Things to Consider as You Read

There are several things you should keep in mind as you read. Ask yourselves the following questions as you go along in order to enhance your understanding of any fictional literary piece.

• What is the setting? Remember that the setting includes time, place, and atmosphere. A smoky street in Victorian London at midnight is going to evoke a far different feeling than modern-day Buckingham Palace at High Tea. 
• Who are the characters? What are their motivations? Who do they love? What are they flaws and weaknesses? What are their strengths and best attributes? What role do they play in the story, and how do they play it? Label the protagonist, antagonist, supporting characters, and minor characters. 
• What is the mood? How do the setting and the tone combine to make you feel? 
• What is the over-arching theme? 

When doing character analysis, please consider the following things: 

• Class. A lower class character is going to have different sorts of conflict, different friends, and perhaps a different caliber of education than an upper class character. 
• Gender. Women are still largely second-class citizens in most of the world. If the story you're reading is set in the past, a woman may be considered property and have little to no worth. Female characters often struggle against chauvinism, sexism, and the patriarchy. 
• Age. Is your character young and foolish, or old and wise? Is s/he somewhere in between? Is s/he wise beyond their years? Did s/he never really grow up? 
• Race. African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and many other racial and ethic groups are commonly discriminated against, both in fiction and in reality. 
• Religion. Religion might influence a character's beliefs and principles, and might also contribute to their struggles throughout the story. Sadly, an American Catholic is probably going to have an easier time than an American Muslim. 
• Geographical context. In general, characters in more developed parts of the worlds face different conflicts than characters in third world nations. For example, a first-world character might be struggling with his/her identity, while a character in a third world nation might be struggling to find enough food to keep her family fed. 
• Historical context. Place all of the above in their proper historical context. An African American is going to have a very different life in Carolina in 1803 than an African American in New York in 2015, just a woman is going to have a different life pre- and post- suffrage and the Woman's Rights Movement. 

Tips for Solving Word Problems

With the new Common Core standards, word problems are becoming trickier and more common than ever. It's vital that you learn how to pull out the important information and figure out what the question is asking you to do even in the most complicated of word problems.

• If you have a worksheet, workbook, quiz, or test that you're allowed to write on, take full advantage of it. Use a combination of underlining, circling, and boxing in to separate the different parts of the word problem and highlight important information. Just make sure that you don't underline the entire thing. If you're going to do that, you may as well just leave it as is. The whole point of marking up the question is to find the important parts, so it's not going to help you if you mark everything as important. 
• Figure out what the question wants you to do. Sometimes, it'll ask you to do more than one thing and sometimes it'll try to confuse you by adding extra steps you need to do before arriving at your final answer. You can lose points fast if the question asks you to round your answer or convert it from feet to inches and you leave it as is. You might want to star the question so it'll stand out on your page. 
• Break it down into steps. Ask yourself what you need to do first. What comes after that? What's my third step, etc, etc? If you have enough time and you're really struggling with a problem, you might want to partially rewrite it and label each part so it's clearer to you. 
• Make sure you final answer is circled/underlined/boxed in/on the line provided. If you just did three computations to get at your answer, your test grader might not know which one is your final answer. 
• Check your work. Make sure you didn't make any silly errors, like adding instead of subtracting or writing a 9 instead of a 6. Also ask yourself if your answer makes sense in the real world. If the question asks you to find out how much Lily spent for three tomatoes and you get an answer of 90 dollars or two cents, you probably made a mistake somewhere. 
• You can also check your answer by working backwards. If you want to make sure you completed a division problem correctly, multiply the quotient (the answer you got) by the divisor (the number you divided by) to make sure you can arrive back at the original dividend (the number you divided, also known as the number under the little house in long division). 

K-12 Reading and Writing Worksheets

K12 Reader provides free printable worksheets for students in grades K-12. Students can brush up on their spelling, reading skills, grammar, composition, and vocabulary. You can sort the worksheets by grade or by topic to find the best worksheet for you. Every worksheet comes with an answer key, and most have a mini-lesson at the top to further aid the learning process.

Why it's Vital to Supplement School with Home Learning

In today's increasingly global, intensely competitive, and dizzyingly fast-paced society, it is vital to supplement what you learn at school with home learning. First of all, let's define what I mean by 'home learning.' I don't mean homework, and I don't mean studying for school-related tests or quizzes. Nor do I mean sitting down and reading your entire biology book in one session. (Seriously, don't do this. You will wake up in terrible pain several hours later regretting every life choice you ever made. I speak from experience. Possibly; it could have been a dream for all I know.)

What I do mean by home learning is going to the library and finding a novel that captivates your attention. I mean tuning into the science channel for a little while. I mean going online to watch educational videos that inspire you. I mean sitting down and writing a poem about what's outside your window, or writing a short story about what your cat does when you're not looking (spoiler: he licks everything you own), or writing a series of novels about alien dinosaurs that may or may not be planets.

