Category: Education

Writing a book report need not be difficult. However, kids do dread it because it seems like an overwhelming task. If that is the case with your kids, let them know the first step in the process can actually be fun. They simply need to book they will enjoy.  From there, here is how you can help them with their book reports.

Read the Book and Take Notes

A good place to start would be the book itself. Reading the source material will help you understand the key points that the book is trying to make. It will also allow you to capture the main ideas that the writer is trying to convey. Unless you read the book, you might miss out on the many details hidden between the lines. And without these details, the book report may feel incomplete.

Kids are often oblivious to these minor details, and they have a higher chance of running past them while reading the book. Hence, it is your responsibility to take notes of such details, and then help your kids realize their importance.

For taking notes, you should follow a chapter-by-chapter approach. Maintain a separate set of notes for any characters mentioned in the story. Word meanings are important as well if you are doing a report on a book of poems.

Along with those, you might also want to make notes on the various similes, metaphors, and analogies mentioned in the poem or story. This will make it less difficult for kids to make sense of these things.

Go Through Existing Reports and Summaries

While reading the book is the ultimate approach to writing a book summary or report, it is likely to feel monotonous at one point. Plus, after a certain time, you might start missing out on certain details within the book that are crucial to the plot. In such cases, it is always a wise decision to go through existing book summaries and reports before you help your kids write theirs.

Of course, you will need some expert opinion regarding the matter, which is why you should look for reports and summaries on trusted websites and platforms only. SweetStudy’s new book summaries section is the ideal place to look for this purpose. Each book listed in this particular section of the website has a critical review of itself written by literature experts.

The books also contain helpful notes. These notes are available for each chapter of the book. The chapter-wise notes make sure that you do not miss a single key detail that is vital to the plot, or any sort of character development.

While going through the existing reports and summaries, you should make notes of your own. These notes, paired with the knowledge you gathered by reading the books, will be more than enough to start working on the book report.

Help Your Kids Realize the Main Ideas of the Book

You have everything you need to help your kid with their book report. However, it is not enough, at least not yet. Your understanding of the book, its plot, characters, and the way it progresses will not be the same as your child’s.

Thus, it is important that you help them realize the main ideas of the book, as well as the key takeaways from the notes you took. Here, you are to incorporate your findings from the book, and the chapter-by-chapter notes you got from SweetStudy, or whatever book summary repository you used.

Once you have everything ready, you start helping your kids with difficult words or phrases and help them understand how analogies and similes work (if they are necessary for the book report).

To help them realize the main ideas of the book, you must first ask them what they think is happening, what the takeaway is, what is the writer/characters trying to say, what the emotion is for a certain scene, and so on. Afterward, you tell them whether they are right or wrong and if wrong, inform them why.

Start Writing

A typical book report has three parts:

1. Introduction.
2. The main body.
3. Conclusion.

Ask your kids to make subsections in the main body. For instance, the subsections can be something like characters, key plot points, plot twists, etc. Subsections can also talk about noteworthy scenes in general, like for instance Hamlet encountering his father’s ghost for the first time in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

The conclusion can be a personal note from your kid on what impact the story or book has in literature or their personal lives.

And with that, your kid will have a perfect book report if not the best in their class.

Additional Writing Resources

• Writing an Argumentative Essay: A Middle School Guide to Writing
• A Guide to Introducing Cursive Writing to your Kids

Kindergarten students are eager to learn! Many people think that kindergartners don’t know much, but the truth is that they have a lot of knowledge already! After all, within the first five years kids are sponges for information. This rapid development continues into kindergarten.

Therefore, it’s vitally important that students are taught six different subjects.

These subjects are:

1.  Reading

Reading is the most important subject you should teach your kindergarten students because it is the foundation of everything. If a student doesn’t have good reading skills, they will have a hard time in their future classes. Reading involves knowing how to read, sounding out words, spelling words, and using good grammar when speaking or writing.

2.  Writing

Writing is another very important subject for your kindergarten students because they need to know how to communicate in writing! Even though learning how to write might seem difficult for some kids at first, it’s really easy after you spend some time practicing! Kids can learn how to write by forming letters correctly (both uppercase and lowercase), starting sentences with capital letters, forming full words instead of just a letter, and writing words they know.

3.  Math

Math is the study of numbers and operations. The most important math skills for kindergartners are counting, identifying shapes, sorting objects by attributes (such as color or shape), comparing numbers to ten, drawing given number patterns, and recognizing quantity relationships. For example: during your child’s first year in school, they should be able to learn how to count from 1-10 to show their understanding of quantity relationships.

4.  Science

Science is one of the most interesting subjects because there are so many cool things to discover! Some science topics that kindergarten students might be interested in learning about are animals, weather, space/planets, how light works, and anatomy for kids. The best way to teach your students about science is by taking them outside to explore nature or visiting a museum where they can learn more about science in a fun way!

