Helping Low-SES Students Thrive

• January 26, 2012 by Bill Jenkins, Ph.D.

Studies and statistics have clearly demonstrated the link between low achievement and low socioeconomic status or SES. Still, studies have also shown that given the right conditions, every student – including those from less fortunate circumstances – have the opportunity to succeed. Not only that, but the kinds of changes that can increase achievement are available to every household, regardless of SES.

Factors linked to low-SES have been shown to have an effect upon readiness for school and achievement once a child has entered school. Circumstances include a household’s lack of financial wherewithal to devote to learning resources such as books, supplies and computers. Other contributing factors include lack of parental involvement; only 36% of low SES parents read to their kindergartners, compared to 62% in the highest SES students (Coley, 2002). In addition, parents of low SES households tend to be dual-income or single parent families who have limited time and energy at home to devote to meaningful engagement with their children.

That said, many successful students do come from low-SES homes. While some of this success can be attributed to the simple innate resiliency and drive arising from within the student, research has been able to tease out a number of common factors in such homes, where certain practices are clearly contributing to student success. 

Factors for Success

In 2006, Allison Milne and Lee Plourde studied this population, selecting six second-grade students from a Central Washington elementary school who came from low-SES homes but were also high achievers. While the number of students in the study was limited, Milne and Plourde outline a number of common factors in their homes that likely contributed to their success:

• Educational content in the home: In all households, these students as early learners all had access to learning materials, such as books, writing material and structured time. All students attended preschool or Head Start.
• Placing value on education: All parents held having an education as an important value, and made efforts to ensure that their children understood this value. Of the participant families, all parents had completed at least through the 10th grade.
• Positive, supportive relationships: Regardless of family structure (single mother, guardian, two-parent, etc.), successful children’s families demonstrated patterns of support and open communication. Such parents expressed wanting open, respectful relationships with their children, and spent time with them having more adult-like conversations. They also indicated that they spent time together and had fun with one another. Finally, these families all had support systems of friends and family nearby to lean on in times of need.
• Understanding of the parental role: When it came to questions about their job as parents, all expressed “eerily similar” answers, such as providing support and guidance at home, and making sure their children understood the essential nature of a good education. They also made sure that they set examples through their own behaviors that communicated such values to their children.

Even though this study was limited in its sample size, the implications and the opportunities are far reaching. If low-SES children have the support and understanding that we see in these households, financial status does not have to be the ultimate determinant of academic achievement.

For further reading:

Factors of a low-SES household: what aids academic achievement?

Education and Socioeconomic Status, American Psychological Association

Related Reading:

Changing the Culture of Poverty by Doing Whatever it Takes

What Educators Can Do About Poverty in American Schools

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Categories: Education Trends, Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: achievement gap, at-risk, early learning, elementary school learning, emotions in learning, how children learn, learning environment, motivating students, self-esteem, student growth, title i

Poverty in American Schools: What Educators Can Do

• January 17, 2012 by Norene Wiesen

 

Many children from poverty arrive in schools with a host disadvantages, including low self-esteem, unstable relationships, and brain differences.  But with support, encouragement and the right interventions, every child can maximize their ability to learn and succeed.

Learn more about "teaching with poverty in mind" in our on-demand webinar by Eric Jensen, full of actionable ideas for getting the most from learning time with students, building learning capacity, accelerating the learning process, and getting better buy-in from educators and students.

Related Reading:

Changing the Culture of Poverty by Doing Whatever It Takes

Building a Foundation for School Readiness for Low Income Children

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Categories: Brain Fitness, Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: achievement gap, at-risk, brain development, brain plasticity, cognitive skills, elementary school learning, emotions in learning, learning environment, self-esteem, student growth, teacher impact, title i

Building Your Child’s Self-Confidence

• January 10, 2012 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

As parents, we want our children to have confidence but not conceit.  That is, we want our children to monitor the outcomes of their behaviors realistically, to be polite and considerate of others, but retain a sense of self that is positive and assured. I believe the mistake parents often make is thinking that constant praise of a child is the route to self-confidence. It is an easy mistake to make, especially in a society in which so much emphasis is placed on making our children feel loved and building feelings of self-worth.

