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Reading is a skill developed through the activities and experiences of daily life. Many children learn to read by themselves. However, some children need reading help from their parents or other adults. The following are ten ways to engage elementary school students in reading.

Engaging Elementary Students with Reading

Reading can do more than build academic skills, it can also shape a child’s character. When stories highlight honesty, kindness, or courage, they help young readers develop values as well as vocabulary. Let’s look at a few ways to inspire both a love of reading and a love of learning.

1. Begin with an Interesting Fact About the Topic

One way to engage elementary students in reading is to begin the lesson with an interesting fact about the topic. For example, if you are teaching about dinosaurs, you might start by talking about a fact related to dinosaurs.

You might talk about how long they lived or how they looked. You may also want to talk about other facts that relate to dinosaurs.

2. Start with a Picture

Another way of engaging elementary students in reading is by starting with a picture. For example, if you teach about farm animals, draw a picture of each animal and have your students identify it and write its name on their papers and the board.

As you go through your lesson plan for the day, have each student add one more picture to their documents or an additional word or phrase to the board.

3. Have Students Clap or Give a Sound as They Read

Another way of doing this is by having students clap or give a sound as they read. For example, you might say, “Clap your hands if you know what this word means.” Or, you might have them say “Good” as they read, or you might have them make noises when they are reading. This is a fun way to engage students in reading, and it helps to develop their listening skills as well.

4. Read Aloud and Do Story Problems

This is also a good way to engage elementary students in reading. For example, you might say, “Let’s read the story about the cow, Henry.” Then have your students read the story aloud and do some of the problems that follow it. You can also have them read the book or chapter and do some of the same problems at home.

5. Have Students Identify a Book Character

This is an excellent way to engage students in reading. A book character is a fictional person who appears in the book. Students are asked to identify the character in various books. This is an excellent way to engage students in reading.

6. Have Students Identify Story Elements

Story elements are parts of stories that help tell the story and make it interesting for readers. These include characters, setting, plot, theme, and subplots. By identifying these story elements, students can begin to understand how stories work and how they affect their reading.

7. Help Students Identify Story Questions

Students can get involved with a reading by asking questions about what will happen next during their read-aloud or class discussions about books they have read. For example, you might offer a selection of picture books about perseverance to your younger students and have a discussion about the themes and how the pictures made them feel. This is a good way to engage students in reading and it helps them to become more independent readers.

8. Have Students Share What They Have Learned

Many children love to share what they have learned and are eager to tell others about their experiences. At the beginning of the school day, students share what they have learned from the day before.

This is a great way to get students to articulate and put into their own words what they already know. It also helps them focus and remember important things that happened during the day.

9. Set Reading Goals for Your Children

You might read the same books to your child every day, or read different books each day. You might ask your child to read a certain number of pages a day, or a certain number of pages. The goal should be reasonable, and it should be challenging enough so that children can do it.

10. Have Students Create Reading Logs

This can be a fun way for students to record their daily reading activities. Students can make a log with the title, author, and book title. They can also include the number of pages read and how many times they read each day.

Closing Thought

As children grow, they will soon be enticed by social media and various forms of online entertainment.  Therefore, it is vitally important to engage students with reading as early as possible.  If you are working with children in a classroom, you should know that they are more than capable of reading and being enthusiastic about it. You can help them by creating an environment where they can feel safe, supported, and encouraged to read. Teachers should provide students with the various resources needed to be successful readers.

If you have younger kids in your family that are not yet in school.  Discover why preschool is good for your child.

Online learning is a Digital Education. Online learning means education based on digital text, video, audio, and graphics. It is an interactive process where students interact with their teacher through the screen and share their ideas.

Students choose to study the subject of their interest anywhere in the world. Moreover, they can learn on any day since it does not depend upon time or place.

On the other hand, traditional education is a classroom-based learning methodology, where students receive the same thoughts and ideas from their teachers.

In traditional classroom learning, the teacher is the class leader, and they usually teach students the same topics at a time through a variety of methods. Different teaching methods are used to enable all students to learn at their own pace. The environment must be quiet so that no disruptions occur while learning occurs.

Benefits of Online learning

E-learning is an online education method through which the student can learn a particular course without the restriction of time and area.

Nowadays, most universities use e-learning to deliver their education in remote areas by their qualified faculties. As a result, students can easily access lecture notes, audio lectures, assignments, and tests at home. Hence, they save a lot of money while getting a quality education.

