Smart Math Strategies Tricks

Thinkstock

Mathematics is often used as an indicator of intelligence. If the value is higher then the math is also high intelligence. This assumption is often made parents worry and complain if his poor math scores. Now parents do not have to worry anymore, because recent studies have found that children clever tricks in mathematics.

Recent studies say that in order to enhance the child's ability in mathematics could only with high motivation and learning strategies of good.

Kou Murayama is the lead researcher from the University of California, Los Angeles said, "The major determinants of growth achievement math skills not on how smart your child but how motivated they are and how they learn. Fact of motivation in the child encourages achievement growth in math skills long term "


Researchers claim to not be surprised if your child math is often overwhelmed by the course consists of symbols and rules that are difficult conceptualized. "The strategy to study mathematics different from other subjects, mathematics because it contains language that is totally different from the usual facing children in their daily lives," said Murayama.

The symbols and rules that exist in a difficult mathematics conceptualized by children often make children become overwhelmed and bored.

The research was carried out in Germany for 6 years with a number of subjects 3,500 students grade 5-10. Level of intelligence, level of motivation, and learning strategies to be the focus of research participants to predict the increase mathematical skills of participants from time to time.

Participants also underwent a test to determine how much learning math achievement at the end of the school year.

From there, researchers found that children's intelligence level affects only increased her math skills in the early years of the study only, while from time to time, two other things, motivation and learning strategies reported to be more important and necessary for successful child learn math.

"The learning ability of the child involving factors indicating that education can be pursued. One way to find a way so that children are motivated and teach them some skills that can help advance the learning of their abilities in math or other subjects," said Murayama.

View Tutorial

Study: More Outdoor Time for Kids Wards off Nearsightedness

University of Cambridge researchers presented evidence drawn from their analysis of carefully selected recent eye health studies suggesting more outdoor time for children and adolescents could reduce their chances of developing nearsightedness, or myopia.

Myopia has grown more common worldwide since the 1970s, Anthony Khawaja of the University of Cambridge noted at the 115th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology -- over 80 percent are nearsighted in some Asian countries -- but Khawaja's and lead researcher Justin Sherwin's analysis of eight studies on outdoor time and myopia, representing a total of 10,400 children and adolescents participating, provided evidence that the amounts of time spent in natural light and gazing towards distant objects, could be keys to reducing nearsightedness in kids, ScienceDaily reported.
The research team found that each extra outdoor hour spent per week reduced the chances of developing myopia about two percent, and they also found that nearsighted children spent less time outdoors, almost four hours fewer on the average, than those with farsightedness or normal vision.
Simply being outdoors appeared to protect eyesight, regardless of specific activities, according to the team, whose study was not designed to identify underlying causes for this relationship.
Two of the analyzed studies also focused on the amount of time spent on "near work" -- studying or playing computer games, for examples -- and found no relationship between such tasks and nearsightedness.
Khawaja concluded,

 "Increasing children's outdoor time could be a simple and cost-effective measure with important benefits for their vision and general health. If we want to make clear recommendations, however, we'll need more precise data. Future, prospective studies will help us understand which factors, such as increased use of distance vision, reduced use of near vision, natural ultra violet light exposure or physical activity, are most important."
Khawaja has also begun researching whether increased outdoor time might stop the progression of nearsightedness, citing in his presentation a separate Chinese study of 80 nearsighted children, half assigned to less near work and more outdoor time; after two years those researchers found children in the outdoor group were less nearsighted than the 40 in the control group children who had followed no particular schedule.
In August 2008 the Sidney Myopia Study of 4,000 children found high levels of near work and low levels of outdoor activity were strongly associated with myopia, ScienceDaily reported

Full Read: www.digitaljournal.com

View Tutorial

Psychology Internship Program Reaccredited

Psychology internship program, which offers three advanced placement to graduates each year University Health Services Center, Counseling and mental health is reaccredited through the American Psychological Association in 2018, according to a press release.

Accreditation ensures that every program meets the standards of the APA, and trains apprentices and trainees in the field. During the program, students are required to provide short-term treatment for individuals, couples, groups and families, as well as providing crisis intervention, according to the press.

For accreditation, the program has been self-assessment and peer reviews on the site.

The seven-year accreditation is given to the University of Massachusetts is the longest period offered by the APA, the statement said. The program has been accredited since 1979.

Source: dailycollegian.com

View Tutorial

Why Students Difficult to Expressing Opinions?

