My job here at Nativity includes a wide variety of activities including:

Consultation with Parents – Parents are welcome to call for " a listening ear" when they have concerns about their child’s academic skills, behavior at school or at home, or when family issues arise, e.g. divorce, parent loss of job, serious illness in the family.

Consultation with Teachers – Time is spent collaborating with teachers when they are concerned about a student’s achievement, social skills or emotional status. Very often this involves providing information regarding the student’s background, on past intervention strategies that have been helpful or working together to develop new intervention strategies.

Team Approach – Nativity uses a team approach to problem solving any concerns about students. A parent or teacher can request a team meeting at any time during the school year. The team generally includes: parents, teachers, principal, speech pathologist and/or remedial reading teacher if she is working with the student, any support services hired by the parent and myself. Some teams meet regularly, every 5-6 weeks throughout the year for ongoing support for the student.

Monitor, Analyze and Interpret Group Testing – The students in grades 2, 4, 6,and 8 take the Terra Nova Achievement Tests every October. When the results are returned in December this information is analyzed to highlight individual student needs as well as academic trends within and across grades. Interpretation of the results is presented at the January parent meetings. I am also available to meet with individual parents regarding an analysis of their child’s performance on the Terra Novas.

Multifactored Evaluations – Sometimes, after intervention strategies have been tried, the team needs more information regarding a student’s potential and skills. Testing, which may include an assessment of ability, achievement in reading, math, written language, social and emotional status and fine motor skills is part of my job.

Study Skills – Students who may struggle with organization, comprehension of directions or planning and studying for tests need extra assistance. I am available to work with students, on a short-term basis, to provide some techniques in this area.

Individual Counseling – Getting along with other students in class, having self-confidence, dealing with the death of a grandparent or friend, these are some of the issues that cause parents to ask me to talk to their child. Each case is assessed individually, and because of the limited amount of time in my schedule, I can work with students only on a short-term basis. If long-term counseling or family counseling is needed than a referral to an outside counselor or agency is considered.

Collaboration with Community Agencies and Resources – Cincinnati has many resources for children ranging from Children’s Hospital to individual tutors and counselors. Part of my job is to be a liaison for the Nativity staff and outside support services. Good communication among all of the people working with a student can be time consuming but we are much more effective in helping the student when we work together!

Entrance Screening – An academic screening is done with all new students from kindergarten through eighth grade. The kindergarten and first grade screenings are done in collaboration with the kindergarten and first grade teachers.

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• Be sure that your child sees you introduce yourself to someone you don’t know on the playground before or after school
  
• Tell you child when you get to know a parent that you didn’t know before

• Time to get to know other parents
  
• Time to share ideas that will benefit all of the children of Nativity

• Is there a student who is new to Nativity in their class? How can he/she get to know the new student?
  
• Is there someone in class that he/she would like to get to know? How can he/she use time before school, at lunch or on the playground to begin to make a new friend?

• Is this the year to try a new sport or something in the arts?
  
• Find out what will be available at school this year (scouts, sports, drama) and talk about how the activities might fit in his/her schedule

Learning Styles – Part I

When you have something new that needs to be assembled how do you approach the task?

Are you the person who reads the direction pamphlet carefully before beginning to assemble the pieces?
Are you the person who looks at the pictures and can figure it out from there?
Are you the person who disregards the instructions for assembly and just puts the object together by trial and error?

The way you approach this task tells you something about your “learning style”. That is, when learning something new, how do you prefer to have the information presented to you. One of the ways of sorting our learning styles is by looking at three modes of presentation: auditory, visual and kinesthetic. Most of us are a combination of all three with some degree of preference for one style.

Children, too, have a preferred style of learning. When new information or concepts are presented in a way that matches their learning style they are more likely to learn the information quicker and retain it longer.

The auditory learner is the child who prefers to listen and talk. He/she picks up an enormous amount of information by listening and participating in conversations and group discussions. Lecture, large group and small group discussions work well for this student.When reviewing for tests try the following strategies:

¯Summarize the information in a discussion with a parent
¯Make silly mnemonic devices (sentences) for memorizing lists of names or places. For example, No Skaters Fall (To keep three countries of Scandinavia in the right order west to east, Norway, Sweden, Finland)
¯Use a tape recorder to dictate information then listen to it
¯Let the child be the character or historical figure and answer questions based on information from the chapter (i.e King Tut, describe the tools that your workers use.)