I, like most new parents, constantly praised my oldest child for everything she did from swinging at the park without falling to reading a stop sign as we drove to preschool. But the problem with that is that excessive praise may create unrealistic expectations for the child when they are in the “real world” where people do not praise them all the time. I did not realize that for my daughter this was creating tremendous pressure to be successful at everything she did. Conversely, some children who hear constant praise at home may feel confused or dejected when others are not as enthusiastic about their feats and develop a fear of failure.

A young client of mine, whose mother worked very hard to build self-confidence in her children by praising them continuously, developed a host of voice problems associated with stress in elementary school.  I have worked with other children who developed a “need” for constant praise that affected their ability to enjoy competition if they could not win.

Since a large component of human brain maturation involves increased self-awareness and improved capacity for self-monitoring of behavior, parents have the opportunity to be instrumental in helping a child develop this advanced skill. By encouraging self-appraisal that is realistic while avoiding being overly judgmental, parents help their child build confidence. 

Instead of constant praise, parents can try to use praise more naturally to encourage behaviors the parent believes are worthwhile or beneficial. Statements like, “I like the way you shared your toys today” or “You seemed to be having a lot of fun on the climber, do you feel like you are getting better at that?” may help a child learn to value effort and progress as well as to self-evaluate.

It is important to remind ourselves that to adequately develop the ability to monitor our behavior we have to understand mistakes as well as achievements. It is very difficult for a parent to watch a child fail at something, but as adults most of us are well aware that some of the best lessons we had as we grew up came from our failures, as rough as they may have been at the time.

Building your child’s self-esteem ultimately will help them succeed in endeavors both in school and in life.  One of the most important jobs for parents is to help your child successfully through life’s challenges and successes, help them feel good about themselves along the way, and learn to accept mistakes as an opportunity to do better next time. 

Related Reading:

Ok, So You Made A Mistake. But Look What You Learned!

Shaming Some Kids Makes Them Aggressive

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Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: behavior, early learning, how children learn, play, self-esteem, toddler

Corey’s Story: My Son No Longer Needs Intervention After Using Fast ForWord

• December 8, 2011 by Norene Wiesen

This post is the seventh in a series aimed at sharing the success stories, both personal and professional, that Scientific Learning employees witness every day.

“My son personally was identified in kindergarten as a struggling learner.  He is a July baby and he started kindergarten at a very young age five.   Right away, red flags were going up for the teacher.  Emotionally, academically, developmentally, we realized that he might not have been ready to acquire the skills that were being taught in the kindergarten classroom.

We worked really hard over the summer to put Zack through [Fast ForWord] Language Basics and [Fast ForWord] Reading Prep*.  These products are really appropriate for a kindergarten-aged learner. 

When he returned to school in the fall and he was re-assessed for intervention, the teacher made a comment: ‘I don’t know what you’ve done with Zack over the summer, but his scores are now above where he needs to be and we no longer will need to provide him with any intervention support. We are just going to continue to monitor him and watch and make sure he continues to grow along the right pathway.’

It brought tears to my eyes knowing that we continued to do the right things and the only one variable that changed was using Fast ForWord with him.  It built his confidence and built his self-esteem.”

*Note: Fast ForWord® Language Basics and Reading Prep are no longer available.  Current Fast ForWord products for kindergarten-aged learners include Fast ForWord Language and Reading Readiness.

Related Reading:

Sara’s Story: From 6 Months Behind In Reading to the Accelerated Reading Class

Joel’s Story: My Nephew’s Reading Skills Improved 1.5 Years in 3 Months with Fast ForWord

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Categories: Family Focus, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic success, child reading development, early learning, employee stories, how children learn, intervention, learning to read, oral language skills, self-esteem, student growth, success stories, technology in education, video

Creating Safe Learning Environments: How Classroom Management Influences Student Performance

• November 15, 2011 by Sherrelle Walker, M.A.

