It’s time to start that first school, new class or senior school. Trepidation abounds for child and parents. Amidst the trauma of the integration process there is the real opportunity for us to consider what it’s all about. As we say goodbye at the front door, bus stop or school gate, time to reflect on how we can best support our offspring and the school.

Schools are incredibly busy places full of timetables and deadlines, but also an introduction to the world of averages. Teachers in state schools are constantly striving to meet performance criteria whilst adjusting to changes in priorities and curriculum. An average class size of 30 means that any child can only receive personal attention from a teacher assessed at 11 minutes per week. If you are on top this is not too bad but if your child is struggling in any subject then the odds start to stack up.

News from the Department of Children Schools and Families reveals that standards of reading, writing and maths amongst seven year children are in long term decline. Despite the focus on literacy and numeracy and a massive £21 billion investment there has been a fall in in basic writing skills and no improvement in reading, speaking and listening, maths and science. The fall is more marked in boys.

The fall in standards leaves many children entering secondary school with a substantial hurdle. Without this essential grounding they really start to struggle and many effectively switch off during the first two years in secondary school as the lag becomes exacerbated.

But there is help for the parent wanting to give their child an extra boost. The advent of modern teaching resources used in schools, predominantly in the form of educational games, are equally usable at home. The opportunity to reinforce the classroom lesson at home by practising the lesson content as a game at home can have a huge boost on a child’s performance and motivation. It also allows the parent to take an interactive role far above the conventional text and exercise book approach.

The resources cover the full range of curriculum subjects including; handwriting games, reading games, alphabet games, maths games

Aliatair Owens
www.keen2learn.co.uk

Investigations by the University of Durham into the effectiveness of the Governments pre school education initiatives – Sure Start, free nursery schooling and Every Child Matters, appear to have had no effect in boosting the development of children entering Primary school. The apparent failure of the 3 billion pound programme that commenced in 2001 has come as a shock to academics. Dr. Christine Merrell of the University of Durham Curriculum, Evaluation and Management Centre who co-authored the report also advised that the sample of 35,000 children failed to reveal why the policies had failed.

Maybe the common denominator is the absence or dilution of parents support in these early years. Although the Governments preschool programme drew on experiences in the USA and Australia it maybe failed to fully engage the considerable mentoring effect of parents.

Time spent at Pre School establishments can help in social interaction and relieve some of the load on a working parent, but the results of the survey indicates we should not rely solely on the learning development of the programme.

Time spent at home on a one to one basis between parent and child, patiently going over pre-school learning games such as numbers and counting games at the pace of the child, develops a learning bond that can remain for the whole schooling programme. The use of modern learning games developed specifically to engage the parent child bond can establish the bedrock of parent child mentoring that can endure for the whole learning journey.

Alistair Owens

When I was at school, marginally after the chalk and slate era, I recall the teaching resources were crude in comparison to the technological advances of today. History was entirely text book driven; maths a combination of text and chalk and talk. Geography was perhaps the most dynamic involving 64mm slide films fed through a low powered projector, rubber stereo printed maps and the highlight of the lesson – Banda printed handouts. Using a spirit based fluid to produce the print in a delightful shade of pink, it was the our first introduction to intoxication, and homework handouts eagerly awaited. Commands to stop sniffing the homework were rife from the teachers, hoping the effect from the spirit would evaporate before any damage done.

My education progressed at a pace commensurate with a lack of motivation, and enthusiasm brought about by the dour teaching ancillaries. I’m sticking to this interpretation despite contradictory end of term reports. My reading skills became frozen when I sat next to a girl destined to be a world class speed reader. Sharing text books with her was a blur and I never had the macho strength to acknowledge she was a page ahead as I finished the first sentence of each page. It did develop my story telling ability as I attempted to fill the gaps with my interpretation of many novels and plays. Acceptable in English perhaps, but the lack of facts left great holes in history, and a string of worrying interpretations of what happened in 1066 etc.