To get an idea of what your learning style is or what your child’s might be:
Parent- www.chaminade.org/inspire/learnstl.htm
Student- www.howtolearn.com ~ log on as “student” not parent or teacher

Look for information about the visual and kinesthetic learner in next week’s newsletter.
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Learning Styles – Part II

The visual learner prefers to see as much as possible when learning new information or concepts. This is the student who spends time looking at the pictures, maps, or diagrams. He/she organizes information more readily when it can be related to a visual image. The more familiar the image the quicker the student will be able to make sense of the information and the longer he/she will remember it.

Grouping information by color- names in one color, dates in a second color, places in a third color. Colors can be used to “chunk” or group information chronologically, by location or by topic.

Drawing a picture of the main ideas- for example, when studying Ancient Rome have the student put the words “Ancient Rome” in the middle of the page and draw a picture in each corner that illustrates something about an important person from that period of time (Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Augustus Caesar). Label the drawing with the name of the person. Students need to decide what they want to draw but they should be able to explain to you why they chose to draw that picture.

When a student is having difficulty remembering the steps in math – for example, long division. Use a post-it note with the symbols for multiply, subtract, and an arrow down for “bring down”. Keep it short and visual!

Students throughout the grades are taught “webbing” as a way to organize their ideas when writing a story. They put the topic in the middle in a box or a circle and then put their related ideas on lines extending from the topic. Numbering the lines provides a sequence for the sentences of the paragraph or paragraphs of the story.

When memorizing the maps use the shape and location of a country to help the student remember it. Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the largest countries in Africa and it has the longest name. Look for words within a word or certain letters in names to help relate places such as Namib Desert is in Namibia or “Z” countries are all together in the southeast part of Africa (Tanzania, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Swaziland).

Remember: for a student who is a strong visual learner the more words you use to “help” him or her the more you will confuse the student. Often students will “shut down” if the teacher, parent or tutor is using too many words to explain a concept.
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Learning Styles – Part III

The kinesthetic learning learns by moving and doing. This is the person who, given an item to assemble, would prefer to disregard written directions or oral instructions and just work with the pieces and figure it out. It’s the student who always needs to “handle” or “touch” the materials that are used to demonstrate a concept.

What type of movement does the student enjoy? What seems to come “naturally”? It may be jumping rope, bouncing a basketball, marching, jogging or tapping out a rhythm on the table. Allow the student to do this type of movement when trying to memorize information.

Using the tiles from Scrabble to move around and create spelling words may help the child to remember the words.

In the primary grades when the “wh” words can be confusing to remember (when, what, where, why). Have the student trace the letters with his/her finger to focus attention on the shape of the word.

Any time the student can manipulate materials, for example puzzle pieces, he/she will enjoy the activity more, pay attention to the information and remember it longer. When working on the maps trace the countries, label them, cut them out and put it together. Chunking the countries, northern, central, southern will make the memorization less overwhelming and more manageable.

Exaggerated hand movements, dance or pantomime are a good way for students to remember characters or action in a story and events in history.

Index cards with information from science or social studies that needs to be sequenced can be written out then shuffled and sorted.

Remember: While parents, teachers, and volunteers might encourage students to “sit quietly” in order to read or study, this strategy goes against the learning style of the kinesthetic learner. The more he/she moves the quicker the material is understood and the longer it is retained.
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Stress and the School Aged Child

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Math in Our Lives

Many of us tend to think that if our children just learn to read they’ll be fine. Math is not that important. After all, there are calculators and computers that do math for us. The reality is that now, more than ever, it is important for children to understand math. What math operation (add, subtract, multiply, divide) do we need to use? Does the answer on the calculator or cash register seem right?

No matter how much you liked or disliked math when you were in school the "fact" is that math is a part of our lives everyday. Is 15% off a good sale at the department store. Is 15% interest on a credit card a good deal? The math skills that we learn in the elementary grades will serve us for a lifetime. It is part of balancing a checkbook, cooking, building bookshelves, comparing the price at different gas stations, figuring out how much cheese to buy for lunches, calculating the tip you leave for a server or how much time it takes to drop off the carpool kids and get to the store. We can’t get away from math. We use it to compare, estimate, measure and plan.

