Helping Your Children To Be Successful Students
You are your own best coaching tool. Watch yourself closely when coaching your child reading, writing, and maths skills becomes difficult and you feel frustrated. The usual trap is to think that they are the one who is reluctant to coach with you, not paying enough attention, or not remembering the work fast enough. Blame… Continue reading Challenges and difficulties when working with your child are inevitable – how you respond is crucial.
A keen proud writer Writing fluently will remain an important skill our children need to master. Your child might not be very interested in writing because they have so many other interesting things they would rather do. Many children are much more interested in doing something physical than sitting down to write. Especially when… Continue reading Writing: first understand why they dislike writing, then negotiate.
The days of boring old handwriting drills are gone. Now instead in the place of drills teachers often give a series of short lessons on how to hold the pencil and correctly write letters and numbers, and then they correct students’ hand-grip and writing direction incidentally as they walk around the room. How your child… Continue reading Handwriting – How your child can write more easily
Win-win or no deal: Only agree when you are both happy. The goals you set decide your success. The more thoroughly and seriously the goals are decided between you both, the more you both will take the coaching seriously, and when the inevitable moment comes that you both find it harder to work together, you will… Continue reading First the reading, writing, and maths goals – then how you work together
Handwriting helps our children learn easier - and it can be taught. I've already written in a previous post about how handwriting can help us learn and remember. Many of you might have children with dyslexia or learning disabilities and I still firmly believe that even if your child has poor motor skills, they can… Continue reading Learning how to handwrite is not an unnecessary skill….yet.
It is up to you when coaching your children reading, writing, and Mathematics, and you may be the weakest link. It is vitally important to coach your child in reading, writing, or Mathematics skills when they struggle at school. Yet important appointments, extra work, tiredness, personal difficulties, or unexpected visitors can easily take away the… Continue reading Get organised to succeed
Create agreements that make you both happy. This week I've asked permission to share an email from a concerned family coach who is working with me. She has a young boy who is working on improving his Mathematics and reading and writing skills and he is a very skilled negotiator - even though he is… Continue reading Win-win agreements make coaching your child reading, writing, and maths skills more fun!
Haste makes for slow reading, writing and Mathematics progress: Relaxed, steady focus works. One new different thing reading, writing, Mathematics skills at a time. I often only begin coaching one area (reading, writing, or Mathematics) that a student finds difficult, and one reading, writing, or Mathematics skill they are comfortable with, and love. To begin… Continue reading Make haste slowly: Coaching your child reading, writing, and maths the fast way.
If you are really going to co-operate with Nature’s plan for the development of intelligence, you take your signals from the child. Not from some book, not from some expert, .....you take your signals from the child. (Joseph Chilton Pearce cited in Brownlee, P. 2007) Taking our signals from our children: The importance of attunement.… Continue reading Respectful partnership: A buzz for you both
Coming from left field: How to use reverse psychology when coaching reading, writing, or maths skills. Surprise works! Your main aim when teaching your children is to encourage your student to stay alert, or in optimal learning mode while learning reading, writing, or maths skills. So I often do the opposite of what an adult… Continue reading Coming from left field when coaching reading, writing, or maths: The importance of surprise!
Families as Coaches 