Think back to your grade school days. Did you ever experience a class where a bully ruled the roost? Were you ever bullied yourself?  Did you ever have a teacher who frightened you or who made you feel bad for underperforming? Or was there simply a disruptive class clown who constantly broke the classroom rhythm the teacher was trying so hard to create?

To varying degrees, all of the above situations can create what we might consider an unsafe learning environment. The teacher must take unquestionable ownership of the classroom, but do so in a positive, caring, constructive manner. The class succeeds or fails on his or her decisions and management of the entire learning experience.

Why is managing that classroom and creating that safe environment where learning can happen so essential? In her article on the value of safe learning environments, Lora Desautels, Ph.D., reminds us that during adolescence, the part of the brain that controls emotional responses—the amygdala—develops faster than other centers of the brain while the prefrontal cortex, a center for logical thought and rational response, develops later. Thus, our students are more effectively wired for emotion than logic. Their systems are primed to react to situations with feelings and they have not yet fully developed the ability to apply logical thinking to keep those feelings in check.

It follows that the stimuli within and surrounding the learning environment can have great effects on these emotional responses and can serve to either support or impair the learning process. The bully, the clown, and the teacher can all have a profound effect on how well a student learns.

So what can we as educators do to bring down the levels of stress in our classrooms and make sure that our learning environments are safe places where optimal learning can take place? How can we create spaces that keep the emotional responses as positive and free of stress and anxiety as possible so that we can most effectively engage fresh young minds?

Rebecca Alber has written a wonderful list of twenty ways to create a safe learning environment for Edutopia, which I highly recommend. Her advice for educators includes building community, setting clear boundaries, smiling and laughing a lot, and getting to know each individual student, as well as allowing them to get to know something personal about you. She says we should sit with our students. We should keep our expectations for student performance and behavior high. And we should incorporate art and music into the day.

I agree with Alber’s top twenty. I find it wonderful that she strikes a balance between creating a space that is fun and welcoming and full of laughter, but also one where expectations are set and failures become learning opportunities. All of them can do wonders when it comes to creating a space where students can let go of their stresses and anxieties and free their minds to absorb all the wonderful learning we have in store for them.

In the end, the responsibility for implementing these kinds of principles and removing the stressors that can impair learning lie with us, the educators. Creating that safe learning environment is a multifaceted challenge that, when done well, allows students to flourish.

Related Reading:

Tapping the Source: Finding and Using the Innate Student Passion for Learning

Inspiring Students to Dream, Learn and Grow

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Categories: Brain Research, Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic success, behavior, brain development, emotions in learning, health and well being, how children learn, learning environment, self-esteem, teacher impact

Modeling Healthy Choices: Three Habits for Optimal Brain Health

• November 10, 2011 by Bill Jenkins, Ph.D.

Isaac Asimov said, “The human brain…is the most complicated organization of matter that we know.”^[i] And it’s true.  Our amazing brains are both a product of biological evolution and a reflection of the world around us.

First, the stuff of the brain – grey matter, white matter, fluids, blood vessels – is made up of nutrients from the plants and animals we consume from the world around us.

Second, in terms of brain function, our interaction with our environment has a major impact on both brain structure and brain health. Extensive and ongoing research into “brain plasticity” has proven that everything we experience, everything we see or touch or hear, creates a perception that changes the wiring of the brain itself.

Given that our brains are a product of evolution (which is outside of our control) and environment (which is only partially under our control, and often less than ideal), how can we keep our brains as healthy as possible, from birth all the way through old age?

The pathway to optimal brain health comes from the small choices we make every day. By making healthy choices on a regular basis, and particularly by turning those choices into habits, we can help our brains stay healthy while also helping the young people in our lives learn positive self-care skills that can last a lifetime.