Today there is a fantastic array of educational games to stimulate the young mind. Used extensively at school these valuable resources can also be used to practice the lesson content at home. Supporting the conventional one dimensional text and exercise book home work – mainly seen as a chore by all concerned, these modern games can be in DVD., CD ROM, or game board format ,and most importantly, really stimulating and great fun to child and parent who want to support the classroom progress at home.

And do they work? Reminiscent of John Wyndham’s “Middlewitch Cuckoos” featuring a group of telepathic children (read completely after leaving school!) it is truly amazing how children grasp technology. Have you ever wondered who taught them to use a mobile phone? Certainly not on the mainstream curriculum and have you ever see them reading an instruction book? Yet their proficiency is boundless – along with the need to continually upgrade as they run out of features.

Practicing in their own time and pace using the equipment is the key behind their steep learning curve. Children also learn rapidly from other children especially where equipment is involved, and practice feeds learning retention and the rapid growth in skill.

Designed by educationalists through research into the ideal way to encourage learning, these modern educational resources open the door to a far more practical approach to learning retention. Educational games or educational toys induce a fun element where peers parents and relatives can join in. An hour spent with or by a child on a maths games such as MathsMania that is actually teaching maths or English games such Stig of the Dump which gets the player to read, is worth days of pressure to “do your conventional homework”

Alistair Owens

Back to school looms, and this term represents a change in class, year and even school. The children’s return invokes a period of disruption, adjustment along with opportunity from the natural focus of parents.

Significant research and experience in the USA has produced positive data on the benefits of a structured involvement of parents. A combination of support at home through a range of educational games linked with the classroom activity has produced highly encouraging results. The involvement of parents has widened the knowledge base, provided practical experience of the lesson theory and re-established the natural mentoring skill of the parent.

The following information appears on http://themoreyouknow.com/Parental_Involment_In_School/

How can you help your kids succeed in life?

Get involved in their education. Encourage good work habits and a love for learning. School doesn’t stop when the bell rings.”

Did You Know..

Studies show that family involvement is more important to a child’s school success than how much money the family makes or how much education the parents have. By showing interest in their children’s education, parents and families can spark enthusiasm in them and lead them to a very important understanding — that learning can be enjoyable and rewarding.

About Parental Involvement in Education…

Research shows that children are more likely to succeed in learning when their families actively support them. Family involvement in education gives children a tremendous advantage.

What You Can Do…

Keep things routine. Following a schedule that creates stability and leaves less time for them to get in trouble. Set homework time, dinnertime, TV time, and discuss the day’s activities at specific times.

Keep morale high. Praise their accomplishments, encourage them to explore their interests and talents, and let them know you believe they can succeed.

Keep them reading. Books, magazines, and newspapers should be available to your kids. Talk to your kids about what they are reading, and what they like to read.

In a couple of weeks millions of children will be going back to school. Some will think it is great to be back, but the majority will have mixed feelings, greatest is the fear fir the unknown – the new school ! The move into secondary school, even a new class year will take it toll.

(more…)

Disrupted Classes; a new way to offset lost time through educational learning support at home

One of the core concerns of teachers is the level of disruption that occurs in the average class. Ranging from the severe to a simple case of horseplay at the start of the lesson whilst the class settles down, the effect on the core teaching time can be substantial.

Closely matched to the learning content of the National Curriculum, the lesson length is critical to the teaching programme. Time lost in any lesson is irrecoverable and it is the whole class including the innocent that suffer.

Requiring a sea change in the behaviour pattern of the parents of the disruptive child, a solution is distant. A parent who doesn’t care is difficult to convince and the offspring understandably lack influence and direction and all consequence from their actions. Unfortunately, this hurts even the students who are trying to learn.

Edward Lazear of the Hoover Institution found that, “If, on average, each student disrupts the class just 1 percent of the time, the time available for learning drops to 74 percent for a class size of 30.” Even the best teachers can only do so much, and many have cited disruption as the most stressful element of teaching. It is no wonder that the “teach to test” syndrome is the consequence of schools attempting to grasp some vestige of achievement by streamlining the teaching content. Regrettably this  form of knowledge veneer presents a smart image on the surface but with little depth. It is, however, within the control of other parents to give greater practical support to their own children.

