Tutoring with IEWâ€

   IEW is taught across homes and schools all around the world. Often it is a teacher or parent who guides students through the IEW approach to writing, but tutors who meet with students just once or twice a week are using IEW to help their students as well. As a private tutor, I find great joy in helping my students achieve their best academically. But tutoring also presents challenges in that sometimes I find I am not able to spend as much time with my students as I would like. Recently we received a question from a tutor who was wondering how to help one of her dyslexic students master his Fix It! Grammar vocabulary words. If you also tutor, perhaps some of my ideas about this situation will be helpful to you as well. Come up with a picture for each word. I like to get input from the student when I can, but sometimes it works best if you come up with your own image (either one that you draw or one that you source online). Create a card for it with the vocabulary word on one side along with the picture illustrating that word. On the reverse side, provide a brief definition along with the word used in a sentence. Use those cards to play games. By the way, we’ve already done this work for you in our theme-based books. All of the vocabulary cards in these books have clever blackline drawings already on them. Build an online set of vocabulary word and definition cards that your student can practice outside of your tutoring sessions. One free service I have found helpful is Quizlet. During your session time, act out some of the words. Adjectives and verbs are especially fun and fairly easy to mimic. Any time you can draw in multi-sensory activities and humor, you have a recipe for learning. Create a word-of-the-day. Challenge your student to use it in conversation at home. I know this isn't something that you can have direct control over, but some students like to be challenged in those ways. Draw in the parents and provide them with the current vocabulary list. Have them post it on the refrigerator, write the words on paper placemats, and use them in their own conversations. I try to keep it to a manageable number of words. Some parents are more amenable to doing things like that than others, but the more the parents are involved, the more likely the students will progress at a quicker pace. Something I did with my own children might be of interest to you and your parents. We would work on our "word of the day" around the dinner table at night. Each of us would make the effort to use the word in our conversation in a relevant way. Since there are five of us in the family, that is five opportunities to hear the word spoken in context. It was a sure way to generate some giggles around the table, too! If you find some of the vocabulary to be not as relevant to your student, omit it. Focus on the words that you do find most relevant. That will cull your list somewhat. Tutors work very hard to help their students succeed. Sometimes our best help comes by remaining pragmatic about all you need to accomplish during your session time. If a student receives no out of session help, it is better to learn one vocabulary word well for that week than none at all because you introduced too many and overwhelmed your student. Using IEW to tutor struggling students can significantly help advance their language arts skills, not only in vocabulary, but also in written expression, recitation, and thinking. And by meeting students at their ability level, they make gains more quickly. It’s a win-win for all involved!    Jennifer Mauser  has always loved reading and writing and received a B.A. in English from the University of Kansas in 1991. Once she and her husband had children, they decided to homeschool, and she put all her training to use in the home. In addition to homeschooling her children, Jennifer teaches IEW classes out of her home, coaches budding writers via  email,  and tutors students who struggle with dyslexia.

