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How can I help my struggling reader? How can I get my child to love reading? These are questions that are asked over and over by caring parents that want to help their students to become successful readers.

Reading for at least 20 minutes a night is the standard advice, and it’s a good habit for students to develop. But what if they read out of duty or grudgingly? Love and Logic has a simple suggestion below that still applies in 4th grade and beyond:

After a difficult and frustrating day at work, don’t you wish your spouse would greet you with the following?

Honey, I got an email from your boss. She says that you haven’t been working up to your potential. She also mentioned that your reading is really poor and that you’ve had a bad attitude about completing your projects. That’s why we are going to sit down together and work on some practice samples. Now…I’m only doing this because I love you.

My guess is that few readers would vote for this treatment as an effective way of promoting deeper marital intimacy and improved work performance!

Far too many children struggle all day long with reading…and other subjects. Then they face even more frustration when they get home. When this happens, their reading performance rarely increases, but their disdain for books does!

May I suggest another approach? What if this strategy saved your relationship with your child AND helped him or her develop a much better vocabulary, understanding of language structure, and attitude toward reading?

Read to them, and have fun doing it. Do this even if they’re in high school! Do it as often as possible. Don’t stand over them and force them to read. Don’t nitpick their reading performance. Just enjoy your time together as you read…to them. Take the pressure off!

Read the rest here.

Originally posted 2014-03-15 12:35:27. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

If homework is not automatic in your home, if it causes some battles, if you know there’s “got to be a better way,” consider Daily Homework Time. Your student will usually have only two kinds of homework: (1) stuff from class they didn’t finish, and (2) stuff they should work on at home to get better and smarter.

The second thing is called Daily Homework Time. The basic idea is for you set aside about 30-50 minutes Monday through Thursday for your student to get smarter; 30 minutes for 3rd graders, 40 minutes for 4th graders, or 50 minutes for 5th graders. Each night, they should practice some math, do some writing, and finish class homework. Other things might be to work on cursive, practice math facts, or work on spelling. There’s no such thing as, “I have no homework,” because there is always something to get better at, such as math practice or writing.

Your student probably won’t do this on their own. But with your guidance, you can help your student get into good habits of doing something every day to improve themselves (not to mention their grades).

Originally posted 2016-09-20 17:36:37. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Love and Logic tells the interesting story of a child that saved up money received from his grandma. His parents helped him use the value of a dollar to learn the value of good behavior:

Money wasn’t the only thing he saved. He also stored up lots of energy for when Mom and Dad went out. In fact, so much energy that he wore out every babysitter in town.

Mom finally convinced a sitter to work with her to help Junior realize the error of his ways. The deal: If he was good, Mom and Dad would pay for the sitter. If he wasn’t, he paid. This got his attention.

And I bet you can imagine how the next babysitting session went!

Love and Logic suggests using natural consequences like this to teach responsibility. You might be able to find several places you could use this in your family:

• Parents pay for good dentist visits, and children pay for the bad ones if their cavities are caused by not being responsible to brush their teeth.
• Parents pay students to complete some chores (Dave Ramsey says to call this a commission, not an allowance). What if they don’t do the chores? They don’t get paid. Maybe they even pay their parent or sibling to do the chore that they were supposed to do.

What about paying for grades? People disagree about if parents should do this, with some saying paying for grades is like adults getting paid for work. That’s close, but adults are paid for hours worked, not usually on the results of a certain product. So you probably shouldn’t pay for grades.

But if you’ve already started or committed to paying for grades, research shows that if you stop, your student will likely not work as hard for their grades. So you might need to continue for a while, and if you do, this Love and Logic tip might apply. Parents pay for the good grades, and students pay for the bad ones, especially if you have evidence (missing assignments, students not doing their daily homework time, arguments) that they didn’t try their hardest.

Again, paying for grades should not be your top way to motivate your student. If you don’t pay for grades, don’t start now. But if you do, try the tip from this article. And certainly with other areas of your student’s responsibility, look for ways that a student’s greedy little heart for cash can teach them that their actions have consequences.

Originally posted 2016-10-03 06:18:15. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Originally posted 2017-08-28 07:40:18. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Originally posted 2018-11-29 16:30:47. Republished by Blog Post Promoter