Teaching comprises of a structured introduction and development of the subject matter followed by practice. Increasing emphasis is being placed on the application and relevance of the subject in day to day surrounding outside the school. This is where parent can play a huge part. Modern teaching resources are predominately in the form of educational games. These are ideal for use at home to practice the lesson in the form of maths games, English games and science games that follow the curriculum. The style and content can be applied by parents to practical applications beyond the school environment to increase the level of knowledge.

But the real benefit is the practical involvement of the parent in a programme where the teacher, child and parent can interact in a fun and highly productive manner. Figures from trials in the USA show the potential to improve performance back in school by 25 percent.

An Educational Games Entrepreneur!

The following article first appeared in www.50connect.co.uk and is reproduced with their kind permission

Alistair Owens, managing director of Keen2Learn and winner of the profIT@50 competition, talks to 50Connect.

Alistair Owens, age 58, established his company Keen2Learn in 2006. It sells educational products, giving parents access to the same teaching resources, games, software and activities used in schools to support the National Curriculum. Eight months later he won Intel’s profIT@50competition, a nationwide search for the most promising over 50s entrepreneur.

Setting up your own business and being over 50 are very compatible, according to Alistair.

“It allows you to use all those skills that you may not be aware that you’ve built up over the years. An element of maturity means that you can approach things with a very level head rather than being too impatient. In any start-up business it is a question of sticking with it and I feel somebody over 50 has probably got a lot more determination to stay the course.”

Retirement is some way off for Alistair, currently he prefers being at work.

“Running your own business requires working into the evenings and over the weekends and I’m getting a tremendous buzz from doing that, far more than if I did those sort of hours in employment for a third party.”

His advice for other over 50s hoping to start a business begins with careful planning.

“It’s a question of mapping out the business plan – which you need to do anyway before you can seek advice from accountants and banks – but also to map out the time-scale. We all like to think we’re going to hit the glory target within a few months – the reality takes much longer.”

“Analyse how long you think it will take for a turnaround to be achieved, then look at the resources for you to keep the momentum going based on that, and work out a plan possibly even doubling that timespan, because if you think it’s going to take six months to achieve you really need to budget for a year, and make certain that you’re going to give it your best shot.”

Alistair also explains the pros and cons of working as a family company.

“You can use a rapport whereby your “other half” has an equal share and can give you respective advice. If you had an employee in the early stages he or she would tend to be very reactive, and in the early days you need somebody who’s very proactive, who can speak their mind as to what is possible and what is not, so that is a real benefit that I have with the family being involved. They tell me where they think I’m overstepping the mark or being too adventurous and what is a practical campaign that we can actually go with.”

“The disadvantage is obviously that because of the closeness of the relationship you often have interesting debate – and argument – that you probably wouldn’t get in normal circumstances, so we have our moments as well!”

There is plenty that Alistair enjoys about his job.

“Putting something together on the website, making changes and keeping it refreshed and up to date, because of the dynamics of that I get a real buzz. I also feel that I’m actually putting something back – the product is going to help schoolchildren progress so there’s a fantastic altruistic aspect to it as well. How often do you come up with a commercial proposition that has such a significant benefit to schoolchildren?”

It was this idea that enabled Alistair to win profIT@50, and in turn the competition has helped Alistair’s business.

“It gave us a huge boost because we achieved that award only 8 months after launching the website. In any start-up business it can be very lonely because you’re putting a lot of effort in your own right behind the scenes. The fact that third parties, especially the shape and size of Intel, have actually recognised that we had a very interesting company with huge potential, gave us a significant step forward in confidence.”

As winner, Alistair enjoyed a mentoring session with former Dragon’s Den judge Simon Woodroffe, and another with Intel’s Director of Public Affairs, Tristan Wilkinson. He found both extremely positive.

