/05/10/six-ways-the-common-core-is-good-for-students/
how it is not worth it at all –this article from Washington post and Fox news- http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/eight-problems-with-common-core-standards/2012/08/21/821b300a-e4e7-11e1-8f62-58260e3940a0_blog.html
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/07/30/do-math-common-core-massive-risky-experiment-on-your-kids/
To Myths vs Facts - http://www.corestandards.org/resources/myths-vs-facts
What we know for fact is that

1. Common core is here to stay.
2. 45 states have adopted it and there was no federal say in it. 
3. It was all community driven – parents, teachers, community leaders, school administrators all worked on standards, pitched in and created them
4. It defines what is expected of each child of each state at each grade level

Now, when we keep debating if they are good or not, in my opinion we are arguing if our educators are any good or not. Not the government, the educators -Since these standards were created by them. And we can never be in a good shape if we question our educators and now show faith in them, so let’s support them and work on a path to ensure that the core standards are well implemented and help our kids and nation grow.
Now, coming to the second part – what needs to be done to implement core standards. So every educator including a company like ours has varied opinions on that. Let me present PracTutor’s opinion. We need to ensure 3 things while thinking of implementing any standard, any policy.

1. Is it going to be fun, easy and motivating for the kids (who actually will be doing all the work)
2. Is it going to be easy for the teachers to know what they need to do - across 45 states?
3. Is it going to be satisfactory for the parents who are apprehensive about all the changes?

So at PracTutor we did a lot of brainstorming bringing in educators, technologists, consultants, leaders, parents and of course kids. To ensure all the above 3 things are well implemented we did the following 3 things.

1. Made learning and practicing/testing fun with rewards, exciting environment
2. Made everything aligned to core standards with flexibility to make changes so the teachers are comfortable knowing what is expected of each standard and how can they bring in their creativity
3. Keep parents connected with students and teachers to know how the students are performing and what the teacher is implementing

This makes all 3 involved parties very content.
To ensure this works, we give it for FREE to most school districts/teachers so they are prepared when common core hits them.
This is our opinion, we may be wrong, but we are willing to do the hard work with the right people and ensure we make it right and I guess that is what the US education system needs right now.

How to enhance the student potential through online resources?

If we want each child to have the chance for sharing his full and equal part in citizenship and shaping his destiny himself, we can make it happen only through correct education. Of course, education is not limited to the knowledge gained at schools or colleges; still academic education has got high level of just significance in our society. It helps an individual in choosing a fulfilling job; shaping the society and enriching the inner life.

Almost everyone accepts the value of education and Governments of all the major countries treat education department in a respected approach. It gets all kind of support from funding to encouraging system reformations with changing needs. Still many challenges are being faced and lot many parents admit that educational cultivation of their child has become a challenging task for them.

According to a report [Problems Facing American Education, Focus on colleges, universities and schools Volume 2, number 2, 2008] prepared by Ashley Boyer and Burnette Wolf Hamil, PhD [Associate Professor at Mississippi State University] states that the following are the major challenges faced by the American education.

• Attrition Rate of Teachers
• Lack of Parental Involvement
• Reading Epidemic [Students don’t like or they don’t prefer to read at grade level]

Many intellectuals will consider that these challenges are not only limited to America. Many other countries face same or similar kind of issues that really need to be worked on. Highly qualified individuals and teams including educationists carry on continuous research work to sort such issues. Alternative education supplement options kind of products or services are also popular i.e. personal tuitions, online educational portals. Parents prefer to keep possible efforts so that their child can achieve desirable educational goals.

 Our society is always in need of an additional system that develops interest for education among students. Sometimes; due to tender age, they don’t like to study more. What they need is personal care, special attention and structured practice. Structured Practice matters a lot because too much repetition leads to over confidence and loses of interest. Structured practice covers varieties of topics with easy explanations; questions – answers.

PracTutor was mainly launched as an initiative to help students, parents and teachers in handling such challenges and providing the best support during school days and holidays.  Attrition Rate of Teachers is something that is not in control of any individual or an organization. There are many factors affecting this issue. Apart from that, PracTutor is considered as an ideal solution by its users.

Following are the special features of Practutor:

• Structured Curriculum
• Personalize Learning
• Unlimited Math online practice
• Unlimited English online practice
• Unlimited Math and English offline practice
• Training Videos
• Detailed student analysis, Periodic progress report
• Game based environment
• 1-to-1 mentoring (Parents and Students)
• Platform to connect with teachers and school

As a result of quality focused approach, Practutor is one the fastest growing services in the USA that really makes difference in a career of a student. Parents, teachers and schools also can actively participate and monitor the performance of students. Please visit following links to explore more about the revolutionary concept and know how to utilize it for betterment.

http://www.practutor.com