5.  Social Studies

Social studies is a combination of history, geography, economics, sociology, and civics/government. It teaches children about different cultures throughout time and around the world. To make social studies more interesting for students, it would be helpful to create games that involve learning new vocabulary words for each unit you teach your class.

Again, art is also a fun subject to teach your students! There are plenty of avenues an artist can take, but some examples include drawing, painting, sculpting with clay or Play-Doh™, making music using instruments, and dancing! Just like science, the best way to teach your students about art is to teach them about colors.  Taking them outside to be creative or visiting an art museum where they can learn more about art in a fun way!

6.  Health and Physical Education

Health and physical education is a very important subject for students because it helps them stay fit and healthy! During kindergarten, students should be taught the names of different parts of their body (such as eyes, nose, mouth, etc.) and keep their bodies healthy by washing their hands before they eat and after they go to the bathroom. Also, kids need to know that it’s okay to say “no” when someone asks them to do something harmful for them, such as smoking cigarettes or doing drugs. By teaching these six subjects in your kindergarten classroom, you can prepare your students for future success in school.

Also, health and safety go hand-in-hand because, without health, we cannot have safety! In kindergarten, students should learn all about staying healthy and happy. This means learning how to wash their hands, brush their teeth, be active throughout the day, eat nutritious food, sleep well, not get sick easily by taking care of themselves. Health is our most important asset, so it’s important to take care of ourselves!

Conclusion

In conclusion, teaching kindergarten students is an important job! These six subjects will help your students learn, prepare for future grades and build good study habits. Remember, learning resources aren’t just found in books or online – whether it’s a field trip to the library or a science experiment during science time – exciting hands-on experiences will keep students engaged and eager to learn! Thanks for reading, and be sure to share this article with other school teachers you know!

Coding for kids is never an easy undertaking. Aside from getting our kid’s full attention, we have to overcome communication barriers and teach complex lines of codes in the simplest way possible. We need to think outside the box so that we can get our kids excited about coding.

That being said, we have listed a few tips on how you can teach your kids how to code without all the tech jargons.

Make them interested

One of the most common mistakes that educators and parents often make is that they immediately jump to teaching the basics and fundamentals. While these information are crucial when it comes to learning how to code, it does not give our kids enough room to process and absorb all the information that they are receiving.

Remember that learning is an academic, social, and emotional undertaking. Studies have shown that kids are more inclined to learn more about the subject if they are interested. With that in mind, you need to make them interested in coding first. This way, they would not only learn how to code, but they would also learn to love the subject and even the learning process.

Teach the Basics Differently

You can do away with the tech jargon if you are just teaching them the basics and fundamentals of coding. If your kids are just starting in their learning journey, then you can simply find alternative ways to teach them the basics and make them excited to learn more about coding.

Many coding for kids programs and courses have already cracked the secret to teaching kids how to code. Nowadays, teaching is no longer confined to the traditional approach like reading from a textbook or printing outputs like “Hello, World!”

There are now several coding apps, games, video explainers, computer programs, software, toys, and other educational materials that you can use to teach your kids.

Block-based coding

Once your kids finish learning all the basics and fundamentals of coding, it is time to start developing their critical and computational thinking. You can do this by simply utilizing programs like Scratch or Blockly.

These blocked-based programs are the most effective and convenient way to teach your kids how coding works. Rather than having them memorize lines of codes or understand complex syntax, you can just use programs like Scratch or Blockly.

To give you an overview of block-based programming, Scratch or Blockly lets you drag-and-drop lines of commands without having to type or memorize the codes. Your kids can create their own games or apps in these programs even though they do not know any single line of code.

Therefore, your kid can easily learn syntax and conditionals without you detailing or explaining tech jargon like assignment operators, loops, functions, if statements, and so on.

Physical and relatable concepts

No matter how long you put off or avoid using tech jargon, there will still come a time when you have to explain these complex matters to your kids.

And when that time comes, you can still be an effective teacher.

This video explainer from the University of South California’s website is the perfect illustration of teaching complex concepts with relatable examples. Rather than simply read off of a textbook and discuss branching, variable review, or python syntax basics, they instead use relatable examples like text messaging, lunch menus, and food groups.

Even though they tackled coding concepts and other complex subjects, they still managed to convey the information in a much simpler and easy-to-understand form. By doing this, your kid would be able to start learning a more specific and complex coding language in no time.

Fun Projects

Learning how to code is a continuous undertaking and has many benefits outside life of coding. Keep in mind that learning does not stop at the end of every lecture or session. Kids should be able to use and apply the information they learned.

One study even found that students prefer active learning over the traditional learning approach when it comes to programming. That said, kids learn better when the approach is more engaging and interesting. And what better way to do this than through fun projects.

These fun projects can be anything. You can assign them projects like making simple cartoon animations, Roblox games, Minecraft mods, and so on. The key thing to remember when assigning projects is to consider their existing interests as well. If your kids love playing Minecraft, then their next project can be about Minecraft mod or shaders.