One day, teacher explaining some actual problems in front of the class. Once completed, he said, "Well, now what do you think about this problem?" Five minutes went by and no students who provide opinion or responses.

Most teachers will confusion face this situation. Are all students don't pay attention or they can't be answered. In educational psychology, especially in teaching strategies, there are times when students are experiencing difficulty in using expressive language skills.

Expressive language related to how one could express the ideas through communication with others. Not a few who have difficulty in responding to or expressing opinions to others.

According to Boyles and Contadino, students who have difficulty in expressing an opinion can be due to several factors, such as:

    * Shy, withdrawn, and had problems in social interaction
    * Delaying the answer
    * Mesulitan cultivate the right words
    * Thought is complicated and not well understood makes it difficult
    * Skipping some understanding of a given teacher (someone else)

Teaching strategies that can be used to overcome this is explained by John W. Santrok in his book Educational Psychology, namely:

    * Give children the opportunity to respond in sufficient time
    * Children may find difficult to express opinions orally, so, we can overcome by having them write it down on paper
    * Give children word clue or help for the child more easily in processing proper diction
    * Give children the opportunity to know the questions to be asked for to prepare themselves for the answer

View Tutorial

Attention Issues and School: A Mom's View

By: Christina Wood
newsletter@lm.kaboose.com

My son is not hyperactive. He's very calm. He's curious, bright, and a lot of fun to be around. So I was startled (okay, angry) when his kindergarten teacher called me in for a conference and made it clear that she thought there was something wrong with him. "He has trouble staying on task. He never pays attention," she said.

Then I heard the words "pediatrician" and "evaluated for attention issues," looked at the list of behavior problems she was handing me and saw red. The list included things like "humming" and "twitchy." I had liked his teacher up to that point. And I knew Cole was willful, but I didn't accept that he would fall behind in school, or the implication that he had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD.) "He needs more of a challenge," I told her. I refused to have him evaluated by a pediatrician, who I assumed would give him a pill so he could drone through a stifling setting.

I tried to ignore the whole thing. Cole turned on the charm with his teachers and got through kindergarten that way.

The same thing happened in first grade. He learned to read just fine. He quickly got very good at math. He kept up with—in fact was mostly ahead of—the rest of the class. But he didn't finish work and rarely appeared to be paying attention. If he's keeping up, I wanted to know, what's the big deal?

"It's a big deal because his self-image could be seriously damaged by the way the world reacts to him," explains Patricia Quinn, a developmental pediatrician in the Washington, D.C. area and the author of many books on ADHD including Putting on the Brakes: Young People's Guide to Understanding Attention Deficit
Hyperactivity Disorder. "I once evaluated a three-year old with ADHD who was also very bright," she continues. "The first thing he told me was that he was bad. 'Dr. Quinn,' he said. 'When people yell at you all day long, you must be bad.'"

By the middle of first grade, I knew this all too well. Cole's teacher and I had tried everything from reward systems to punishments to get him to finish his work. He would do it long enough to demonstrate that he could but it was not consistent. As a result, he was always in trouble.

One day, I went to school to visit him at "Fun Day" and found him in the classroom refusing to complete a test. I looked at it. It should have been easy for him. I decided right then that this couldn't go on. So I asked him if he wanted to finish the test and go to fun day or come home with me. "I have to get 100 percent to go to fun day," he told me, miserable. "Just finish it," I said. "If you don't get 100 percent, we'll go to the playground." He perked up, answered all the questions as quickly as he could, got 100 percent, and went to fun day. But I'd made up my mind; he was being treated like a bad kid. Whether it was because he was bright and bored or had ADHD wasn't the point. It had to stop. But how?

"School is the least ADHD friendly place in the world," agrees Quinn. "But it is what we have." She explained that there are myriad ways to cope depending on the child, the diagnosis, the parent's situation, and the school system. What's the same in every case where a child is being called out as a problem is that you must deal with it—the sooner the better.

"You have a window between when they are about five to 10 or 11 years old to treat this before it starts to affect their self esteem in some permanent ways," cautions Janet Z. Giler, Ph.D., a California family therapist, educator, and author of an Attention Deficit Disorder website (www.ld-add.com) established to help parents recognize and manage ADHD and learning disabilities in children.

I called the therapist who'd been recommended to me the year before. I was now thinking in terms of finding strategies for dealing with the education system rather than avoiding a diagnosis for ADHD. But I wish I'd gotten to that point a year earlier.

