Rainy Day Fine Motor Work

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When a summer day is not so summery, parents are often left with minimal options for entertaining younger children until the rain lets up. While technology is the obvious default go-to, it’s still a good idea to have some tricks up your sleeve. Anytime that you can disguise learning as an engaging indoor game or activity, children thrive with that challenge.

 

Activities to build fine motor skills:

  • Two simple items from a craft store can help to boost your child’s fine motor skills. Packs of multicolored beads and thread, yarn, or jewelry strands are all you need to encourage dexterity and creativity. This is also an opportunity to take a hands-on approach to patterns. You can extend the activity by beading alongside your child and asking him or her to identify which color comes next in your pattern. You can also use this activity as a conversation starter about your own favorite colors, birthstones, your alma mater colors, the order of the colors in the rainbow, etc.
  • Challenge your children to an ice cube tray race in which you sort small items into the different cubes using tweezers. You can use spare coins/change, beads, different types of dried beans, multicolored confetti, M&Ms, old buttons, etc. Using tweezers adds to the challenge and helps to build the smaller muscles in the hand and fingers that are used for writing.
  • Chinese checkers is another great game that helps to build fine motor skills. In fact, anything that requires children to pick up and place marbles in a specific area builds those motor skills.
  • Stickers and sticker books that ask children to arrange the stickers into specific scenes on the page are great for dexterity as well. This not only strengthens the tiny muscles in their fingers, but it also promotes logical and ordered thinking. For instance, a scene in the sticker book might require them to put the police officer in the correct car, match the hair stylist with the proper tools, put domesticated animals in the house while the others go in the barn, place the flowers in the empty flower pot, etc.  
  • Keep busy hands moving by making a paperclip chain. You can also use different colored or different patterned paper clips to create a chain with an alternating pattern.
  • Use clay or playdough to roll, knead, twist, and cut shapes or “ingredients” to make playdough pizza. Just remember, no eating!
  • Create your own kiddie putting green using large styrofoam sheets, golf tees, and plastic golf balls. The tees stick straight down into the foam sheets, which allow kids to practice placing and balancing the plastic golf balls gently. As children practice swinging and hitting the plastic golf balls, they are getting practice with hand-eye coordination as well.
  • Use eye droppers and food coloring to turn cups of water into color-changing liquid art. The eye dropper builds fine motor skills, but the activity also teaches children about primary and secondary colors. You can also extend the activity by asking your child to predict what color would result from dropping a blue dot of food coloring into red water, yellow water, etc.

Games such as Jenga, Lincoln Logs, Legos, and Operation help children with motor skills while keeping the fun and competition in the forefront. Jenga requires children to practice precision, balance, strategy, and patience, all while keeping a steady hand. As always, you can also use games to teach accountability and good sportsmanship by requiring the “loser” to clean up the fallen blocks—but remind them that it’s all in fun!     

Summer Writing For Your Elementary Schooler

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Summer slide, or the tendency for students to lose academic knowledge or skills while they are out of school during summer break, is a common concern among parents and educators. For many students, literacy skills see the most regression over the summer, which is why summer writing can be so crucial for families once school lets out.

Practices to Consider

The key to encouraging summer writing, especially for struggling or reluctant writers, is to fuse function with fun. That is, make writing feel less like an assignment and more like an engaging activity by linking it to your child’s everyday summer activities.

  • Grab the sidewalk chalk and help your early elementary-level children with their sight words in the driveway or out front on the sidewalk. Because chalk can be easily brushed/swept or hosed off, children do not need to worry about perfection. Stress the fact that this meant to be a low-risk activity to practice sight words.
  • Continue using sidewalk chalk to write sight words, spelling words, or vocabulary words, but add a layer of complexity by devoting specific colors for consonants and vowels. Extend the challenge by grouping long vowels and short vowels, underlining consonant blends, etc.
  • Practice summarizing, making predictions, and extending or altering the endings of your child’s favorite bedtime story. This activity allows them to tap into their literacy skills and their creativity. It also incorporates choices—they can choose their bedtime story, decide on an alternate ending, or add on to the story to keep it going in whatever direction they’d like.
  • Use a whiteboard on the fridge to start a daily or weekly vocabulary word for the family to learn and practice. Of course, you will want to make sure that the vocabulary term is grade-level appropriate or something that your child would see in school in the coming years. The purpose is to get them excited about and proud of their expanding vocabulary. Add to the challenge by tallying every time your child uses the word properly.
  • Show children that writing can be a great way to wind down, especially at the end of those long summer days filled with physical activities. A leisurely way to settle one’s thoughts is to put them on paper. Encourage a brief daily journaling routine or start a 365 diary. The diaries are meant to capture key takeaways from the day or respond to thought-provoking, open ended questions. At the end of 365 days, your child will have an autobiographical account of their experiences and musings.
  • Frame the writing activities or journaling practices as an experience—designate a specifically cozy spot in the house with cushions and blankets, special pens, markers, and stickers. Play soft, instrumental music in the background and remove distracting technology. Parents should follow the guidelines as well and join in with their own journaling. Turn off the television, silence phones, and immerse yourself in writing for 15-20 minutes to demonstrate how a leisurely routine is cathartic and engaging for everyone.