Think of a project that would not only help them learn but would also pander to their interests.

Build on Success

Part of the learning journey is failure. It’s one of the biggest obstacles to learn coding for kids.  It is also one of the reasons why kids often lose interest or quit halfway in their learning journey.

So to overcome this hurdle, you should celebrate their achievement and find ways to extend that achievement even further. For example, if your kid finally learned how to use programming tools like Scratch, then you can share their finished project online for their friends to see. Doing this would boost their confidence and push them to learn more complicated projects in the future.

Just Have Fun with Them

Even though coding is a complicated subject to teach, you can make learning the coding process even more bearable for your kids. Inspire your kids to learn more through play.

Given that the learning process can be long and tedious, you should find ways to make the learning journey a lot more fun and exciting.

This way, your kids would be able to understand all the tech and coding jargons in no time.

Enhancing the development of computational thinking is an essential mental process for all children in today’s information and knowledge society. Mainly because mastering it will allow them to adequately face their future work and, above all, it will give them the ability to be decisive in the day to day and in any area of their lives.

Moreover, it is a fundamental resource for any child, since the development of this type of thinking reduces the digital divide, helps their integration into today’s society and facilitates the acquisition of many important transversal skills. These include critical thinking, adaptability, information management in different environments – such as interactive – and, of course, mastery of digital technologies themselves.

Therefore, although its development implies the approach of complex concepts, it also involves competencies that we use and develop in multiple areas of our daily lives. This approach simplifies its teaching, by giving examples that are simple and familiar to children.

In this article we are going to analyze some resources that facilitate the teaching and understanding of computational thinking, but first we need to understand what exactly this concept consists of.

What is Computational Thinking?

There are multiple definitions, but they all agree that its main objective is to solve problems. This is reflected, for example, in the description of computational thinking by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA).

For these bodies, computational thinking is a problem-solving process that includes at least the following characteristics:

• Formulation of problems in such a way that it is possible to use a computer and other machines to solve them.
• Logical organization and data analysis.
• Representation of data through abstractions such as models and simulations.
• Automation of solutions through algorithmic thinking – understood as a series of discrete and ordered steps -.
• Identification, analysis and implementation of possible solutions, with the objective of achieving the most effective and efficient combination of steps and resources.
• Generalization and transfer of the problem-solving process to a wide variety of situations.

This definition allows us to understand the different elements that make up computational thinking. But it is also important to understand that this type of thinking is not only used to solve problems with computational means, but can also be used to solve other problems in very different fields.

Just like a child may be learning how to code for the purposes of education, there are so many other benefits of coding.

In short, computational thinking allows children to learn to solve everyday problems by analyzing them, breaking down the process of solving them into small tasks, identifying patterns, following algorithms and detecting errors in order to fix them.

In what activities in our daily lives do we use computational thinking?

Computational thinking is based on reasoning to understand problems and seek the most efficient solutions. Therefore, it is essential that the exercises focused on developing this skill are based on interaction with students, and that they are invited to continuously reflect on the concepts they learn. And one of the best ways to achieve this is to use games and other resources that encourage their participation.

As computational thinking involves the development of several and very diverse skills, you can use these games and exercises to learn each of them.

Examples of Computational Thinking

• Logical thinking: Sudokus are an excellent resource to develop it.
• Decomposition: both the analysis and the description of dance choreographies allow children to analyze the parts of a whole, to define and structure them.
• Patterns: series of numbers are a classic resource that helps students identify the patterns on which their construction is based.
• Abstraction: the game “Guess what” allows children to recognize and abstract the essential elements of an object or entity.
• Algorithms: with a simple game in which the student is invited to describe an activity such as, for example, getting dressed or going to class, it is easier for children to understand what an algorithm consists of.

These are just a few examples, but the possibilities are endless. In addition, many of these options are available through computer resources, a good way to develop computational thinking.

How Critical Thinking Relates

Critical thinking is closely related to the logical aspects of computational thinking.  However, critical thinking allows for less strict process of the evaluation of conditions.   Critical thinking identifies positives and deficiencies to come to a conclusion with limit data.  The process includes debating and judging the parameters or state of a situation.

Examples of critical thinking are the grading of a subjective essay and determining whether to believe something or not.

Resources

In this resource on computational thinking, created by ProFuturo, you will find not only simple to understand definitions -mainly for 8-10 year olds, but also for older children-, but you will also have access to fun and easy to follow exercises and dynamics. These will help students to understand in depth and reinforce their learning of concepts such as decomposition, patterns, algorithms, error detection or bugs.

In short, computational thinking is a key mental process that can be taught in a simple way to all children from a very early age, also favoring the reduction of the digital divide. The best way to explain it is by applying computational thinking strategies that make children use logical reasoning and reflection to understand the concepts in depth.