Better Tuition

Half term activities recommended by the Better Tuition Centre

The Better Tuition centre will be closed for rest, recuperation and relaxation over half term (23^rd – 30^th October 2011) – even Urmston’s top tutors need the occasional rest – but before we go we’d like to leave you with a few ideas for half term activities that will engage the brain, imagination and attention of your young learner.

First of all, Greater Manchester is teeming with opportunities to boffinise your junior scientists this half term, as the Manchester Science Festival is running for the fifth year.  There are hundreds of events, from lectures about Harry Potter-style invisibility cloaking to a celebration of trees.

If you have always wanted to meet or be a mad scientist, we suggest Mad Science (at various locations).  This promises a science show with an Olympic Science theme to celebrate London 2012 and, of course, the odd explosion! Following that, hands-on workshops* allow kids and grown-ups alike to don their goggles to carry out cool chemical reactions. You can even make and take home your very own Mad Science Slime!  This is a FREE event, but whilst there is room for everyone at the show, only the first 60 to arrive will get tickets to the workshop.

There’s too much to list here, so why not visit the Manchester Science Festival website here?

Over at the Imperial War Museum of the North, the focus is on the Ministry of Food’s role in World War II: find out why carrots were eaten on lolly sticks, parsnips were used instead of pineapples, and handle real artefacts each afternoon.  More details here. 

Closer to Better Tuition’s office, indeed just down the road, you will find Urmston Bookshop, which runs various fun activities throughout the year.  Over half term there will be a Halloween story and craft session for children aged 3 – 7 years.  The cost is £4 and places must be booked.

If you want to find some activities closer to home, why not create your own autumn project – collect leaves, create a scrapbook, and find out some science and maths facts at the same time – there is great information about the fascinating Fibonacci sequence here and here.  You can also look at our useful links section: there you will find a massive range of fun and engaging learning activities, including games.

Whatever you’re doing this half term, Better Tuition wishes you a relaxing, fun time.  We reopen on Monday, 31^st October and we hope to see you soon!

Image: Tom Curtis / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Nearly one tenth of our young people are NEETs

The dismal news that the UK currently has more NEETs than any other nation in the developed world bar the US has to be a wake-up call for those who care about our young people.  Almost one in ten of our young people is not in education, employment or training (hence the acronym NEET).

Coupled with the news that many British employers claim that school leavers and recent graduates lack the necessary skills in literacy and numeracy, whilst also finding punctuality a challenge, this must give us all pause for thought.

Whatever the reason for this state of affairs, one thing is clear: in spite of depressing unemployment figures, young people with good literacy and numeracy skills are in demand in the workplace.  Working on numeracy and literacy, as well as life skills such as punctuality and good manners, can give your child a head start.

Here are our tips:

Even if you don’t have a lot of time to spend on helping your child with their homework, just taking an interest shows them that education and learning are important.

Keeping on top of homework develops organisational skills they can one day use to good effect in the workplace.

Making sure their attendance at school is as near to perfect as possible gets them into the routine of daily, purposeful activity.

Encouraging your child to focus on short, medium and long-term goals will ensure they continually aim to develop their skills.

If you want to boost your child’s skills in the core subjects, contact us and find out how we can help. 

Not much is being done for NEETs: the more creative solutions have fallen to recessionary cuts.  If you are a NEET or you know a NEET who could do with a boost or help to focus on the future, all sorts of help and advice can be found on the Direct Gov website.

Further reading

Image: graur codrin / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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BBC Apprentice 2010 winner Stella English has been told her contract will not be renewed.

The news that 2010 Apprentice winner Stella English has been fired by Alan Sugar comes as a surprise, but I have a feeling she’ll take it in her stride.  From burning the toast to botching our driving tests (four times in my case), failure is something we adults cope with on a daily basis – some better than others. 

The hardest failures of all to deal with are those of our children.  If your son comes last in every Sports Day race or your daughter just misses a much-wanted C grade at GCSE, it’s heart-wrenching.  As adults we know that to fail is not to become a failure – it just means you haven’t succeeded yet, but the challenge for us is to communicate this to the young people in our care.

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

When I was at school and university I never failed a single thing.  The first exam failure I experienced was in my thirties when I just couldn’t get through my driving test.  Let’s just say that reversing around a corner doesn’t come easily to everyone!  The only way I could make myself carry on trying was to book another test the moment I got home from each failure.  That gave me something to focus on; to look forward to, rather than dwelling on the test that was already behind me.  Help your child to refocus their attention by finding out the dates of resits, etc. and work out a plan to help them achieve their goal.

As Winston Churchill said, “Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.”

I’d like to write a novel, climb Kilimanjaro and achieve world peace by Christmas, but I have to be realistic and accept that I’ll be lucky to finish this blog post.  Are your child’s goals realistic?  If their teachers predict a GCSE grade E, they are highly unlikely to achieve a grade A, but they could still aim for a C grade.  If they want to play football for Manchester United/ City, shouldn’t they first aim to be picked to play for the school team? 

 Get SMART

Young people (actually, I think this applies to everyone) respond well to SMART targets: S-pecific, M-easureable, A-ttainable, R-ealistic, T-ime-bound.  So being able to go from National Curriculum Level 3b to Level 4b within twelve months would be a suitable SMART target for most Key Stage 2 students; “getting really good at sport” wouldn’t be a SMART target at all (which sport?  What does ‘good’ mean?  When is the deadline?).