Here are three important steps everyone can take toward optimal brain health:

• Eating more healthy foods and minimizing unhealthy foods. Eating foods that provide nutrients to build healthy brain tissues is essential. Foods high in omega-3 fatty acids, such as salmon, avocados and nuts, along with foods high in potassium like bananas promote brain function. Also, lowering our intake of sodium can reduce blood pressure, a factor that can, if left unchecked, lead to stroke.
• Engaging in regular physical exercise. Like every other organ and tissue in the body, the brain needs healthy blood flow to function at its highest possible levels. Physical exercise helps improve and maintain cardio vascular health, allowing the body to efficiently and effectively deliver oxygen and nutrients to the brain. But it can do more for us. In students, educators have reported physical exercise resulting in less disruptive behavior, higher self esteem, less anxiety and greater attentiveness. Dr. John Ratey of Harvard University describes exercise as “food for the brain.”
• Giving your brain practice in the activities you want it to be good at. The neural pathways that our brains create over time, as we have said, are a direct result of the stimuli that we receive. That’s why through practice and training, a child can work to shape their brain into that of a great musician or mathematician or martial artist. At the same time, we must remember that negative input also affects our wiring. For example, excessive amounts of watching television and playing video games has been shown to have concerning chemical and biological effects, such as the suppression of melatonin release, elevated blood cholesterol and an increased chance of coronary heart disease – and these effects should be taken into consideration as we make decisions about how we spend our time.

The brain might be the most complicated organization of matter we know of, but that doesn’t make it difficult to keep healthy. By learning to choose the right foods, the right activities, and the right input, we can each take control – at any age – of building the brains we want. 

Children can begin learning to make good choices from the earliest ages, but it is up to parents and teachers to model these healthy habits of mind.  

Yes, that means you.

References:

[i] J. Hooper and D. Teresi. The Three-Pound Universe. Macmillan Publishing Company. 1^st edition 1986.

Related Reading:

Lifelong Learning and the Plastic Brain

5 Paths to Brain Health: Tips from Dr. Paul Nussbaum

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Categories: Brain Fitness, Brain Research, Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: behavior, brain plasticity, brain training, health and well being, nutrition, self-esteem, teacher impact

Shaming Some Kids Makes Them Aggressive

• November 3, 2011 by Bill Jenkins, Ph.D.

Many people believe that youth who are aggressive and violent towards other children have low self-esteem. Youth programs are often designed to boost self-esteem in kids at risk. Does the research support this belief? A team of researchers designed a study on young teens to examine their responses to feeling shame.

The subjects were asked to compete in an easy, timed task against a competitor.  Some of the youth experienced shame when they were shown a fake list of competitors’ times and saw their own times at the bottom of the list.  The group that did not experience shame was not shown competitors’ times or their own rank.  Then all participants were given an opportunity to act aggressively by blasting their opponent with loud noise through headphones.  All participants also completed self report measures of narcissism (grandiose views of self, inflated sense of entitlement) and self-esteem a few weeks prior to the competition. 

The results of this experiment showed no evidence that the kids with low self-esteem were more aggressive.  Instead, kids with narcissistic traits were most likely to react to shame with aggression.  This is interesting to think about from the perspective of educators who want to support learning through optimizing a collaborative atmosphere as opposed to promoting a highly competitive environment.

References:

The Cracked Mirror: Features of Narcissistic Personality Disorder in Children. 2009.

Related Reading:

Of Rats and Men: How Stress Affects the Brain

Adolescence: What’s the Brain Got to do with it?

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Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!

Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: behavior, emotions in learning, health and well being, learning environment, self-esteem, teacher impact

My Son Announced He Was Dropping Out of High School: Mary’s Story

• September 15, 2011 by Norene Wiesen

This post is the fourth in a series aimed at sharing the success stories, both personal and professional, that Scientific Learning employees witness every day.

Mary’s Story:

I was hired at Scientific Learning in 2007 to educate people about the products as an Account Manager in the Midwest.  At the same time that I got the phone call to find out if I had interest in talking to Scientific Learning, our ninth grade son announced to us that he was not going to high school and he was going to drop out.  It took my breath away. Both his father and I have been educators for many years and we both hold advanced degrees. 

I said, “Todd, you have to go to high school,” and he said, “But I don’t want to go.” I said, “But you have to,” and he asked, “Well, what would happen if I didn’t go?” I said, “It’s the law, Todd.” Then he said, “I can’t read.  I can’t keep up with it.  You guys have done everything for me that is possible but I can’t read.  I can’t read at grade level.”