"Teachers have a pretty good frame of reference when it comes to identifying behaviors and symptoms since they see a lot of children from year to year," says Quinn. But these behaviors can have a lot of different explanations other than ADHD. "Child abuse can look like ADHD," offers Giler, "Depression can look like it. A child who hasn't been socialized before getting to school may be withdrawn or distractible. Children who are very bright and bored can look like they have attention problems."

And taking a pill is not the only solution. "Medication is too easy an answer," says Quinn. "This is about self-knowledge. If you know yourself well enough to know that you can't focus on boring tasks, you make sure you don't choose a career that requires you to focus on boring tasks. It is the same with a child." I was starting to see how these same factors had shaped my own life. Maybe I was the right person to help him deal with this.

I don't yet know the right answer but I know the wrong one—ignoring it. Maybe the solution is to give him a motive for completing those boring tasks—a reward system of some kind that is the same at home and at school. More likely a different type of classroom is the answer for him. I'm considering private schools, an inquiry-based charter school, a magnet school for math and science, and home schooling. We may end up trying all of these options and more between now and college.

"It sounds like you are on the right track," Quinn assures me. "At least you aren't in denial anymore."

Eventually this can be a good thing, she counsels. "If [your son] wants to be a CEO, a lot of these traits will be very useful. And then he can hire people to do all the boring things that need to get done."

But between now and then he has to get an education and continue to believe, as I do, that's he's not a bad kid. Quinn helped me to see that I have a lot of experience with this and that Cole probably comes to his "attention problems" through genetics. (There isn't one of us on either side of the family that would choose to be an accountant. We are a creative bunch and we lose our car keys frequently. But that also means we have a lot of knowledge of what worked for us--and what didn't--to draw from.)

Whatever the doctor we visit calls Cole's "problem" no longer matters to me—except that it might be a useful tool—because I no longer see it as a problem. I see it as a challenge and, like Cole, I like things to be challenging rather than boring. So even if he isn't a good fit for the school system, he's a great fit for this family. I just have to make sure he knows that.

View Tutorial

The Role of Teachers in the Assessment of Children Suspected of Having AD/HD

Gill Salmon and Amanda Kirby

Correspondence to Gill Salmon
Trehafod Child and Family Clinic
Waunarlwydd Road
Cockett
Swansea SA2 0GB
Email: salmogm@doctors.org.uk

ABSTRACT

In the light of recent guidance published by The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) on the diagnosis and management of attention deficit disorders in children, young persons and adults, Gill Salmon, a consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist based in Swansea, South Wales, and Amanda Kirby, Professor of Developmental Disorders in Education based at the University of Wales, Newport, give an overview of the rationale for involving teachers in the assessment of children with AD/HD and the development and implementation of subsequent educational interventions. They also review the resulting training implications; explore some of the obstacles to multi-agency, multi-disciplinary working; and examine how current special educational needs policy goes hand-in-hand with the tiered approach to provision of child and adolescent mental health services in offering a graduated response to these children.

KEYWORDS
attention deficit disorders • teachers • assessment • intervention

Source: www3.interscience.wiley.com

View Tutorial

How to Become a More Effective Learner Tips from Psychology to Improve Learning Effectiveness & Efficiency

By Kendra Cherry

I'm always interested in finding new ways to learn better and faster. As a graduate student who is also a full-time science writer, the amount of time I have to spend learning new things is limited. It's important to get the most educational value out of my time as possible. However, retention, recall and transfer are also critical. I need to be able to accurately remember the information I learn, recall it at a later time and utilize it effectively in a wide variety of situations.

1. Memory Improvement Basics
I've written before about some of the best ways to improve memory. Basic tips such as improving focus, avoiding cram sessions and structuring your study time are a good place to start, but there are even more lessons from psychology that can dramatically improve your learning efficiency.

2. Keep Learning (and Practicing) New Things


"Learning is good for your brain. "Learning and practicing new skills helps your brain retain new information. Image by Mysid.

One sure-fire way to become a more effective learner is to simply keep learning. A 2004 Nature article reported that people who learned how to juggle increased the amount of gray matter in their occipital lobes, the area of the brain is associated with visual memory.1 When these individuals stopped practicing their new skill, this gray matter vanished.

