This Month's Teachable Moment

How do you know when to use "I" vs. "me"?
Many people incorrectly assume that "I" is always correct because it sounds "proper." Not true! The simple way to determine which to use when there are other people in a sentence is to take out the other people and see which makes more sense between I" or "me." 

Example:  My mother took my sister and me/I to the store.

Take out "my sister" and you're left with "My mother took me to the store" or  "My mother took I to the store."  In this sentence the "me" makes more sense. Of course there is a more technical way to explain this, but we've found that this way is much easier to remember!

Now, go TEACH it!

Three Fun Summer Learning Activities

This following ideas were featured in a newsletter I receive from BrainWare/Learning Enhancement Corporation and I thought I'd share them with all of our summer savvy parents.  The author is Betsy Hill and the full article is accessible here.  

Happy learning, everyone!

1.  The “Think and Listen" – A parent and child agree to “think out loud” about a topic of mutual interest:  the menu, the weather, world peace, etc.  Each person agrees to speak for the same length of time, the listener never interrupting.  The “Think and Listen” gives the thinker good practice identifying thoughts and articulating them.  Just a few "Think and Listens" can make children more articulate and confident. They are more likely to do well in class discussions and to express ideas that are important to them.

2.  The “Restaurant Review” – Give summer vacations more “mental meat” by writing restaurant reviews with your children after dining out. This is a good way to work cognitive skills such as memory, sustained attention, creativity and prioritizing of values. Those skills will come in handy next fall, when it comes to reviewing for an exam.  

3.   The “Visual Scavenger Hunt” – When planning a summer trip, develop a list of things you might see along the road – the kids can help with the research – and give each child a list to check off as they find the items. Include a mixture of common objects, like a stop sign or a gas station, and rarer objects … like a jewelry store, a cemetery, a cactus, a purple flower, a black squirrel …. The mixture of objects will help sustain interest and balance the difficulty of finding one with the feeling of discovering a treasure when something rare is spotted.  This simple game strengthens focus, visual discrimination and memory skills.

Teaching Through Relevant Examples

What do Wile E. Coyote, E.T., and John Legend in common?  To everyone except me, the answer is "nothing."  But to me, the common thread is that I used each of these as teaching examples in my verbal test prep sessions this week.  Each example is a true testament to how well you can facilitate student understanding just by making relevant connections to things that students already know and/or are interested in.

Wile E. Coyote
In the first session, the SSAT question asked my student to select a synonym for the word "wily"  from a list of five words.  He had no idea what it meant, that is until I asked him if he ever watched the show, "Bugs Bunny."  When he told me that he had, I asked him to name all of the characters.  When he got to the coyote, I asked him to give me his full name:  "Wile E. Coyote."  For those of you who don't remember, Wile E.'s main activities involved devising wild (and always unsuccessful) schemes to catch the Road Runner.  After thinking about Wile E.  and looking again at the answer choices, the student immediately chose the word "crafty."  Guess what?  He was correct!  "Wily" is an adjective that means "crafty or cunning." How many of us knew this when we watched the cartoon years ago?!