I called my son’s teacher (we convinced him to go to school) and I said, “Here’s the carrot.  My son doesn’t have to do any homework until he finishes this product.  This is his homework at night.”  And every night he came home and did Fast ForWord. 

And what he did is committed to doing 90 minutes a day and he was done is less than 4 weeks, and he did the post test and when I looked up the score my son had gone from seventh grade, one month reading level to tenth grade, two months reading level. He was a year above grade level and for the very first time in his life he said, “I love to read.”

All I can say is thank you to all the scientists that did all the work to bring this product to not only my son but to the parents and kids out there in America who need it so desperately.

Related Reading:

Language Skills Increase 1.8 Years After 30 Days Using Fast ForWord

Implementation Fidelity: Maximizing Your Fast ForWord® or Reading Assistant™ Investment

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Categories: Brain Fitness, Family Focus, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic success, accelerate learning, below grade level, employee stories, high school learning, improving reading skills, increased test scores, reading comprehension, self-esteem, struggling readers, student growth, success stories, technology in education, video

Leigh Ann’s Story: Making a Difference in Children’s Lives

• August 4, 2011 by Norene Wiesen

This post is the second in a series aimed at sharing the success stories, both personal and professional, that Scientific Learning employees witness every day.

Leigh Ann’s Story:

“Hi, my name is Leigh Ann.  I’m a BrainPro Representative with Scientific Learning and I have a few stories I would like to tell today about some outcomes that have really touched my heart.

The first story I want to tell is about Henry.  He’s eleven.  He lives in Michigan and his mom was really very excited to tell me this story. At eleven, he couldn’t spend more than fifteen to twenty minutes reading, and a month after he started our software he spent three hours in the hammock in his backyard reading a book from cover to cover.  And when he was finished he ran in the house and he goes, ‘That was fun!’ And his mom was just so thrilled when she told me that story.

There was a seventeen-year-old boy in Canada, and the Internet where they lived was not strong enough to deliver our software into the home.  So he had to drive forty minutes one way to his dad’s office.  So he drove an hour and twenty minutes each day.  That boy’s life completely changed.  His parents said he’s a different boy.  He saw himself catching up to the smarter kids in class.  It completely, totally changed his life.

And those are the stories, those are the things that help me get out of bed every morning and get to work with a big smile on my face and know that I’m make a big difference in children’s lives.”

Related Reading:

Jolene’s Story: “I Saw Tremendous Change”

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Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic success, child reading development, effort, emotions in learning, employee stories, high school learning, improving reading skills, learning to read, motivating students, reading comprehension, self-esteem, student growth, success stories

Inspiring Fluency: One School’s Journey to Improve Reading Skills

• July 21, 2011 by Jacqueline Egli

A focus on core reading skills has recently been promoted in college coursework for beginning teachers, statewide initiatives for student achievement, and professional development for teachers across the curriculum in all levels of education. One of the five core skills, fluency, is still being heavily debated among the researchers, but is gaining traction as an instructional skill that is necessary to the efficiency of reading. Differences in word reading or naming speed, two aspects of fluency, have been identified as early as kindergarten levels in struggling readers (Wolf, Bally, & Morris, 1986), and can continue to be tracked into middle and high school (Meyer, Wood, Hart, and Felton, 1999). Many students who struggle and are identified as having reading deficits have difficulty with reading speed and accuracy. 

Although there seems to be a significant and growing body of research on reading skills, including fluency, there is still much to be learned about the impact of fluency on overall learning. The typical definition of fluency is “the ability to read connected text rapidly, smoothly, effortlessly and automatically with little conscious attention to the mechanics of reading, such as decoding” (Meyers and Felton, 1999). Reading fluency problems of children with reading difficulties, according to Torgeson (2006), are a result of students’ difficulties forming large vocabularies of words that they can recognize “by sight” or at a single glance. If students receive “powerful and appropriately focused interventions many of them can become accurate readers and their reading comprehension improves as a result of being able to correctly identify more of the words in text” (Torgeson, 2006).