So if you're learning a new language, it is important to keep practicing the language in order to maintain the gains you have achieved. This "use-it-or-lose-it" phenomenon involves a brain process known as "pruning." Certain pathways in the brain are maintained, while other are eliminated. If you want the new information you just learned to stay put, keep practicing and rehearsing it.

3. Learn in Multiple Ways
Focus on learning in more than one way. Instead of just listening to a podcast, which involves auditory learning, find a way to rehearse the information both verbally and visually. This might involve describing what you learned to a friend, taking notes or drawing a mind map. By learning in more than one way, you’re further cementing the knowledge in your mind. According to Judy Willis, “The more regions of the brain that store data about a subject, the more interconnection there is. This redundancy means students will have more opportunities to pull up all of those related bits of data from their multiple storage areas in response to a single cue. This cross-referencing of data means we have learned, rather than just memorized.”2

4. Teach What You've Learned to Another Person
Educators have long noted that one of the best ways to learn something is to teach it to someone else. Remember your seventh-grade presentation on Costa Rica? By teaching to the rest of the class, your teacher hoped you would gain even more from the assignment. You can apply the same principle today by sharing your newly learned skills and knowledge with others.

Start by translating the information into your own words. This process alone helps solidify new knowledge in your brain. Next, find some way to share what you’ve learned. Some ideas include writing a blog post, creating a podcast or participating in a group discussion.

5. Utilize Previous Learning to Promote New Learning
Another great way to become a more effective learner is to use relational learning, which involves relating new information to things that you already know. For example, if you are learning about Romeo and Juliet, you might associate what you learn about the play with prior knowledge you have about Shakespeare, the historical period in which the author lived and other relevant information.

6. Gain Practical Experience
For many of us, learning typically involves reading textbooks, attending lectures or doing research in the library or on the Web. While seeing information and then writing it down is important, actually putting new knowledge and skills into practice can be one of the best ways to improve learning. If you are trying to acquire a new skill or ability, focus on gaining practical experience. If it is a sport or athletic skill, perform the activity on a regular basis. If you are learning a new language, practice speaking with another person and surround yourself with immersive experiences.

7. Look Up Answers Rather Than Struggle to Remember
Of course, learning isn’t a perfect process. Sometimes, we forget the details of things that we have already learned. If you find yourself struggling to recall some tidbit of information, research suggests that you are better offer simply looking up the correct answer. One study found that the longer you spend trying to remember the answer, the more likely you will be to forget the answer again in the future. Why? Because these attempts to recall previously learned information actually results in learning the "error state" instead of the correct response.

8. Understand How You Learn Best
Another great strategy for improving your learning efficiency is to recognize your learning habits and styles. There are a number of different theories about learning styles, which can all help you gain a better understanding of how you learn best. Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences describes eight different types of intelligence that can help reveal your individual strengths. Looking at Carl Jung’s learning style dimensions can also help you better see which learning strategies might work best for you.

9. Use Testing to Boost Learning
While it may seem that spending more time studying is one of the best ways to maximize learning, research has demonstrated that taking tests actually helps you better remember what you've learned, even if it wasn't covered on the test.3 The study revealed that students who studied and were then tested had better long-term recall of the materials, even on information that was not covered by the tests. Students who had extra time to study but were not tested had significantly lower recall of the materials.

10. Stop Multitasking
For many years, it was thought that people who multitask, or perform more than one activity at once, had an edge over those who did not. However, research now suggests that multitasking can actually make learning less effective. In the study, participants lost significant amounts of time as they switched between multiple tasks and lost even more time as the tasks became increasingly complex.4 By switching from one activity to another, you will learn more slowly, become less efficient and make more errors. How can you avoid the dangers of multitasking? Start by focusing your attention on the task at hand and continue working for a predetermined amount of time.

11. References

1 Draganski, B., Gaser, C., Busch, V., & Schuierer, G. (2004). Neuroplasticity: Changes in grey matter induced by training. Nature, 427(22), 311-312.

2 Willis, J. (2008). Brain-based teaching strategies for improving students' memory, learning, and test-taking success.(Review of Research). Childhood Education, 83(5), 31-316.

3 Chan, J.C., McDermott, K.B., & Roediger, H.L. (2007). Retrieval-induced facilitation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 135(4), 553-571.

4 Rubinstein, Joshua S.; Meyer, David E.; Evans, Jeffrey E. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 27(4), 763-797.

Source: psychology.about.com

View Tutorial