 

Tone in Writing

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This topic was inspired by a recent email that I received from a student. Essentially, the student was concerned about a missing homework grade after an absence, which is a completely valid concern. However, the issue was not with her inquiry, but with her tone in the email. In literature, tone is defined as the author, narrator, or speaker’s attitude toward a subject or person. When we write, we establish tone using diction (word choice) and syntax (sentence structure, including punctuation). Unlike one’s tone of voice, which is fairly distinguishable, someone’s tone in writing, or even via text message, can be vastly misinterpreted. It is this miscommunication that can turn an email into an issue.

Things for students to consider regarding tone:

  • Keep the subject line clear and specific. Your recipient should ideally understand the general point of your message from seeing the subject line. For example, the subject line for an email to your teacher about a homework assignment should include the specific class period and name/date of the homework assignment if possible—“AP Chemistry 3/12 homework”
  • Consider the purpose of your email. If you are emailing to ask a quick question or to get clarification on something, be direct. Once you have addressed the recipient, get straight to the point and ask your specific question. A succinct email is much more likely to get a swift response than an email that is long and drawn out.
  • Know the difference between phrasing a question, a request, or a demand. A question should obviously have the appropriate “?” punctuation. A request should ideally include polite phrases such as could you, please, and thank you, etc. To demand something in an email, however, is rarely a good idea, unless the circumstance warrants a more severe or urgent tone.
  • Read the message or email aloud to yourself with a neutral tone before sending it. If it sounds harsh, demanding, or accusatory you should rephrase the message so that it is received in a more positive manner.
  • Avoid overuse of punctuation, especially exclamation points and question marks. These can inadvertently come off to the recipient as overly dramatic, aggressive, harsh, etc.
  • Do not include emoji’s or abbreviations or slang when corresponding with your teacher, professor, superior, or boss. An overly casual approach could be mistaken as disrespectful, careless, or immature.
  • Draft a message first and send later if your email is provoked by anger, disappointment, or frustration. Often times, in an emotional moment, our words, even when written, can be impulsive or emotionally charged. If you feel that you might be furiously dictating while you type your message, it is probably best to save that email as a draft and return to it a few hours later. Once emotions have settled, your wording will have softened.

Specific “DON’Ts”

  • Don’t assume that your teacher, or whomever the email is intended for, will recognize your personal email address. If your email address does not include your full name, be sure to add a signature or salutation that includes your first and last name.
  • Consider the actual content of your email address, especially when completing college applications and job applications. If the email address doesn’t sound professional, consider creating a new address for professional correspondence that includes your name.
  • Be careful with the “reply all” button, especially if you do not know some of the cc’d recipients. Consider responding just to the sender and then circling back to the rest of the email chain.
  • Know that “deleted” doesn’t mean erased forever. Deleting an email, whether is is one that you have sent or received, does not mean that it no longer exists. As we have seen all too often, texts and emails can come back to haunt us down the road, so it is very important to think carefully about what you are trying to say and how you should say it.

 

Reading Better

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For elementary and middle school-aged students, reading better, in their minds, often means simply reading faster. While reading fluency and words per minute (wpm) are crucial indicators of a strong reader, a student whose primary goal is to read quickly is not necessarily reading properly. To curb this “faster is always better” mentality while still promoting fluency growth, parents and educators can help shift the focus to a more broad definition of a strong reader.