This year the faculty and staff at Nativity invite you to join them in helping your child to see that math is as important as reading. In the classroom these skills will be introduced and reinforced through in a variety of activities from math workbook pages and old-fashioned games (cards, board games, pick-up sticks) to math software and math journaling.

At home, we would ask you to use "teachable moments" to make sure that math is a part of your child’s experiences outside of school. We want our students to know that math is not just something that we learn because "we have to". It is useful, important and maybe even fun!

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Read! Read! Read!

The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children. While this conclusion was written approximately twenty years ago, as a result of a landmark study on children and reading (Becoming a Nation of Readers), the finding still stands as a primary recommendation to parents who want to encourage their children to become good readers. Many parents believe that once a child learns to read then he/she should read on his/her own. Reading aloud to your child (not taking turns or having him/her read aloud to you) or reading a book with your child is important throughout the grade school years.

Reading aloud to your child-

Be sure that your child sees you reading!
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Helping Children Cope with the War

Be aware of your own feelings. Before you can help you child talk about the war and their related concerns take time to assess your own thoughts and feelings. Children often attend to the body language and tone of voice of parents rather than the message in the words you use. If you are feeling anxious or angry, your child will see that no matter what you say.

Take time to listen. Many children will experience a wide range of feelings including fear, anger or confusion. Acknowledge the feelings. Empathize with the feelings. Let them know that sometimes you feel the same way and that these feelings are normal and expected.
Answer questions honestly. There is a lot that we don’t know about this war. There are no guarantees with any war. It is ok to say, "We don’t know." Stay with facts such as, "Our troops are well trained and they will do the best they can."

Observe your child at play. It is not unusual for children to play "war" during times of war. When all of their play is war-centered, however, they can loose sight of the reality of war. If you see your child "playing war" frequently, you may want to remind him/her of the other games (or redirect towards other games) that he/she enjoys.

Consider turning off the TV. The media coverage of the war in Afghanistan is unprecedented. Imbedded reporters providing information, sometime while under fire, news leads during commercial time and news as it happens across the bottom of the screen keep the war in front of us constantly. It is important to stay informed but such coverage may heighten the anxiety of both children and adults. In addition, young children often have difficulty discriminating when and where events on TV are happening. Older children may need an adult perspective to help them understand what they are seeing.

Encourage your child to be sensitive to the feelings of others. Help your child to understand that the family members of classmates and neighborhood friends may be in the military. The family members may be away from home for long periods of time with no phone calls or letters home. Discuss ways that your child can "be a good friend".

Do something positive. Think about the family members of the military that are in your neighborhood or parish. Is there something you can do to help them? Consider babysitting, running an errand, bringing over a meal or cutting the lawn for moms that may be here without spouses. Cards, letters and small packages for members of the military may also be appreciated.

Keep teachers informed. The topic of the war in Afghanistan may be discussed in school in any number of classes or situations. Teachers try to discuss such topics with a great deal of sensitivity. If your child is having a unique or intense response to the war please let his/her teacher know about it.

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Attention Deficit Disorder

What is Attention Deficit Disorder?
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, "ADHD is a condition of the brain that makes it difficult for children to control their behavior. It is one of the most common chronic conditions of childhood, affecting 4%-12% of school-aged children." There are three primary behaviorial symptoms: inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity.

Are there different types of ADHD?
Children may have "inattentive" only where the symptoms include: a hard time paying attention, seems to not listen, does not follow through on instructions, is disorganized, loses things, forgets things, does not seem to care about details or makes careless mistakes. "Hyperactive/Impulsive" children can often pay attention by seem to be "driven by a motor". They cannot stay seated, talk too much, run, jump, and climb when it is not appropriate for the setting and have difficulty playing quietly. The third type of ADHD includes inattentive, hyperactive and impulsive symptoms.

Don’t all children have lots of energy and act impulsive?
Yes! It is normal for all children to be energetic and to act impulsive or "hyperactive" from time to time. In addition, children may have times when they seem to be daydreaming or inattentive. This may be a reaction to stress, fatigue or lack of interest in a particular subject. Parents should consider the issue of attention deficit if your child is six years of age or older and has shown symptoms of ADD on a regular basis for more than six months.

