Parlez vous ... sprechen zie?

You've probably seen the kiosks in your local mall with those bright yellow boxes.  Have you ever stopped and perused the program? 

You don't need to wait for your students to reach high school to introduce foreign language studies.  Rosetta Stone incorporates a dynamic immersion approach to teach students using the audio and visual capabilities of your computer.  A student that can comfortably handle a mouse, can begin work with the simpler lessons, often as young as 6 years old.  Older students can progress into written lessons and pronunciation practice with native speakers guiding the lessons.

So, Mom or Dad, have you ever dreamed of learning to speak another language?

There was a time when I thought I didn't have need to learn another language, but then I married an Army officer and we were stationed in Europe.  Learning at least the basic portions of a new language, or two, was vital then.  Nowadays, you don't need to anticipate traveling out of the country to find learning another language beneficial.  There are opportunities to speak other languages in everyday circumstances.  You may choose to learn the same language that your children are learning, or venture into another language that interests you.  With Rosetta Stone, there are over 30 languages from which you can choose. and all of them are available through Sonlight Curriculum.

Why would you want to purchase your Rosetta Stone program from Sonlight?  Well, there's a significant difference between the program that you would purchase at the mall kiosk and the one that is offered by Sonlight?  Sonlight offers the Homeschool edition, which includes the Student Management System at no additional cost, and allows you to track multiple students' progress through the lessons.

The Student Management System is a key feature, but now there's an even more exciting feature that I want to share.  Rosetta Stone is available at a significant savings through June 11th!  How significant is the savings?  Well, I'd call more than 1/3 off a significant savings, wouldn't you?

Rosetta Stone languages are offered in multiple levels, and you can purchase these levels in bundles of 1 to 5 sets, with the greatest savings available when you purchase all 5 sets of one language.

      Any individual level is $159 (marked down from $249-299 - you save $140!)
      Level 1-2 sets are $259 (marked down from $449 - you save $190!)
      Level 1-3 sets are $359 (marked down from $579 - you save $220)
      Level 1-5 sets are $459 (marked down from $749 - you save a whopping $290)

These prices are the lowest I've seen on Rosetta Stone in years, and Sonlight is offering not only these great prices but also free shipping and no sales tax if you live anywhere but Colorado or Indiana.  That adds a lot more to the savings.

If you've ever thought of exploring a new language, now's the time to look into Rosetta Stone.  Wouldn't this make a great adventure for the whole family to embark on this summer? What's it going to be ... Francais, Deutsch, Espanol, or something more unique?  There's a world of language waiting for you in a little yellow box.

Kelly

Spring Is Coming

For many of us, this time of year can be a bit of a struggle. You may be feeling cabin fever if your yard is still buried under piles of snow, or you are wallowing in rain-soaked fields. Whatever your outside environment may be, many homeschoolers find their vision blurred and their strength waning at this time of year. 

Hang in there!  Spring is coming and the finish line for this school year is almost within reach.  So what do you do to get over the hump?

First of all, take a break from academics.  Declare a game day, if you can't get out of the house, or take a field trip if you can escape.  You can play educational games, but the importance is PLAY.  Pack a picnic and eat it in the family room or cook hotdogs in the fireplace or woodburning stove.  Step outside your "norm" for a day or two to reset your mind.

Take the opportunity to consider your school year.  What has worked?  What is lacking?  In what areas do each of your children still need focused help?  These will be the basis for planning for next year, and it's helpful to take notes while it is fresh in your mind.  If your local homeschool convention is coming soon, look in the right column of this blog to find my Convention Survival Guide.  Go to your convention with a plan and purpose so that you are able to come away with your needs met rather than just being tossed to and fro by a full schedule of speakers and an equally full lineup of vendors in the exhibit hall.

And have you begun to feel the growing anticipation of a new Sonlight Curriculum catalog?  It won't be long before that valuable resource will arrive in your mailbox.  I'll let you in on a secret ... the catalog will be available online before it shows up in print.  If you a really eager to see what's coming for this year, keep an eye on the Sonlight website.

Questions - aren't there always?  You can contact me at klutman@sonlight.com and I will be glad to provide answers.

Multitasking - Fact or Fiction

In our fast-paced, often overloaded society, it seems that one's ability to multitask is a vital skill.  I have generally seen this skill most often demonstrated by mothers, haven't you?  Let's face it, just getting started in the morning has Mom juggling wakeup times, breakfast preparation and supervision, ensuring the children have dressed themselves (unless Mom had to do that, too) appropriately and made their beds, answering that first phone call of the day, and thinking of the tasks that must be accomplished and appointments that must be kept during the day....and that's just the general stuff!