How To Apply To College A Mothers Advice

HomeSurviveParentingHow To Apply To College: A Mothers AdviceThis page may contain affiliate links.Oct 23, 2019Being a mother with a child going through the college process is a little like childbirth — while it’s happening it’s soo painful, but when it’s over you look back and think it wasn’t that bad (but it really was!). Parents love to share information about how to apply to college and pay for it. So if you’re a parent with a high school student, gather as much advice as you can. Navigating college admissions and financing is as much a rite of passage for parents as it is for students. Start Learning About The College Process Way Before Your Childs High School Tells You To Since this was my first time through the college planning process, I can’t say I executed well on this piece of advice. Quite honestly, it was the winter of my daughter’s junior year as I sat listening to her school’s parent presentation on â€Å"What’s Important to Colleges† that I realized I was already behind the eight ball in understanding the process (and why didn’t the school give this presentation in the spring of 8th grade, before starting high school). I know every list of advice about college planning includes starting early, but it is so true! By the time your child is in the middle of junior year, their academic and personal profile is almost complete for what will be presented to colleges. For students applying early admissions, GPAs are based on grades 9th to 11th, as are activities, interests, and experiences. As a parent, if you had wanted to better guide your child, you should know more about college admissions starting in 8th grade. This is not to make you (or your child) crazy, but more to make you an informed consumer. Be A Guide in the Admissions Process, Not a Dictator As my daughter and I got more entrenched in the process, I realized this was a perfect opportunity to teach her how to handle major decisions and life events. I wanted to show her how to â€Å"approach† the admissions process in a way that she could learn to approach other important processes and decisions in her life. I’ve always been a â€Å"researcher† and feel most comfortable with having as much information as possible. We discussed what types of information she should research to decide if a school should be included on her list and what resources to consult. We created a master schedule and worked backwards from admissions deadlines to set dates for starting essays, having drafts, filling out the common app, etc. She added dates for registering for tests, requesting transcripts, sending scores, and asking for recommendations. We established a sharedDropboxfolder to make it easier to share files on anything she wanted my husband and me to review. After creating the framework together for handling the process, I moved to the sidelines and let her take responsibility and control for getting things done. She procrastinated and sometimes waited until the last minute, but at least she had an idea of the bigger picture for how to handle a complex process. As a Parent, Make Sure You Have Your Own Support Group Get perspectives from friends who have already gone through the process.As a parent, you need a source to vent to, especially to someone who can really sympathize with what you’re dealing with. My best pieces of advice came from parents who were veterans of college planning. One friend said, â€Å"Don’t nag, just offer your support and when she needs it she’ll ask for it.† Another said, â€Å"Make sure you talk about other topics not related to testing, applications, college visits, essays and what all her friends are doing for college.† The advice was easier said than done, but my friends and sisters helped keep me sane when I thought I might explode with frustration from my daughter’s lack of progress. Be Open About Finances and How You Can Pay For College This is the first MAJOR financial decision your child will be involved with and one that can have lasting implications on their future. Don’t skip this topic because you don’t want to worry them or you’ll do whatever you need to (like take out loans) cover the costs. And don’t wait till junior or senior year to start looking at college costs. T The College Board is a good source to look at college costs including tuition, room and board. Once you see those prices you might head for a glass of wine to relax your nerves. But hopefully this will get yourself motivated to start figuring out whats going on. Find out as much as you can about merit scholarships. If youre a family thats not likely to receive needs-based aid, then finding colleges that are more likely to offer your student merit-based scholarships is an important strategy for finding free money to pay for college. Using the College Free Money Finder is a great start for creating a list of schools that can lower your cost of college by offering your student merit scholarships or tuition discounts. Whichever language you prefer, it makes paying for college a little more affordable. How To Find Colleges That Give The Most Merit Aid Here’s the â€Å"start early† comment again – but it really matters. FAFSA forms are based on tax information from two years prior to when your child will be a freshman. This is called your base year, which is January of your child’s sophomore year to December of their junior year. My child’s school held a financial aid night in January of her senior year – which was too late for anyone to do anything other than fill out the forms and pray. To be a financially responsible parent, I should have started understanding the financial aid process while my daughter was in middle school when I had more time on my side. It’s a Random Process and You Can’t Explain The Outcomes Up until this point in my daughter’s life, she could see the relationship between hard work and getting what she wanted. She’d always been self-motivated and when she spent time studying, she got good grades. When she joined and participated in organizations, she was rewarded with leadership positions. But what we learned in the college process was that having all the â€Å"right† stuff did not equate to getting what she wanted. College Planning is a Family Affair, Not Something a Teen/Young Adult Should Do Alone I think anyone who tells you that your child is old enough to handle this process on his/her own is crazy! Sometimes parents can’t handle it themselves on their own. Educate yourself and your child about the process, embrace the time together, know it’s a roller coaster, expect conflicts, and don’t be afraid to ask for help. The next time I go through this process I may be a little wiser, but because the process is always changing and each child is unique, it doesn’t mean the path will be easier. Having just finished with one child, I need a break, but I look forward to the next!