How is ADD diagnosed?
There is no single test for ADD. It is a medical diagnosis based on behavior at home and at school. Parents need to begin with a consultation with the pediatrician. Generally the pediatrician will want to do a physical and will want some questionnaires completed by teachers and parents. He/She may request other testing or observations from the school psychologist in order to rule out emotional or learning problems.

What can be done at school to help the child with ADD?
Educational interventions include a wide range of accommodations to help children with organization and paying attention at school. Interventions at school are generally designed for each child individually and are reassessed periodically.

What about medication?
The decision to use medication is between the parent and the child’s physician. While most of the medications used are stimulants there is a new medication that is not a stimulant. The most typical medications used are either short-acting (in the system for about 3 hours) or long-acting (in the system for about 6-8 hours).
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Helping Children to Cope with Traumatic Events

Unexpected events and/or events that require adapting to long-term changes in the life of a child can be very traumatic. They cause a type of stress that, if not addressed, can interfere with the child’s ability to learn, to maintain friendships and to cope with the everyday problems of life.

While divorce and dealing with the illness or death of a friend or family member are usually considered the most difficult traumas of childhood there are other events that may cause significant stress for a child. Examples of such situations are: moving to a new school, home or city, a change in a parent’s job that takes them away from home for days at a time, the introduction of a potential stepparent, parent’s loss of job, or a new baby in the family.

A child may choose to avoid coping with the traumatic event through the use of ...

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Peer Relationships

Every parent wants their child to have friends and to get along with other children in the family, in the neighborhood and at school. Parents want their children to develop strong physical, cognitive, emotional and social skills. So, what role can parents play in helping their child to have friends, to get along with others?

Home is the first place that we learn to get along with others. Siblings and cousins can help children to learn and refine social skills. Siblings and extended family members provide children with multiple opportunities to learn to:

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Educational Toys?

It’s hard to believe that it’s time to shop for Christmas gifts. As the need for gift ideas for the kids becomes more pressing I thought you might like a few suggestions that don’t require a computer, a CD player or batteries of any kind. The truth is that there is a lot of educational value in the "old" tried and true toys and games. Here are some of my favorites:

Board Games - Learning to play a board game teaches patience, turn-taking, strategies such as predicting and planning ahead and following multiple step rules and directions. Children in the primary grades enjoy Chutes and Ladders, Candy Land, Connect Four and Checkers. Intermediate grades generally like Sorry, Parcheesi, Battleship or Clue. Monopoly, Risk, Chess and Trivial Pursuit are great for junior high age.

Puzzles - All puzzles encourage visual analysis and attention to visual detail. This is a fun way to encourage the child who is very verbal to strengthen visual skills or to recognize the child who is already strong in the area of visual skills. Choose puzzles by the size and number of pieces. Usually the age guidelines are on the box. Remember, large puzzles do not need to be completed in an afternoon. Find a place where you can leave it out and work on it over a few weeks.

Arts and Crafts – A great way to encourage creativity and to help strengthen fine motor skills and attention span. Arts and crafts can often be given away as gifts providing an extra motivation to complete the task. Some classic toys in this category include: sewing cards, potholder looms, rug making, cross stitch kits, model planes/cars/boats, Lite Brite, modeling clay, PlayDoh, finger paints, fashion plates, Etch-A-Sketch, a supply of construction paper, crayons and markers.

Verbal Skills – These games provide a fun way to build vocabulary and language skills. Scrabble Jr., Boggle, Outburst, Guess Words, Pictionary and 20 Questions are a few to consider.

BOOKS! BOOKS! BOOKS! – Any salesperson in the children’s section of a bookstore will be able to point you towards a wonderful world of entertainment. You may want a book on a particular topic of interest or just a great story. Be sure to ask about Caldacott Award winners, Coretta Scott King Award Winners and Newberry Award Winners. If your child is in the older grades get two copies and read it together (separately) so that you can discuss the chapters. Magazine subscriptions are also a great way to get your child interested in reading. Check with the school librarian or your neighborhood librarian to get an idea of the magazines that are available for children with almost any interest and any age and reading level.

REMEMBER – The real gift with all of these toys and games is your taking the time to enjoy them with your child. You provide the model for taking turns, following the rules, and being a good winner or loser. Make time together (without the TV) a regular event and the value is priceless!
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