John Medina, in his book Brain Rules, definitively states that the brain cannot multitask.  What?! That was my response when reading the statement, so I naturally had to read on in an attempt to find a weakness in his defense of the statement.  While Medina notes that at one level the brain can multitask - noting that we can walk and talk at the same time, that pianists can play two different arrangements with their left and right hands, that your heart continues to beat while you read a book, etc. - he clarifies his definition of multitasking by stating that "we are biologically incapable of processing attention-rich inputs simultaneously."  Hmmmm ... now I have to focus on processing this information.

Medina demonstrates his point with the example of a teenager who is determined to write a paper while keeping his cellphone and instant messenger open to receive messages from friends.  Look at the steps that the brain follows in this effort:

1. Shift alert - as the student sits down to write the paper the brain signals an attention shift.
2. Rule activation for task - the brain sends out a search query to find the neurons capable of providing the information needed to write the paper, and then activates those neurons.
3. Disengagement - receives audible alert of an IM (instant message) from a friend.  Since different neurons are required for interacting with that friend, the brain signals a shift of attention.
4. Rule activation for task - the brain sends out a search query to find the neurons capable of writing to that friend and activates them.

These 4 steps must occur in sequence each time the student switches from one activity to another.  Have you ever counted how many IMs and cell messages can be exchanged between just two friends in a given hour - and my teens often carried on conversations with multiple friends at the same time?  No wonder that school assignment or paper did not get accomplished very efficiently!  Note to self after reading this chapter:  establish periods of time during the school day when the IM and cell phone are shut off so that my student can better focus on one task, and then try not to be another source of distraction for him while he is working.

But I can still hear the gears turning in many of your minds - ha!  I've gotten your attention focused!  You are likely thinking that you see many people multitasking with apparent efficiency.  How does that work?  Medina says that those who appear to be good at multitasking actually have good working memories which are capable of paying attention to several inputs at once.  They still need to process each of these inputs and determine what action is warranted for each.  If the inputs involve tasks with which the person is familiar, then switching between related inputs and tasks can be done more efficiently.  Yet, let's face it, we each have our limits, and whatever your capabilities may be ... your brain still needs a break!

Yes, we can be successful in processing multiple inputs and performing accordingly, but we can't function that way in all circumstances.  Help your children understand this important aspect of brain function and their need to establish opportunities to focus on one topic, and you should find your homeschooling efforts will be more efficient and less stressful.

Kelly

Sleep - Anything But 'Down' Time

Sleep.  As children we may avoid it, certain that we might miss out on something, but as adults we crave the sleep that seems to be stolen by our commitments and responsibilities.  Why is sleep so important to our bodies, and what might it have to do with learning?  As I continue to work through John Medina's Brain Rules, I can tell you more than I knew before.

You may think that our body is "in neutral" when we are sleeping, yet science has demonstrated that, for the majority of the time that we are sleeping, that is not the case.  In fact, the only time you can observe a real resting period for the brain is in the deepest parts of what is called non-REM sleep, which takes up only about 20% of the total sleep cycle.  While your body may appear to be resting, the brain is not resting at all.

Now most people report that sleep is restorative, and note that if they don't get enough sleep, they don't think as well.  In the mid-1960s, a high school student did a science-fair project involving his not sleeping for 11 straight days and observing what happened.  To sum the experiment up, his brain began to malfunction - he became irritable, forgetful, nauseous, not surprisingly tired, and even suffered many symptoms similar to Alzheimer's disease.  All because of lack of sleep. 

One of the early discoveries in the area of sleep science was the fact that our bodies are locked in a daily warfare between the circadian arousal system (wakefulness) and the homeostatic sleep drive (you guessed it, sleepiness).  Internal and external forces help regulate the conflict, defining both the amount of sleep we need and the amount of sleep we get.  Scientific literature has labeled  people with different sleep rhythms as larks (early risers who are most productive around noon), owls (those who are most alert around 6 p.m.), and hummingbirds (the other 70% of the population who vary between those time ranges).  Though it is obvious that people's preferred sleep times can vary, just how much sleep an individual needs has not been concluded.  Sleep schedules are quite dynamic - changing with age, with gender, with pregnancy and with puberty. 

Most of us would agree that infants and young children need a nap to get them through the day, but science has found that short, regular naps can greatly benefit adults as well.  President Lyndon Johnson routinely closed his office door and took a 30-minute nap, which he said gave him the stamina to meet the demands of his position.  May seem odd to us, but consider that a "siesta" is part of many cultures.  Whether you actively pursue a nap each day or not, numerous studies have demonstrated that even a brief nap can improve performance by at least 30%.  Did you need a reason to take a break?

I think it's safe to say that most of us have heard the phrase "let's sleep on it."  What's behind the concept?  Can ordinary sleep benefit learning?  Yes!  Sleep has been shown to enhance tasks that involve visual texture discrimination, motor adaptations, and motor sequencing.  The learning that appears to be most sensitive to sleep improvement is that which involves learning a procedure, but consolidation of all learning and experiences in the day takes place the night after they occurred.