An online master’s program is available on various e-learning websites, which allow people to learn new skills at their own convenience.

Benefits of traditional learning

Traditional learning has several merits, including the ability for students to maintain personal contact with their teachers and mentors, allowing them to clear doubts directly and receive adequate responses.

They can create bonds with classmates and other people. Students can expand their network and compete against one another. Take part in many activities in school, college, and university. They have hands-on experience in laboratories and fields with a variety of subjects.

Drawbacks of traditional learning

There are many limitations of the traditional education system, even within chartered school that offer specialized focus on each student.  These schools often offer the flexibility of online learning as required.  However, in most traditional public school settings all students must learn the same thing at a particular time in the same manner.

The teachers can teach only a limited number of people in a classroom. All members of society should be present if they want to get educated. If a student misses a lecture, they will forget that topic. In this way, traditional education is a strictly classroom-based learning pattern that provides learners with uniform content and discourages discussion or debate outside class time.

Is online learning better than classroom learning?

Many believe that e-learning is better than traditional teaching for several reasons. Here are some of the benefits to help you understand them better.

Accessibility & Flexibility

Online courses and learning through e-learning channels such as cyberschool can be accessed around the clock, saving you time and money. You can view them wherever you are, and once you download them, you don’t even need an internet connection—so now you don’t miss an important lecture or assignment due to a poor network connection.

It also gives the flexibility to finish the course at your own pace while catering to other professional and personal responsibilities. Furthermore, these recordings will remain available for viewing with lifetime access and can be easily referred to in case of any doubts so you can study at your own pace.

Cost effective

This is a cost-effective alternative for students who want to pursue a degree or training program but find it hard to afford the time and money required to travel to and from a physical location.

Online courses are ideal for anyone who lives far away from the place of teaching, needs flexibility in scheduling their classes, or intends to work full-time while taking classes.

It helps them save time and money on travel, food, tuition, and accommodation. In addition, online courses, on average, cost less than 40% compared to an on-campus program because of the factors mentioned above.

Time-saving and no need to take a break

There is a lot to consider for a millennial researching colleges and universities.  One often overlooked element is the time it will take to complete their education.  Time will also increase the cost.

Within online learning there is no need to take a sabbatical while pursuing online courses. You can quickly earn a degree and have time for other interests simultaneously. Online study is best for professionals like you who have a busy schedule but still want to pursue professional studies in their respective fields they can simultaneously pursue extracurricular interests related to your career or personal life.

Credible and well recognized

The curriculum of an online program is designed while keeping in mind the industry’s demand, making them credible in the corporate sector. Also, they are well recognized by the educational institutes and are well accepted. This, coupled with their affordability, convenience, flexibility, and online training courses, has made them quite popular among employers and learners worldwide.

Quality content is also a vital aspect of every online training course, which helps them seek jobs from reputed institutions like Infosys, Accenture, Wipro, etc.

Global exposure and networking

Online courses have been a boon to the education sector, especially for students and professionals looking to expand their horizons. Owing to the accessibility factor, online courses manage to break the constraints of geographical distance, enabling students worldwide to connect online, resulting in building a strong community of learners that is ready to help each other by clearing doubts via brainstorming sessions apart from creating a robust networking platform.

Students from all parts of the world could share views and collaborate with each other while gaining knowledge, experience, and training in all fields of education through online courses.

The online course offers a wide array of benefits that helps students learn in an interactive way that is inexpensive and flexible for students who are looking for an international experience.

World-class faculty

Online programs allow you to learn from world-class faculty. The online learning process is designed to make it easy for you to learn at your own pace and schedule. Breaking all the barriers of boundaries, a learner from a rural, semi-rural, or urban has the opportunity to learn from a world-class faculty at Harvard, Oxford, Wharton, or any other premier institute without relocating from their native place. This has opened ample growth opportunities for learners globally.

Ultimately, when parents talk with their kids about going to college or university, a conversation about the pros and cons of online learning versus traditional learning should always include the individual strength, weakness and desires of each individual student.

Dyslexia is a learning disability in reading, writing, and spelling. It affects everyone differently, but is caused by difficulties with the phonological process.  This is how we break down words into their component sounds and combine those sounds to make words. These skills are essential for good reading comprehension and writing.