  • Strong readers do much more than absorb and store the information that they have read in their minds. Recall is important, but application is more important. This means that, after students read, an immediate process or task to apply that information or combine details from the text with another skill is critical.
    • After reading about ancient civilizations, for example, ask students to participate in a discussion in which they compare ancient tools and building methods to today’s modern tools and structures.
    • While reading a “how-to” text, ask children to restate each step in order using the text. Then ask them to consider why certain steps must be completed before others.
    • When reading a novel or story, encourage students to make connections to the text with questions and considerations, such as:
      • Why do you think the character responded in that way?
      • How do you think he/she is feeling at this point in the story, why?
      • Have you ever felt that way or experienced something similar?
      • What would you do if you were in this same situation?
      • What kind of relationship do these two characters have? How do you know?
      • Do you think the character is making good decisions?
      • What do you think might happen next based on what we have read?
      • Have you read anything like this before?
      • How was that story similar or different?
      • Does this story, setting, conflict, or character remind you of anything you have heard or watched before?
    • If students are asked to complete a multi-step assignment or required to read complex or lengthy directions, encourage them to break the steps or directions down into smaller, manageable procedures. Prompting students to rephrase instructions or directions is also a good practice for applying what they have just read.
  • Teach young readers how to consider their intent for reading whatever it is that they are reading. When reading for pleasure, their reading strategies might include making predictions, visualizing the details of the story, or discussing the section or page with a friend who is reading the same novel.  However, if a student is reading something for school, the strategies are likely different because of his or her intent.
    • Ask students to consider their goals for reading prior to diving into the text. Do they want to memorize certain information? If so, rereading is going to be a necessary process for that text. If a student is reading something to learn a new skill or strategy, they may want to summarize or simplify the text as they work through each page or chapter.
    • Similarly to goal-setting before reading, teachers should encourage readers to consider one thing that they hope to gain from the text. Are you seeking another’s perspective? Absorbing new vocabulary? Looking for clues to a math word problem? Comparing/contrasting information? Summarizing a process? Investigating a problem and potential solutions? Following a sequence?
    • Ask students to then identify if their goal or intention was accomplished or met by reading the text. If not, ask them to question why they may have missed the mark while reading.

Discuss what active reading looks like. For many students, especially reluctant readers, reading simply means getting to the end—each page or paragraph is just one step closer to being finished. When completion is the goal, students tends to daze, daydream, and lose focus of the text. Remind students that, if they get to the bottom of a page and realize that they had been thinking about something completely different from the actual text, they were not actually absorbing the information. This is similar to the difference between seeing something and looking at something—sounds like the same thing, but looking at something means to examine it; seeing it means to just come across something without actual consideration.

End of School Year Activities to Promote Reflection

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The end of the school year brings a lot of excitement. It is a time for celebrating students’ growth, achievements, perseverance, and accomplishments. While students often spend those last few weeks of school looking ahead—to summer, to vacations, to the next step in their education— teachers will find it beneficial to encourage students to look back on their year and reflect.

Reflection as a process
To reflect on something, in the general sense, means to look back on and consider a past occurrence. However, in the educational realm, reflection can be more of a structured process.

A student:
1) learns something or absorbs information,
2) assesses prior knowledge of the topic,
3) considers the new information,
4) uses or practices the new skill or information, and then
5) examines how he or she can utilize the skill/info for further learning and growth.

With this cyclical process in mind, teachers can promote contemplation and metacognition at the end of the year by asking students to ponder what they have learned, revisit the difficult moments/skills, make connections to how this knowledge can serve them in the future, and consider additional learning opportunities.

Benefits of reflective practices

  • Reflection promotes retroactive problem-solving skills. Students have an opportunity to look back on their work and consider in what other ways they could have approached a task or completed a project. If forces them to examine the steps that they took and how they could improve on that same task the next time.
  • Reflection gives students a stronger sense of responsibility and ownership over their work. By revisiting completed work or writing from earlier in the year, students are reminded of the fact that, while they earn a grade from the teacher, every decision that they make regarding an assignment is what contributes to that grade—they hold the keys to their success or failure.
  • They get to know themselves as learners when examining their academic strengths and weaknesses. This level of self-examination encourages students to capitalize on their strong points and consider how they can improve on their weaker areas.
  • Reflection also promotes creativity. During the process, students consider alternate ways that a goal or task could have been accomplished. In asking themselves how they would approach a similar task next time based on what they know now, students automatically brainstorm new approaches, strategies, and techniques to expand their understanding for the next opportunity.

Activities to try

  • Ask students to evaluate the class using a Google form: What was interesting, boring, repetitive, beneficial, etc.? What improvements would they like to see if they had to complete the class over again? What advice would they offer to next year’s students? What unit, project, or topic was the most enlightening? What information or knowledge will they be most likely to take with them moving forward through their education?
  • Ask students to use Padlet or another form of whole group sharing platform to provide advice for future students.
  • Use a day of class to host the “Academy (Academic) Awards” in which students are recognized for their various strengths: BEST PUNCTUALITY, BEST PARTICIPATOR, BIGGEST HELPER, BEST QUESTIONS, BEST CREATIVE INFLUENCE, etc.
  • Make a Rose & Thorn or top 10 list. Ask students to consider their best memories or experiences during the school year. Encourage them to talk about what made that memory great.
  • Portfolios, especially for arts and English courses, allow students to have a physical “scrapbook” of their progress and achievements from throughout the year. For teachers, this will take a little bit of prep work early on, but the data that can be gathered from these portfolios is beneficial to our own professional growth and reflection as well!