 While we are on the subject of sport, I’ll leave you with a quote from Michael Jordan, the world’s most successful basketball player and one of the most successful sportspersons of all time:  “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Image: arztsamui / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Education Secretary Michael Gove has announced his desire to see foreign languages taught in schools from age five.  As a foreign language fan myself – I speak French, German and occasional Spanish – I emphatically agree that we need urgently to address our country’s dismal performance in this area.  In common with our Eurovision Song Contest entries, our attempts to learn languages lead us straight to the bottom of the charts.

Learning a foreign language broadens horizons by offering a practical, portable skillset, teaching children about other cultures and ultimately opening up career opportunities outside the UK.  Is that not enough?  OK, here’s more: learning a foreign language boosts the brain’s processing speed, strengthens synapses, and expands or creates functional networks within the brain.  In other words, learning a foreign language builds a better brain.

Unfortunately, Gove’s functional networks were on a go-slow the day he came up with his plan to infuse the nation’s children with je-ne-sais-quoi because it turns out to be not so much a considered piece of policy as a piece of empty, teacher-beating rhetoric.

Who is going to be teaching these foreign languages?  We don’t have enough trained teachers with the necessary foreign language knowledge.  Before the millennium, when FL teachers were in short supply, if you had been to Alicante for a short break and could stutter out the phrase, “No hablo español,” you were given your very own Spanish dictionary and timetabled for GCSE Spanish four times a week.  The current primary initiative has, in Trafford anyway, resulted in language learning being led by non-teachers in the form of foreign assistants, who are undertrained and do not have the skillset necessary to devise and develop a programme of learning.

Gove intends to extend the school day by up to an hour per day in order to deliver his vision of shiny, happy language learners across the nation.No money has been committed to Gove’s scheme/ scam (delete as per political preference), so Gove plans to make teachers do it for free!  Yes, when money is scarce, simply get some free work from the professionals (doesn’t that make them amateurs?). 

Last year the government itself found that primary school teachers work a 50 hour week on average .  Never mind the blah about copious holidays; if you work 50 hours per week during term time, that averages nearly 39 hours per week EVERY SINGLE WEEK OF THE YEAR, which in effect cancels out nearly all their holidays.  So these are the people Gove is going to make work significantly harder – for free – because young teachers, “want to work as long as it takes to help children succeed,” in contrast, he says, to “staffroom voices saying ‘don’t go the extra mile’. 

This is hugely insulting to thousands of experienced teachers.  Let me tell you, full time classroom teaching is very, very strenuous: by Friday afternoon, you feel as though you have run a marathon.  Adding to the workload in a profession that comes fourth in the stressful jobs league table  is not sustainable.  I hope it goes without saying that teachers are, as a profession, completely committed to their pupils’ success. 

So to conclude then, Michael Gove wants children to learn foreign languages from teachers who don’t speak any and are exhausted, overworked and doing it for free.  Bonne chance, Mr Gove, bonne chance.

Image”>http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=2125″>Image: photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Better breakfasts boost brainpower

 

 

Few parents question that breakfast is beneficial, but getting kids to eat a decent amount before school can be tough.  If you have ever questioned how a healthy breakfast can boost school performance, read this article to find out how children who eat porridge for breakfast get better results.

Better Tuition has researched the best breakfast choices for your child, so here is our advice:

1.  Make sure you can offer a variety of healthy breakfasts (NEVER sugar-based – see our previous post on morning routines), so that your child can have a degree of choice.  If the mornings are too rushed for choosing, ask them to choose the night before.

2.  I’m all for multi-tasking and efficient time management, so if your child often runs out of time for breakfast, why not make it portable?  Wholegrain toast or oatcakes, nut butter (cashew, almond or peanut butter are all great) and a banana should keep them going and provide vital nutrients (but don’t let them take nut butter into school, in case other children are allergic – they should also wash their hands when they get there). 

3.  If your child is very resistant to eating in the mornings, make a fresh fruit smoothie.  Just pop some bananas, berries (frozen is fine), peaches, plums or any other soft fruit into the blender and whizz it up in seconds.  It’s not a completely adequate breakfast but it is very nourishing and will keep them hydrated.  Do add a handful of oats if you can get away with it.  You can buy smoothies ready made but freshly made retains more nutrients and is far cheaper.

4.  Make sure your child understands why it’s important to eat breakfast.  Even a very young child can understand that eating breakfast helps them to concentrate and learn in class and gives them energy to play with their friends.  Most children will make an effort to eat breakfast once they understand the benefits.

5.  If your child is a mini-eco warrior, show them www.lovefoodhatewaste.com.  Up to 1/3 of the food we buy is wasted with serious consequences for the environment.  It is thought that if all of us in the UK stopped wasting food that could have been eaten it would have the same environmental benefit as taking 1 in 4 cars off the road.  Help your child to see eating breakfast as recycling with benefits and they’ll cheerfully shovel porridge in no time!

6.  When all else fails, a star chart works wonders!  Give them a time limit of, say 15  minutes in which to eat all (or most of) their breakfast.  Offer an appropriate reward for a full school week of finished breakfasts, but don’t be tempted to undo all your good work by taking them to a fast food outlet for some deep fried cholesterol.  Home made pancakes with maple syrup as a weekend breakfast is a brilliant treat, but if time is an issue why not offer a non-food reward?

For further reading,  this government study looks at several studies across the world on the effect of breakfast and other nutritional factors on education performance. 

We are all so rushed in the morning that we don’t have time to focus on breakfast but any teacher will tell you the difference a healthy breakfast makes to learning capacity is vast, so please try it for a month and see how your child improves.

Image: photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net