Lack of sleep hurts learning.  In fact, a highly successful student can be set up for an academic fall just by adjusting the number of hours he or she sleeps.  Cumulative losses of sleep are difficult to make up, and the physiological effects are staggering.  When sleep is restricted to 6 or less hours per night for just 5 nights, cognitive performance will match that of a person suffering from 48 hours of continual sleep deprivation.  When people become sleep-deprived, their body's ability to utilize the food they are consuming falls by about one-third - causing the body to crave more food, and adding weight gain and accelerated aging to the effects.

Does this information validate some of your innate understanding of sleep, or have you encountered information that contradicts your expectations? Are you a parent like me whose "owl" child seems to function in another dimension from the rest of the family?  How do you accommodate his individual rhythm and keep the whole family working together?  I chose the route of compromise - planning the activities that we would do together for late morning or afternoon, and allowing my "owl" to focus on his independent school work in the evening when he was most alert.  There were occasions where an external influence required him to be involved earlier than he preferred, but that was only when I had no control over the scheduling.  It took some adjustment for all concerned, yet the outcome was beneficial.

One thing is for certain ... I now have a greater appreciation for the importance of sleep, both for myself and my family.  I wish you pleasant dreams and effective learning!

Kelly

Remember to Repeat

Wouldn't it be a delight if our brains worked like a cassette tape recorder?  Do you remember those handy gadgets.  All you needed to do was put a blank cassette into the machine, press record and talk or sing into the microphone.  Then rewind and press play, and you heard a recording of what you had done.  While it might seem that it would be great to have it work that easily, our brains are, in fact, capable of so much more than the old cassette recorder.  The key is knowing how to maximize its potential.

That's what I'm hoping to share in this series of blog posts as I read John Medina's book, Brain Rules.  I can't say that I agree with his whole perspective - he works from an evolution-focused foundation - but many of his insights have been extremely enlightening.

We last talked about short-term memory and the fact that repeating information at regular intervals would enhance the encoding of that information.  Likewise, receiving that information in a variety of ways - through multiple senses - would provide more intricate and lasting encoding.  The key phrase for short-term memory was Repeat to Remember.

Next we will look at long-term memory, for which the key phrase is Remember to Repeat.

New memory traces - often referred to as working memory - are flexible, subject to amendment, and at great risk for extinction.  Converting this working memory into long-term storage is called consolidation.  Just like short-term memory, the fixative for long-term memory is repetition at regular intervals.  Thinking or talking about an event immediately after it happens greatly enhances memory.  Putting thoughts into your own words is another beneficial action.  Both are incorporated in the educational exercise of narration, where the student may read or listen to a passage or chapter in a book, and is then asked to recount the information in their own words.  Doing so right after the initial exposure is effective, and then repeating the information again - telling Dad at dinner, or sharing it with someone later in the day - will further fix the information in place.

There are auditory and visual components to memory, but when both can be incorporated as the information is first processed, the memory traces are more intricate and more easily retrieved at a later time.  The brain's retrieval systems seem to undergo a gradual shift from specific and detailed reproductions of information to more general and abstracted recall.  Regular re-exposure to the information will help to keep the memories more detailed.

Harvard phychology professor, Dan Schacter, tells his students, "If you have only one week to study for a final and only ten times when you can hit the subject, it is better to space out the ten repetitions during the week than squeeze them all together."  Late night, last minute cramming sessions are not effective.  Rather we learn here that it is better to revisit the information regularly between the time it is introduced and the time that retrieval is needed (test day) in order to ensure that retrieval will be as vivid as possible.

As teachers, we can seek to pace the information that we are giving to our students so that we are incorporating new information gradually and repeating it at timed intervals, rather than bombarding our students' brains with a constant flow of new information and minimal opportunities to revisit and explore deeper the concepts that were recently introduced.

For enhanced memory function ... Repeat to Remember, and Remember to Repeat.

Kelly

Repeat to Remember

One of the primary functions associated with the brain is memory, and this is a key function for students and educators. Knowing a little more about how the brain stores information may help you in your efforts to teach your children.

The brain has different types of memory systems that fall into two categories - those memories that involve conscious awareness and those that are voluntary.  Once you have learned how to ride a bike, recalling the skill at a later time does not generally require a conscious effort.  However, remembering a telephone number does require a conscious effort.  This type of memory is what we would call a declarative memory - involving something you declare - and it is the type about which researchers have learned the most.  Declarative memory involves encoding, storage, retrieval and even forgetting.