“Simon Woodroffe is a clear strong thinker, full of ideas, and he has given us a significant amount of advice that we’ve been able to adopt and get the benefit from. It’s like having the equivalent of about five or six pairs of other eyes looking at the business. Tristan Wilkinson has an amazingly clear view of the role that technology will play in the future of communications in education”

Intel also awarded Alistair an £8,000 grant.

“That allowed us to go with a promotional campaign, and helped us towards the redesign of the website. Later Simon introduced us to Rachel Elnaugh, another Dragons Den entrepreneur who gave us further invaluable start up advice”

Overall Alistair would recommend entering an entrepreneur competition.

“It’s the actual process of entering – I had to make a statement where we had to come up with a business plan, what we intended to do and how we were doing it. That was six months after we started, so it was a very good exercise to make you think about why you are different and what your plan actually is.”

Alistair came up with the idea for the business after being a parent with two children at school, and having 20 years of experience in marketing, latterly in the distribution of educational products.

“Going along to parents’ night, the teacher would say how the kids were getting on, and then I’d discover if they’d fallen behind. I always felt isolated from the solution – 15 years ago teaching resources were very much classroom based, and I would have appreciated some means of helping instead of it all being down to the teacher. With technology moving on and the presence of DVDs, CD ROMS and modern teaching resources, I spotted that many of these products being sold to schools for teachers to use also represented a fantastic way for parents to reinforce lessons at home. Now parents are able to respond quickly rather than waiting for that end of term report when it’s too late, they’re able to help their child immediately if he or she starts to slip behind.”

The Keen2Learn website sells the same teaching resources:- maths games English games and science games etc. that are used in schools, that can help children catch up.

“A teacher can tell a parent or grandparent which products to match in order to help a child who’s struggling with the times tables or not too good at spelling. With 30 others in the classroom how many kids will put their hand up to say to the teacher, ‘I didn’t understand that’? The child tends to keep their hand down and muddle on. These are packages they can do at home and increase their confidence and competence. at their own pace”

The idea of using the products at home is that practice makes perfect.
“We retain about 5 percent of what we hear in a classroom, but if you practice the lesson you retain up to 75 percent. Practice to reinforce the lesson is the one key area that the parent can easily adopt, and probably the most difficult for the teacher to incorporate. In a 45 minute lesson there’s probably 20-25 minutes actually available for teaching – if you take in registration, settling the class down, handing out and collecting homework – so the opportunity to practice is fairly limited. At home the child has time to go over the lesson and really get to know it well, and can do it at their own natural pace.”

The products are intended to be easy to use at home for non-teachers, and enable the family to be more interactive with what’s going on at school.

“People feel that they’re not teachers so how can they do this, but because the products are teaching resources all are very straightforward. They’re self-explanatory and there are teaching notes included as to how to handle them. The child will have been introduced to the subject at school so there’s a connection between what the teacher says and what this programme says.”

It doesn’t have to be a big undertaking, little and often is the way.

“Parents and grandparents spend 20 percent more time with children now than 15 years ago, so within the space of a generation there’s a real opportunity to actually reinforce lessons. You don’t have to change your lifestyle dramatically, it just means applying that time in a constructive manner.”

More information can be found at: www.keen2learn.co.uk

By Cherry Butler of www.50connect.co.uk

50Connect is the UK’s largest website for today’s over 50s.

“Studies show that children that have at least one adult that takes an active interest in their education do far better in their school,” said Joe Donzelli, communications director for the Lee County School District in Florida USA which is initiating the campaign the country wide “Be There” campaign to encourage parents to participate in their child’s education.
The biggest concern of parents is being unable to effectively help their child at school. Combined feelings of inadequacy, or not wishing to interfere masks a real opportunity to make a difference. Modern teaching resources from preschool educational toys to classroom games used in schools are now available to support the practice function at home. Seventy five percent of learning retention is archived through practice, a commodity sometimes all too rare at school.
When parents get involved in their child’s education with an educational game they get to know that you’re there for them and, critically, the parent is the child’s number one role model and the most influential teacher that their child will ever have.

