101 ways to help your child at school

Bill Spooner grew  up in the Cairns of the 1960’s. His father, deciding that Sydney was no place to bring up children moved the family north in January 1960. Bob Spooner was Cairns’ first specialist physician and a pioneer in many areas of tropical medicine.

Bill and his sisters went to Edge Hill Primary School. Bill then went to Trinity Bay High School and attended Cairns High for years eleven and twelve attending The Southport School on the Gold Coast.

In 1973 he graduated from the Queensland College of Art and completed a Post Graduate Diploma of Teaching in 1975. 

Bill taught secondary art at local high schools before moving away from the class room to work in careers education, senior schooling and as an adviser to schools and teachers in curriculum development. This gave Bill the opportunity to broaden his educational interests and to work at the cutting edge of education at a state, national and international level.

He has been actively involved in many professional and community associations and projects, all designed to further the cause of education and to further the ties between schools, parents and the business community. 

In 1997 his career saw a major change when he resigned from Education Queensland and set up Bill Spooner’s Coaching Academy having decided that he could make a greater contribution to children and their parents by working in the private arena. Bill has a passion for motivating children to learn, to achieve success and happiness.

He has five children ranging in age from 41 to 11 and lives with his wife Noeline and three younger children at Lake Placid. 

I honestly believe that every child is born a genius. That every child is gifted in some way. No child should ever be given any reason to doubt his or her self worth or ability to achieve.

101 ways to help your child with school

Welcome to my little book. I hope that these words of encouragement will assist you in some small way in the greatest task of your life; the raising of your children. School and education take up a major part of the lives of children. As a parent of four children ranging in age from twenty-six to eight months and as an educator for twenty seven years I have had the joy and privilege of spending a lot of time with my own children and with the children of other people. This, along with working as an adviser to teachers, has given me the opportunity and time to think about learning and how to motivate children to learn.

I have often wondered why it is that babies and very young children embrace learning and development with a natural joy and exuberance and so many older children are turned off by learning, or at least by learning what the society requires them to learn. As educators and parents, we tend to put the blame for our anxiety about their apparent negativity on our children. I believe that instead of asking what is wrong with the children we should be asking what is wrong with us and what we can do about their anxiety.

Kids soon learn that education is not always about learning, but that it is a competitive sorting and grading process. A process of elimination. They change from being the active participants of learning that they were as little ones to be unwilling, passive recipients of learning. Children may feel that they lose control of their learning and have it imposed on them. The preoccupation can be with right and wrong. A black and white approach to life and too often the emphasis can be is on what is wrong. The world is in actual fact an ambiguous place. 

			Peak learning
					anxiety
Brain cycles per second………….
0-5	4	8	12		18	30
	DELTA sleep	THETA REM sleep	ALPHA some awareness		BETA aware
Subconscious mind – 88%. Long term memory – stores: habits and beliefs memories personality self image				Conscious mind - 12%. Short term memory

Alpha Learning.

Between the conscious and subconscious mind is a “filter”. This filter either lets through or blocks out information that the conscious mind receives. Once information gets past the filter it’s in your subconscious mind, which is your long-term memory. Science has estimated that 70%-80% of what the conscious mind deals with does NOT make it into long term memory.

Research has shown that when we are in an Alpha state of brain cycles per second, optimum learning occurs. Alpha learning is induced in a calm and relaxed learning environment and enhanced through the use of some pieces of music that have a beat of 60 to 70 beats per minute, rather like a heartbeat. Baroque music is used for this purpose

Try playing it softly at home when your teenager is studying. Most certainly upbeat pop music will have entirely the opposite effect and put the student into a Beta state which activates the short term memory only; the “here and now.” Learning cannot occur in this state, as the filter will block access to the subconscious memory.

An  understanding of and an ability with mathematics is essential to survival in the real world and at school.

An  understanding of and an ability with mathematics is essential to survival in the real world and at school. This understanding and ability begins at the primary level with the “basics”. These are, quite simply, the four number operations: adding subtracting multiplying and dividing the whole numbers, or integers as well as the fractions both decimal and vulgar. From this follows knowledge of percentages and then the relationships between percentages, fractions and decimals and whole numbers. 

Then and only then are children equipped with the necessary skills to achieve in areas such as data, measurement, space and geometry, algebra and so on. 

Bill Spooner’s Basic Primary Maths Program delivers these necessary skills to both primary and junior secondary students.

What follows is dictated by the needs of the individual child.

Primary children will move to more advanced lessons that introduce and give practice across those above mentioned areas (data, measurement, space and geometry, algebra, etc).

Junior secondary students are often with us for help with the maths required by the schools. They want direct assistance and answers to “how” questions. 