Individuals with Dyslexia often have excellent memory skills and are very creative, but they might find it hard to remember lists of unrelated facts. They may also have difficulty expressing themselves in writing, so they may use inappropriate vocabulary, misspell words, and get confused about capital letters.

The following are signs that a young child may have Dyslexia:

• Talking late
• Slowly learning new words
• Word formation issues, such as reversing sounds in words or mixing up words that sound alike
• Letters, numerals, and colors are difficult to recall or name.
• Learning nursery rhymes or playing rhyming games is difficult.

How to help dyslexic patients

The educational approach and techniques used to help children with Dyslexia are designed to improve their basic reading skills. Strategies like multi-sensory techniques help children use several senses — such as sight, hearing, or touch — to learn and process information.

Tailored dyslexia programs play an important role in overcoming reading challenges and improving literacy skills. By incorporating various sensory stimuli, dyslexia intervention programs provide dyslexic children with diverse pathways to comprehend and remember information, ultimately leading to enhanced retention and comprehension.

Additionally, they create a supportive and inclusive learning atmosphere that fosters confidence and empowerment in dyslexic students, thereby promoting their academic achievements. Let us share with you the following guidelines under Dyslexia reading programs to assist you in managing the roadblocks in your child’s development.

1. Keep the surroundings organized while teaching time management

The first step is to dedicate a place for their bags and a designated study or homework area, and a homework schedule. They can then work on  time management once they’ve mastered the basics of organization.

So, when working on projects, one method that can assist here is to look at the due date and then work backwards from there.  This helps the student keep on track with their job commitments and prioritize any duties that require immediate attention.”

2. Dyslexic students should first accept their condition and openly ask for help and resources

For dyslexic students, acceptance and communication are two crucial elements that have the potential to make or break their academic careers. Therefore, students with Dyslexia need to own their condition and openly communicate with their teachers about the accommodations needed to succeed.

When these students express their needs, they’ll often be met with support and resources from their teachers and other members of the faculty and staff.

3. Dyslexic students should learn to use technology to develop learning skills

Studying with Dyslexia becomes more achievable when dyslexic students use their skills and available technology to their full advantage.

This helps them better understand what they are learning, so they can apply it outside of class.

4. Dyslexic students should allow their study skills to evolve

Dyslexic students often struggle with many aspects of study skills, including organization, time management, and motivation. For these students to succeed, they must find what works for them.

While it may take time to develop practical study skills, dyslexic students can use what works for them and find ways to work around their struggling areas.

Additional Study Resources:

• How to help children with ADHD successfully study at home.
• Building good study habits in early childhood.
• Effective study techniques for secondary school students.

It was back in 2019 when scientists joined forces to produce the first ever picture of a black hole.  Now they’ve done it again using the same technology.  This new block hole discovery is not as big as the first one, yet it’s a lot closer to us. It’s at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy and is only 26,000 light-years away.

There’s no need to worry however, 26,000 light-years means that if you traveled at the speed of light in a space ship, it would take you 26,000 earth years to get there.  The first black hole picture was called M87 and is 55 million light-years away. It’s staggering to the mind.  Still, this latest picture of a black hole is no less amazing, especially with it existing in our own galaxy, which is just one of billions of galaxies throughout the world.

Lessons from Black Hole Picture

As long as we walk this earth, one thing we should all discover is this. The more you know, the more you know you don’t know. That’s a quote from Aristotle, the Greek philosopher who lived over 2300 years ago. It basically means that no matter how much we learn in school as kids and later in life as adults, we’ll find there’s always more to learn about everything.

If we decide that we know everything there is to know and stop being opening to learning, we become ignorant and miss out so much that our wonderful world has to teach us.

As smart as Aristotle was, many things have been discovered in the hundreds of years since he lived. Many great philosophers and scientists have followed, and each one as built upon the knowledge of people who have gone before them.

The First Picture of a Black Hole

With the two recent achievements by the world’s greatest scientists of our day to create real pictures of a block hole, we never cease to be amazed by incredible discoveries in space.  The first black hole discover confirmed many theories about the existence of black holes and how they work. It also proved that Albert Einstein was right about his Theory of General Relativity regarding the relationship between space and time.

With every new scientific discover and achievement we expand upon our knowledge. Each scientist builds upon the knowledge of those who went before them.

