The term “learning and attention issues” covers a wide range of challenges kids may face in school, at home and in the community. It includes all children who are struggling — whether their issues have been formally identified or not. Learning and attention issues are brain-based difficulties, and they often run in families. Find resources that can help kids be successful in school and in life!
Learn the basics about autism spectrum disorder (ASD): what it is, signs and symptoms, strengths and abilities, risk factors, diagnosing ASD, the value of early intervention, and treatment and therapies that can help children and their families.
The identification of a child with dyslexia is a difficult process, but there are ways that parents and teachers can learn more about the reading difficulty and support the child’s learning.
Although we may not be aware of it, we do not skip over words, read print selectively, or recognize words by sampling a few letters of the print, as whole language theorists proposed in the 1970s. Reading is accomplished with letter-by-letter processing of the word.
Knowledge does much more than just help students hone their thinking skills: It actually makes learning easier. Knowledge is not only cumulative, it grows exponentially. Those with a rich base of factual knowledge find it easier to learn more — the rich get richer.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Ophthalmology, and the Council on Children with Disabilities published a statement summarizing what is currently known about visual problems and dyslexia. The statement also covers what treatments are and are not recommended when diagnosing and treating vision problems, learning disabilities, and dyslexia.
We all use strategies throughout our day to remember the variety of facts and ideas we need to retain. It is valuable for teachers, therapists, and parents to understand the memory process in order to become better equipped to help our students understand and use strategies.
One potential way of fostering empathy in young children is through picturebooks. Learn about empathy, theory of mind, the development of emotional intelligence, and the role of picturebooks in the classroom.
School is not the only arena in which children’s minds need to be nurtured and expanded. Equally vital is the kind of education and brain building that a student undergoes at home.
As we discover more about how students learn and how different minds learn differently, our schools have a golden opportunity to increase the percentage of their students who experience true academic success.
Reading instruction changes the brain. New before- and after- images that show what happens to children’s brains after they get systematic, research-based reading instruction show that the right teaching methods can actually normalize brain function and thereby improve a child’s reading skills.
How does the mind work — and how does it learn? Teachers’ instructional decisions are based on a mix of theories learned in teacher education, trial and error, craft knowledge, and gut instinct. Such gut knowledge often serves us well, but is there anything sturdier to rely on?
Students often think they understand a body of material and, believing that they know it, stop trying to learn more. But come test time, it turns out they really don’t know the material very well at all. Can cognitive science tell us anything about why students are commonly mistaken about what they know and don’t know? Are there any strategies teachers can use to help students better estimate what they know?