Bridges Academy, located in Winter Springs Florida, serves students with specific learning disabilities. The overall purpose of the program is to remediate the learning gaps for the students and to “bridge” them back into mainstream schools with mainstream curriculum. Ninety-nine percent of the students who attend the school have an identified deficit in reading and many are considered to be dysfluent readers. Several years ago, Bridges Academy incorporated a computer-based instructional tool, Reading Assistant software, that provided a highly focused intervention for fluency to address the skill development of reading fluency, as a trial implementation.

For the pilot program, 10 middle school aged students were selected to try the Reading Assistant program. Each middle school student was invited to participate, if they desired to do so, during their homeroom time at the end of the day. Homeroom time, of course, is a very social time and many of the middle school students looked forward to spending some time connecting with their peers before leaving campus for the day. Each of the students was asked to commit to no more than 10 days, so they did not feel that they were giving up their social time for the rest of the school year. 

To get familiar with the program and the process, each student was assigned a level of the computer program that was instructionally suited to their present independent reading level. The requirements were straightforward. Students were to listen to a selected story read aloud on the computer a total of three times. Then each student was required to review any words that were unfamiliar to them by selecting the word and seeing or hearing an example of that word in a picture or sentence. After this initial step the students were required to orally read the story selection. Words Correct Per Minute (WCPM) was tracked by the software and students were directed to complete a series of comprehension questions when done. One key component unique to this product was the requirement that the student listen to their own voice recording of the selection after each of the three required oral reading samples. 

The interest and enthusiasm amongst these 10 middle school students as the project began was very exciting to the faculty and administration. All 10 students shared information with their parents and their classmates about the project and the way the program worked. During their lunch break, they discussed the various stories that they were reading amongst themselves   and shared their present WCPM scores with their peers with tremendous pride!  These students would celebrate their promotion to a new story with a “high five” and pored over their data reports at the end of the week to see what types of gains in fluency they were making. What was most encouraging? All 10 of the students chose to work on the program for the duration of the school year, a period of eight weeks. One student even elected to come back to the campus during summer vacation to complete the stories he was reading, so he could reach his own set goal of 200 WCPM! 

The impact of this implementation of the Reading Assistant program is now being realized across the campus at Bridges Academy. All students who are reading above a second grade level are provided access to the Reading Assistant program two to three times a week, throughout the school year. Students who are preparing to “bridge” to a new school program are provided the opportunity to work four afternoons a week as an after school option, so that they may increase their proficiency rate with above grade level material in preparation for their move to the mainstream schools. Every January through April, 80% of the students eligible for bridging can be observed working in the afterschool program. What is most impressive is that these students have chosen to participate in this afterschool program! 

The assessments, data analysis, and individual summary reports built into Reading Assistant track the overall impact of the program in improving reading skills for student participants.  Bridges Academy staff and administration are pleased with the overall improvements in the students’ reading skills and confidence. The students perceive themselves as readers, and parents report that the students are now becoming more confident readers who enjoy reading--many for the first time!

References:

Meyer, M.A., & Felton, R.H. (1999). Repeated reading to enhance fluency: Old approaches and new directions.  Annals of Dyslexia, 49, 283–306.

Meyer, M.S., Wood, F.B., Hart, L.A. & Fenton, R. H. (1999) Longitudinal course of rapid naming in disabled and non disabled readers. Annals of Dyslexia, 48, 89-114.

Torgeson, J.K. & Hudson, R. (2006) Reading fluency: critical issues for struggling readers. In S.J. Samuels and A. Farstrup (Eds.). Reading Fluency: The forgotten dimension of reading success. Newark, DE: International Reading Association

Wolf, M., Bally, H., & Morris, R. (1986) Automaticity, retrieval process and reading: A longitudinal study in average and impaired readers. Child Development, 57, 988-1000.

Related Reading:

Truth in Numbers: School Achieves Statistically Significant Improvements on TAKS

The Essential Nature of Developing Oral Reading Fluency

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Categories: Reading & Learning, Reading Assistant, Special Education

Tags: academic success, child reading development, fluency, improving reading skills, learning to read, literacy, motivating students, reading comprehension, reading intervention, self-esteem, struggling readers, student growth, success stories, technology in education