The time that a child is awake and paying attention – and ready to learn – isn’t all spent in front of a teacher. From birth to age 18 years 85% of learning hours occur in the home. This time can be used with learning games to encourage a sense of fun. Tamara Chilber, who lives in Fort Myers and author of two books encourages parents to set aside time each day to go over their child’s schoolwork. She said parents must be enthusiastic, because “the love of learning is contagious.” Chilber also recommends getting in contact with teachers regularly by attending parents night, phone or e-mail – where a teacher would probably be more open and honest in responding.

Chilber also lists key methods

*Do not pressure your children. Give them choices academically and use their interests to guide learning time.
*If you sense your child getting frustrated with a particular skill, take a break and come back with a different approach.
*Children learn using visual, auditory or physical, hands-on methods of teaching. Know your child’s learning style and use it when tutoring at home.

Read the full article by Matt Clarke of Naples news
Alistair Owens

www.keen2learn.co.uk

A global issue. The following comment were made by Patrick Manning Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago.
Juhel Browne jbrowne@trinidadexpress.com

Wednesday, August 8th 2007

Prime Minister Patrick Manning says research has shown that parents have a vital role to play in reversing the ongoing trend of girls outperforming boys at school. He did not identify the research data to which he was referring, but Manning urged parents to pay particular attention to the education of their male children.

“Early intervention in the home is therefore most necessary. We must keep a careful eye on the boys as well,” Manning said.

He highlighted the issue as he delivered the feature address at the opening ceremony of the 33rd Biennial Conference of the Caribbean Union of Teachers (CUT) at the Cascadia Hotel, St Ann’s. Manning was speaking less than two months after the results of the Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) examination taken by primary school pupils showed female pupils again outperformed the boys.

The top three performing pupils who sat the exam were all girls. Manning said it was becoming a global phenomenon that girls were outperforming boys at school. “And whilst our education systems must diagnose and prescribe cures for this growing trend, for this growing malaise, parents have a vital role to play in arresting this trend, particularly since the research shows that the gap starts very early in the education process,” he said.

Manning said earlier that while Government acknowledged its responsibility in ensuring education played a critical role in national development, it was a fact that the vast majority of successful students came from homes where parents took a keen interest in the education of their children.

Keen 2 learn responded with the following comment:

The painstaking and highly effective role achieved by parents when their children were toddlers, teaching them for example to walk and talk incurred two major facets. Learning was at the pace of the individual child and the learning process involved constant practice.

As the child goes to school this vital interaction is generally lost. Parents don’t want to interfere, feel inadequate, or are glad to get some free time back! Although teachers introduce the subject effectively the vital practice function, where 75% of learning retention is obtained is the most difficult aspect to achieve at school. Class size, range of ability and the reluctance of children; too shy to ask questions, embarrassed that they do not understand or peer pressure means they can easily slip behind and lose interest. The diligent teacher with some free time in their hectic schedule can help to correct the gap in their understanding but this is often a bridge too far.

Modern teaching resources used in school are predominately in the form of educational games and ideal to practice the lesson at home, critically at the pace of the child. Parental interaction in maths games, word games, science games,  all have an element of “learning in disguise” and not seen as conventional homework. These learning games follow the curriculum from ages 3 – 15 years have a substantial benefit to the child in improving their understanding – and also the parent who can once again becomes pro- active in the schooling process.

Alistair Owens

www.keen2learn.co.uk

All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing. A very true statement concerning the use of the internet. Our job is to make the navigation of the site as easy as possible and ensure that the products are the very best available as educational toys, educational games, puzzle games, maths games and word games, but we also pay great regard to the security of the site. Keen2learn is supported by the most secure systems available. Our site is hosted by Sunflower-Netmedia who operate a dedicated secure server operated solely for the use of their clients. They constantly monitor the code used by each of their clients to verify continuous safe operation.

Additionally there are pre-set times limits on all secure data entry. This means that if you were to enter your name and address as part of the order entry routine – and the front door bell goes, and you can’t come back to your computer for a while, the system will time out for security reasons after 5 minutes and delete your details. It may be annoying having to enter the information again, but we have prevented anyone from illicitly looking at the details.