Most people believe that the brain is a lot like a recording device where learning is based on pushing the record button, and remember is similar to pushing the playback button.  But it really isn't that simple.  There are several types of encoding, which involve all of our senses, and their processing centers are scattered through the brain.  These include:

• Automatic encoding - which occurs unintentionally and is easily recalled because the memories seem bound in a cohesive, readily retrievable form
• Effortful processing - which requires conscious attention and deliberate effort, but the information does not tend to be bound together and requires a lot of repetition for effective retrieval
• Semantic encoding - which is focused on the definition of words
• Phonemic encoding - which involves the comparison between the sounds of words
• Structural encoding - which involves the visual inspection of shapes

What does this mean for your child's learning efforts?  Well, here are some guidelines for enhancing the encoding process, and thereby the memory retrieval.

First of all, the more elaborately we encode information at the moment of learning, the stronger the memory.  When information is presented in a way that incorporates multiple senses, that information will be encoded in various parts of the brain and produce a stronger opportunity for retrieval.  For example, when reading from a textbook, the student is receiving visual information for encoding.  Adding the student's voide reading the words - or at least the key sentences - out loud, provides auditory information for encoding, and taking notes or highlighting key information provides touch input that further expands the encoding.  Another example from the literature-based approach would involve reading a story that incorporates factual information within the context of a character's life and actions.  As the student connects emotionally with that character, the factual information becomes more personal in nature and is more elaborately encoded.  Ensuring that the student understands the meanings of words, and adding personal examples make the most of the brain's natural predilection for pattern matching.

Memories have different life spans.  Hermann Ebbinghaus has been credited with research that determined that people usually forget 90% of what they learn in a class within 30 days, with the majority of the forgetting occurring within the first few hours of class.  Isn't that encouraging?  However, he also found that simply repeating the information at timed intervals greatly increased the memory.  What does this mean to us as parent educators?  In order to help our children remember the information that are encoding, we must revisit that information regularly.  This can be done through discussion after material is read, by reviewing what has been learned about historical figures and events in our Book of Time, by making up songs or ditties with key information ... there are numerous ways to repeat information and extend the life of the memory.

Lastly, it is suggested that retrieval may be improved by replicating the conditions surrounding the initial encoding.  When a student has learned a particular portion of information in a special setting, returning to that setting will usually aid in the retrieval of the information.  You can recreate the sounds, the smells, the seating ... all to enhance your student's ability to retrieve information that has been encoded.

Repeat to remember, circle back to prior subject material and look at it again.  Your student will benefit greatly!

 Another post presenting information drawn from John Medina's Brain Rules.

Kelly

Attention!

Does it matter if we pay attention when learning?  You bet it does!  The more attention the brain pays to any stimulus, the more effectively the information will be encoded and retained.  Better attention always equals better learning in every academic category.

So do we use the military approach of yelling "attention!" whenever we want our homeschooled children to focus on what we have to say?  I really don't think that would be effective - we'd be hollering too much during the school day, and some of our children would be so distracted with the effort of sitting still that their brains would be anything but focused on what we are saying.  [By the way, the handsome soldier in the picture is my youngest son, demonstrating his good Army posture ... with the addition of a slight smile.]

The fourth rule that John Medina explains in his book, Brain Rules, addresses what attracts the brain's attention.

Memory - in everyday life, we use previous experience to predict where we should pay attention.  Even different environments create different expectations in the brain.  This could affect your child's willingness to pay attention if he is facing a subject that has felt defeating in the past.  Experiment with different settings for working in this subject, looking for an upbeat place and a new approach to give him success.

Interest - regardless of our culture, "interest" or "importance" is closely linked to our level of attention.  Marketing professionals actually believe that the reverse is also true - that unexpected attention getters can also spark interest.  Some commercials use unusual, unpredictable or distinctive features to harness our attention.  Likewise, you could use a story or picture to draw your children's attention and pique their interest before beginning a new lesson.

Emotion - emotionally arousing events tend to be better remembered than neutral events.  When the brain detects an emotionally charged event, it releases dopamine into the system which greatly aids memory and information processing.  This is one of the primary benefits of a literature-based approach to learning, where the story is written so as to immerse your child into the environment and emotion of the event, thereby fixing the detail into memory much more effectively than reading a dry narrative in a textbook.

We humans are terrific pattern matchers, constantly assessing our environment for similarities.  Our memory is enhanced by creating associations between concepts.  When you are introducing a new concept in Math, try showing your child how this concept can be utilized in real life before you explain how to do it.  This may seem like approaching it backward - most Math lessons would teach the concept and then show how to apply it - but you may find that your child's attention will be more focused and their grasp of the concept itself more firm if you use this approach.  He may even take the problem solving further than you had demonstrated, which makes the lesson all the more effective.

There's more to this topic of attention that I will share in my next post ...

Kelly