Senior secondary students are either the high achievers who are chasing a top OP for tertiary entrance or those that are experiencing difficulty and need guidance. They are studying Maths A,B or C at school. Each child comes to us with individual needs.

Both junior and senior students receive direction, instruction, enlightenment, information; recommendations, suggestions, tips, hints, pointers and guidelines in the areas below  and others, according to their individual requirements.

  

Arithmetic	Algebra	Measurement
Directed numbers	Graphs and charts	Angles
Equations	Ratio	Perimeter, area and volume
Data, chance and statistics	Number plane	Indices and surds
Geometry	Money	Similar figures
Trigonometry	Function and logs	Problem solving

Children need to experience achievement and this is especially so in maths; the satisfaction of getting it “right”. Achievement builds confidence and confidence builds achievement. At Bill Spooner’s Coaching Academy we, quite simply, help children to get it “right”. 

Teaching Children to Read

We use the Australian, phonics based Reading Freedom program to teach children to read.

Overview for parents.

The following is some information on the successful Reading Freedom program we use to improve the reading and English skills of our students.

The first two levels of Reading Freedom provide a carefully structured remedial reading program for those children who have already received reading instruction but who have yet to master basic skills with accuracy and fluency. 

The third level of Reading Freedom is designed for children who have mastered basic skills but who still have difficulty reading and spelling longer words. Level Three of Reading Freedom gives instruction in the skills necessary to make children independent readers. All three levels are intended for use in primary and junior secondary schools.

The fundamental principle underlining the Reading Freedom remedial reading program is that children with reading problems require the kind of instruction that is systematically structured to enable them to overcome their difficulties. A second and equally important principle addressed by the program is that children with special needs require the kind of positive reinforcement that comes from the steady and easily demonstrated mastery of basic skills. It is upon this basis that Reading Freedom takes the child from mastery of the simplest reading skills carefully and systematically through to mastery of the most complex skills.

Each new unit of the program builds on from the skills learned in previous units. The student progresses from learning new sounds to blending these sounds into words – to spelling the words – to reading sentences made up of these words – to adding word endings – to combining the words with those learned in previous units and to reading comprehension passages based on the skills learned in each unit and at each level. 

The first two levels of Reading Freedom provide remedial instruction for children lacking basic reading skills (assigning sound values to letters), sight vocabulary (recognising words instantly) and comprehension skills (reading carefully structured prose passages and answering questions on them).

Reading Freedom’s Golden Rules

• Careful assessment

• Regular lesson format

• Regular time and place for lessons

• A pleasant and positive atmosphere

• Careful instructions

• Regular monitoring of progress

First Things First:

The Assessment Procedure

Before starting the program it is essential to find the areas of strength and weakness in the child’s reading ability. A diagnostic test of phonic knowledge is provided for this purpose. A standardised test of reading ability is used to determine the child’s reading age. Equally important is the vocabulary of sight words. Finally, a quick check of the child’s visual function is advisable. Many children who have reading difficulties also have visual problems or a learning difficulty. 

At the assessment, all children are checked, and if necessary, screened for learning difficulties. An optometrical check with a behavioural  optometrist may be recommended. Bill Spooner is an accredited Irlen diagnostician for dyslexia and other learning difficulties.

Some children may experience extreme difficulty at a particular diagnostic level. Should this occur, it is not necessary to test at subsequent levels or to continue with the level causing difficulty. The prime reasons for administering the test is to obtain two kinds of information: first to determine the gaps in the child’s phonic knowledge and second, to determine a suitable level at which instruction can begin. 

The program teaches quick and accurate word recognition. This is a skill, just like any other and with a systematic approach you, the parent can see where the child is. It is hierarchical in difficulty and by going from the easiest first to the hardest last you and your child will not be bewildered. The process is further de-mystified by the fact that you can see the teaching methods. 

One of the great benefits of the program is that all school subjects will improve and any feelings of inadequacy leave the child.

Phonemes: the smallest unit of sound that distinguishes one spoken unit from another (e.g. ‘man’; ‘can’.)

Phonetics: is a scientific study that deals with sound. ‘a’ is a letter but ‘a ‘ is a phonetic sound. ‘a’ is the same sound but ‘a’ is a different phonetic sound. The phonemic hierarchy deals with 26 letters but 44 different sounds.

Phonetics: a method of teaching reading that enables students to analyse letters in words and associated sounds.

Reading is a skill, just like riding a bicycle. At Bill Spooner’s Coaching Academy, we check for and if necessary, address the “hidden learning difficulties” and through the Reading Freedom Program, quite simply teach children to read.