The pictures also prove that recent scientific calculations about black holes were correct. These discoveries, however, are more than a story about the advancement of technology that allowed humans to see an actual black hole for the first time. It’s also a story of how many scientists from all over the world worked together for many years to achieve this great feat.

For one, just to make the now famous black hole picture took many observatories from all over the world working together to create one virtual telescope the size of our earth.

How Far Away is the Photographed Black Hole?

The image we see of the block hole is like looking into the past. It’s light that started a journey to planet earth millions of years ago. Light from our sun takes an average of 8 minutes and 20 seconds.

The first black hole shown to us in an image was named Powehi, which means ‘adorned fathomless dark creation’. Black holes have always fascinated scientists and students of astronomy because a black hole actually isn’t a hole. It’s a place in space containing a lot of matter closely packed together. It has accumulated so much gravity, that not even light can escape it. Therefore, it’s always black, even if it sucked our sun into it. And the black hole Powehi could easily do that because it’s about the same size as our entire solar system.

Black Hole Math

Did you know that the first proof of the existence of black holes came in the form of a math equation?  Yet, there was still no solid proof that they existed.  In 1963, mathematician Roy Kerr was the first to find the mathematical solution to Einstein’s equations that describe the phenomenon.  At the time, the term black hole had not yet been used.   It wasn’t until 1971 until the first black hole was discovered and was named Cygnus X-1, which backed up the math that had already been done.  This is the power of math to prove amazing theories in advance and drive scientific discovers.

While the first picture of a real black hole captured in 2019 confirms many theories that were calculated using mathematics, (see NASA Education’s Black Hole Math the Students), scientists are the first to point out that this great discovery is the beginning of many more discoveries yet to come.

Producing the black hole image took over 200 scientists working together from all over the world. They all would be the first to tell you that as much as we know about the Universe, there is so much more we don’t know.

How New Scientific Discoveries Change Our Perception of Space

Black holes are relativity new to us.  As mentioned, even Einstein was not certain that they even existed even thought the math showed black holes were possible.  Now, there is even more proof of it because we have a picture to look at.   The study of planets and the proof they exist has been going on for hundred’s of years.  Still, ideas and scientific theories change.  Here’s an example of that.

Poor Little Pluto

Life can be confusing. People sometimes struggle with the idea of who they are and where they belong in the grand scheme of things. If Pluto had feelings, imagine what it has gone through in its 87 years. When first discovered in 1930, the small mass orbiting the sun at the edge of the solar system was called “Planet X.”

It wasn’t named until an 11 year-old girl suggested calling it “Pluto,” after the mythological Roman god of the underworld.

At that time, Pluto had the title of being the furthest object ever found that rotated around the sun. It was our solar system’s outermost planet, the deep dark member of Earth’s immediate family.

For decades, scientists, astronomers and students learned about the lonely planet Pluto.  Then, in 1979, Pluto got its first humiliation. Because the orbits of planets are not perfect, Neptune swung further out in the sky, making Pluto only the “second” furthest. It lost its title.

Why Pluto is No Longer a Planet

Things got worse for Pluto in 2006. At that time, the astronomers who oversee how objects in space are classified reviewed their rules. Under their new rules, Pluto was too small to be a planet. It was removed from the official list of solar system planets. Pluto was just another “mass” whirling through space.

But Pluto has fans. Many scientists who grew up looking at Pluto as the great distant planet were upset. They thought that Pluto’s history should give it special consideration. Because of their concern, the International Astronomical Union sat down and again looked at how they defined a planet.

Many hoped that a new definition would return Pluto to its previous glory. After all, it had moons and was a significant body at the very edge of our solar system. Still, Pluto is smaller than our moon and has very , very weak gravity.

The astronomers sat down and played with their numbers. Over the last few months, they created a new definition of what makes a body in space “a planet.” This new definition would again make Pluto one of the planets in our solar system. But The new definition would mean that another 109 celestial objects (like asteroids) would also now be “planets.”

Poor Pluto. This mass orbiting the sun in space has gone from being the great edge of our solar system—named after the mythological god of the underworld–to a simple “mass.” If any object in space could be considered an underdog, it would be this small, lonely body over 3 and a half billion miles from the sun.

Conclusion

So, just like black holes only existed in theory until they were later discovered to be real, Pluto ceases to become a planet because of new scientific knowledge.  The lessons we learn from the first image of a black hole are many. One important lesson is to never stop keep learning. You never know what amazing discovery you will find.