The Learning Success Blog

Teaching is a responsible profession, where you act as a candelabrum for your students and guide them on the path of learning. Your sense of responsibility fuels your enthusiasm to teach your students in the best manner. So, every morning you enter your classroom enthusiastically, ready to serve your students.

But, many times, your enthusiasm can wither away within moments as you find your students not showing the desired interest in learning, despite your best efforts to teach them well. You feel disheartened when you watch them engaging in mischief, lacking attention and creating noise even when you are teaching.

Under such circumstances, you often engage in self-doubt and start thinking that you lack appropriate teaching calibre. However, this is not true! In almost every school and every classroom, teachers face similar problems from their students. So, cheer up, you are a great teacher, and deep inside your heart, you know that too!

Are we safe? This is the biggest question the pandemic makes us ask every time we step out of our house. We doubt every person we meet and surface we touch, are they the carrier of the deadly infection- Covid-19 ? This doubt stimulates us to take the best safety precautions for ourselves.

But, if you are a teacher, you’ll have to take care of your own safety as well as your students’ safety as the schools begin to reopen in some parts of the world. Although this is going to be a really challenging task, some effective tips can make it simpler for you.

We know that children are notorious, they are always making plans to break the rules you make. So, making rules for them is not going to be of help in this situation. You’ll have to make some special arrangements so that your students have no choice but to follow every safety precaution. These tips provide you with some arrangements that you can make in your classroom and ensure safe learning for your students. Now, let’s discuss them one by one:

Is your smart phone making you less smart?

According to a survey of 3600 people our digital devices like smartphones, tablets, and computers are degrading our ability to remember. They are giving us “digital amnesia”.

The survey by Panda Security found, for example, that over 82 percent of parents wouldn’t be able to remember their children’s phone number if they had to. 

See the survey report here.

Today’s entrepreneurs are starting businesses at a young age, and some have managed to establish their own companies while they’re still in primary school.

There’s Maya Penn, who successfully launched a sustainable jewellery business called Maya’s Ideas when she was just eight years old.

Then there’s seven-year-old Ryan, who reportedly made $31 million online due to the success of his YouTube channel RyanToys Review. These kids prove that age doesn’t equal success as they were able to turn their ideas into thriving businesses.

If your child is thinking about launching their own business venture, you’ll need to teach them how to properly plan and manage it so their efforts will be rewarded in the future.

Moreover, they’ll need to develop certain skills in order to make it in the competitive business world. Here’s a guide to teach children about entrepreneurship.

As an educator who specialised in teaching children to read, I tried lots of different methods. Some worked with some children and some worked with others but there wasn’t one that I could say was super effective.

For 3 years I ran a reading group before school which we called Early Birds for the children who needed more help with literacy. We staffed the program with parents and volunteers and every morning before school we would see up to 15 or 16 children for a twenty-minute lesson, one on one. And when we did that, we started to see the children make progress in their reading. 

Since most learning is now moving into the digital age, teaching your kids about cybersecurity is a must. Here are some very real reasons why!

Identity Theft

Over 1 million children had their identities stolen, and that number is growing exponentially, according to a Javelin Strategy & Research survey. Children are often specifically targeted by hackers and identity thieves, since kids tend to have clear credit records compared to adults.

Once criminals obtain enough information to open up a bank account in your child’s name, they go on to rack up mountains of debt. To prevent this from happening to your child, it’s critical that they are taught basic cybersecurity protocols that prevent identity theft by not talking to strangers online or giving out sensitive personal information via email or text.

Malware and Viruses

Australians are enamoured with video games and a recent survey has shown that more than two thirds of the population are avid gamers. While some people believe that gaming is just a shallow way to pass the time, 60 percent of those who were polled say that playing video games can be beneficial for students.

And over 50 percent said that their children use games for school purposes. Apart from being an interactive and fun way to learn, video games can also have surprising benefits for kids as they can pick up positive values and develop new skills from gaming.

Here are the valuable lessons your child can learn from playing video games.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if all the students you teach would pay attention and more easily “get” what you are teaching them?

That’s impossible, you might say. Perhaps it is, but it’s not impossible to improve the attention and ability to learn for every one of your students. Listen to this podcast “Student Learning Capacity – The Missing Link in Education” to find out how.

Welcome to the concept of being able to change the learning capacity of students

How often do some of your students:

• Find it hard to pay attention to your teaching?

• Struggle to remember what you taught?

• Seem to be unable to keep up with the pace of your instructions or the classroom discussions?

How much more could you enjoy teaching if these were less of an issue?

Something had to be done!

So, with a vote of 92-3 the Alabama state parliament enacted the Alabama Literacy Act beginning in 2020 to ensure that every child was reading at grade level by Year 3.

They nominated a task force to recommend a comprehensive core reading program and assessments to be used by local schools and that job fell to Tim Solley.

Solley is a kindly, bespectacled, grey-haired man who looks like he could be your kid’s soccer coach. In fact, he is a leading educational advocate and the Assistant Superintendent of the Madison School District which comprises 17 different schools.

Solley takes up the story:

A lack of financial literacy can have major consequences that last a lifetime, yet around 50% of Australians struggle with financial literacy as reported in a Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey. The problem is more pronounced in women than in men.

In the survey, 50% of men obtained a 5/5 score when asked five basic financial questions, while only 35% of women achieve this score. Financial literacy is not something that should be left until after school or university, since many Australians will have to make decisions on aspects such as student loans when they are young.

How can you help your child build a good financial base so they can be aware of the consequences of issues like the type of loans they take or the importance of paying taxes when they are due?