Your credit card payment is handled by Protx a market leader in credit card security. They use 128 bit encryption which is one of the highest level of data security. Also your credit card details can now have “3D” security. This allows you to set an addition level to the normal security associated with the card number, dates and 3 digit security code. 3D lets you set up your own pin number and password to be linked to the card. You only need to do this once (unless you wan to change the information) and it means your card has another security lock.

We don’t retain any credit transaction details on the site – all this is handled through the banks and Protx security only. For more information please see our help page.

And finally we acknowledge that children can inadvertently become the targets of the unscrupulous web user. To help improve their safety we have linked with Net Intelligence a leader in web safety. This on-line system allows parents to pre-set access and remotely monitor their child usage of the web sites especially chat rooms.

Linda Whitlock, a Roanoke Times columnist in the USA, is an adjunct English professor who lives in Salem.

Home schooling puts parents back in control of their children’s education. That’s not to knock the legions of dedicated  school teachers who do their best to educate kids. But when someone else is educating your child, it’s that person’s philosophy of education and his or her ideas about what’s important — not yours — that govern what’s taught. That and the government , of course.

True, you can try to influence what happens in your kids’ schools and what’s taught in their classrooms. But it’s hard work; it doesn’t always, or even often, work; you run the risk of being labelled a censor or troublemaker; and in the meantime, your kids aren’t being educated the way you’d like. Why put you or your kids through all that when you can educate them at home?

I can hear all the objections now. But I don’t have a college degree. But we can’t do without the second income. But curriculum and materials cost too much. But my kids won’t want to leave their friends.

Valid concerns, all. But you don’t need a college degree to teach your kids. According to the National Home Education Research Institute, “Home school students score above average on achievement tests regardless of their parents’ level of formal education.” And no matter where you think your academic deficiencies lie, abundant resources are available to assist you.

As for doing without that second income, maybe you should take a close look at what it’s costing you to bring in that extra money. After factoring in child care expenses, fast-food runs and transportation and clothing costs, you might find it doesn’t make as big a contribution to the family coffers as you thought.

Curriculum doesn’t have to be expensive either. A public library and the Internet can provide most of what you need. Anything else you can more than likely pick up used at a reasonable price. Besides, it’s not as if there aren’t any costs associated with sending kids to public schools.

Your kids might surprise you, too. It’s just possible they’ll leap at the chance to escape the public school rat race. OK, maybe not. But once they figure out the benefits of home schooling for themselves, they’ll come around.

Education, the home school license plate says, begins at home. If you decide that’s what you want for your kids, it will require sacrifices on the part of the whole family. But achieving a worthwhile goal always does require sacrifice. And that’s not a bad lesson for any of us to learn.

A hot topic at the recent Professional Association of Teachers (PAT) meeting in Harrogate reviewed the supposed dangers of wireless technology used in and around schools. told the PAT annual conference delegates: “Until there is a full inquiry based on both existing evidence and on newly-commissioned research work, the nation’s children are being treated as guinea pigs in a large-scale experiment.”

The Health Protection Agency’s advice – that no evidence has so far shown that Wi-Fi causes health problems – and the panned Panorama documentary into the subject, calling children ‘guinea pigs’ is just going to cause parents and teachers unnecessary worry and confusion. On this score we need the next generation to be aware of the implications of science through greater knowledge of the subject.

Technology can occasionally bite back. Whilst modern technology and materials can prove to hold enormous social and economic benefits we do need to assess their long term impact and avoid the occasional Trojan horse.

We don’t yet know of the lasting consequences of WiFi if any, just as we didn’t know about asbestos – a breakthrough in building materials at the time, white finger from power tools, lung infections from coal dust, skin cancer from sun bathing and sun beds, liver damage from binge drinking, and the big one – global warming.

I am by no means a Luddite but feel we need to be sure as best we can before we go gung ho. Otherwise we could leave a nightmare for the next generation to resolve, in addition to the ones we have already given them!

Alistair Owens