The Learning Success Blog

After 20 years as a maths teacher and tutor, Dr Dion Khlentzos, has a clear view of what's necessary for building students' maths skills.

His top five keys to maths success include building on students' prior knowledge, relating maths to their everyday life and strengthening their motivation and belief in their own maths abilities.  

He discussed the five keys in an interview on The Learning Capacity Podcast where he commented on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), and whether artificial intelligence will reduce the need for many people to understand maths. 

Dr Khlentzos also commented on how technology like Zoom and Skype has enabled maths tutoring to be delivered to students who find it hard to attend face to face sessions with a tutor.

If you have a child with language challenges, reading problems or learning difficulties, and you have sought help from their teacher, speech pathologist or other learning professional, you may have heard some unfamiliar terms.

Words like phonemic awareness, auditory processing, listening comprehension and working memory.

Listen to Episode 96 of The Learning Capacity Podcast for explanations of 16 common terms used in discussions about learning difficulties. Once you understand these, you should be able to have more productive discussions with your child's teacher or therapists.

Ash Bhattacharya describes himself as an “autism advocate & coach”.  He is also a tech savvy entrepreneur who has established an online coaching program for parents of children with autism.

It's called Autism360 Club.

Ash spoke to The Learning Capacity Podcast about how he was inspired to create this service by growing up with a brother on the autism spectrum . And how Autism360 is delivering services to parents in Australia and the USA.

His belief, which underpins the online coaching program, is,  “More than any treatment, diet, or therapy, the perspectives from which you see your child’s Autism will have the greatest impact on him/her.”  

How would you like your child to hear almost 300,000 more words before they start kindy?

They could, if you read them just one book a day.    

That’s the finding from new research published in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics.

Researchers at Ohio State University estimated the number of words a child would hear from various amounts of being read to, up until the age of 5.

Here's how many words kids would hear by the time they are 5 years old:

When Sophie Bawa started teaching theatre in India, her students thought they were going to learn about Bollywood movies.

I met Sophie, a UK theatre teacher, in the Indian state of Rajasthan.

We spoke about her experiences teaching in India, how she was impressed by her very well behaved students' massive respect for education. And the students' mistaken belief that theatre was the same as the loud, colorful, singing and dancing movies produced by the Indian film industry.

We also discussed “human photocopiers”.

Can you imagine what it would be like to suddenly forget your past, to have pounding headaches, dizziness and tremors?

To be unable to find words when you wanted to speak?      

To experience an extreme loss of energy, have your blood pressure drop dangerously low, and find yourself uncomfortably sensitive to sounds and sunlight?  

And to feel that as well as having no past, you have no future? 

Sarah Rasborsek did.  She experienced all that and more when she "fried her brain" and suffered chronic brain inflammation during a triathlon on Queensland's Gold Coast in January 2018.

Should all primary school students be required to qualify for a “Social Media Licence”?

That’s the proposal prominent Australian child psychologist, Michael Carr- Gregg has made to the government.

His idea is the licence would be needed before a student could bring a digital device to school.  Students would qualify for the licence by passing an on-line test with questions including privacy, cyber-bullying and how to spot a stranger online.

Great idea, but is it sufficient?

How should you dress to get the job you want?  Does it even matter much what you wear for a job interview? 

This is an important question for young people making the transition from school or tertiary studies to the workforce. And perhaps going to their first ever job interview.

To get some answers to these questions I spoke with award-winning stylist, Bernadette Payne. 

Bernadette focuses on educating men and women about how their choice of clothes and personal styling can make important contributions to their success.

Her advice may be helpful if your child is attending interviews for jobs or even volunteer positions.

Are you a recent school leaver?  Waiting for your results? Are you hoping for a university offer?

In my last article, How to Make Career Decisions at the End of Secondary School, I discussed a number of things Year 12 students needed to consider relating to their future.  By their “future”, I’m not talking about the rest of their lives,but I certainly am talking about the next stage of their lives – that is, the next study stage, and the working stage to which that naturally leads. 

So I’m looking at a period of time up to ten years out. 

After the HSC exams and registering preferences with your tertiary admissions centre (UAC, VTAC, QTAC etc), it’s time to take a break.  Hopefully, you have done, or are doing that. 

How do young people, school leavers, and those who have completed post-secondary school education figure out what they want to do as a career? How do they succeed in the interviews for the job they want?  And how can they learn some of the people skills to help them succeed in their workplace?

There is an interesting skill that may help. Internationally recognized facial profiling authority, Alan Stevens spoke to the Learning Capacity Podcast and discussed the course he has developed for school leavers transitioning to work. And he explains why the Pinocchio nose story may not be totally fictitious.