Find a topic that interests you and learn everything you can find about it. Admittedly, that's probably an impossible goal in this day and age. If you try to learn everything you can find about volcanoes, say, you'll have to sort through fifty million webpages, videos, articles, pictures, ads, etc, etc. When I was a child, all I had to do was take out five books from the library and watch a 45-minute documentary and presto, I had explored every possible avenue of volcano-related knowledge that existed in my small corner of the world. Perhaps a better bit of advice would be to explore the topic of your desire until your curiosity is throughly satisfied.

Find something you're passionate about. If you like art, take a virtual museum tour. Do some research about galleries that offer free or reduced-price or optional admission, and politely request that your caregiver organize a day trip in the near future. If you want to try your hand at art, see if you can borrow some art supplies from your school or local library. If not, you may just have to settle for sketching with a pencil or pen and drawing online until you can save up enough to explore some other mediums like pastel, watercolor, or sculpture. See if you can apprentice with a local artist or if you can negotiate a work-for-knowledge sort of employment.

You might want to explore film-making or photography. Even if you start with the camera in your phone, you can still play with light and shadow, theme, mood, tone, composition, and subject. Experiment. Mix it up. With your parent's permission, you might even be able to start a Youtube channel. Enlist the help of your friends to interview elders in your community. Gather stories from the people around you, or find an beautiful little place of isolation where you can record the swaying of trees or the blossoming of flowers or the ebb and flow of the urban environment.

Volunteer. Find out if there are any local animal shelters or hospitals nearby that accept volunteers. If you love working with animals or helping other people, this might be a great way to gain experience, give back to your community, and start building your resume or CV.

Spend a day at the library with the goal of exploring something completely new. Go to the geography section and find a book about a country you've never heard of. Wander over to the history section and pick out a few books about time periods you know little about. Make your way over to the science isle and find materials about a theory you've never even knew existed. Either do it the old-fashioned way and leave your electronics at home, or bring along a tablet or laptop for additional research. (Just make sure it's silenced beforehand, or you might find yourself on the receiving end of a very disapproving SHHH!)

If you're interested in computers, electronics, engineering, or robotics, see if you can find a really old desktop computer from the '90s. You might have to look around your neighborhood on trash day or ask around to see if anyone is looking to get rid of a broken computer, or you might have to settle for buying one. A general rule of the thumb is the older, dingier, dustier, and more broken it is, the cheaper it'll be. Your goal here is to take apart the computer, so don't spend more than 10 or 15 dollars. If you can find a tower as well, great. (For those of you too young to remember what a tower is, it's a big, loud, noisy black box that used to run our computers and stub our toes back in the days before laptops.) I took one of those bad boys apart a few years back, and it was pretty awesome. I am, however, contractually obligated to inform you that you will find fifteen years of dust, pet hair, and other assorted debris, so consider yourself warned.

If you're interested in coding, that's another story entirely. I'm planning a post about online resources for students just like you, so keep checking back over the next week.

You might be interested in geography as well. Try starting a rock collection, and learning about the origin of each rock, how it was formed, approximately how old it may be, and how professional geologists would classify it.

If you love nature and find yourself inspired by trees and flowering plants, there's a couple of things you can do to foster that interest. Ask your caregiver if you can start a small garden in your yard, or, if you don't have a yard, ask if you can dedicate a windowsill or corner of your room to a small garden. You might want to try growing herbs, flowers, succulents, tomatoes, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, or even bushes and small trees. You might even want to start a butterfly garden or a compost pile. (Please remember that unless you're living on a piece of property that you yourself own, you will either need to ask your landlord and/or caregiver for permission.) You can also join Arbor Day foundation and get ten trees delivered to your house when you purchase a year-long ten dollar membership. You'll be helping the environment, beautifying your community, purifying your air, and providing a place for local birds to nest. And I will stress again that you must ask your caregiver to borrow their credit card before purchasing a membership, unless you are an adult or are old enough to have a high school checking account with a debit card.

If you're interested in writing, you might want to start a blog, or contribute to an existing forum for young writers. If your school has a journalism group or newspaper, enquire about joining.

I'm sure that there are other interests I've missed. If you'd like a personalized recommendation for home learning ideas for your personal interest or hobby, leave a comment and myself or my co-partner will be more than happy to help you.

My point here is that you should find something you love. Find something that excites you, something that inspires you, something that matters to you, something that speaks to your heart and your mind and your very being.

This isn't just important because it'll boost your grades. (Though, it is likely to help you perform better in school. That's just a bonus.) It's important because you are young and full of excitement and curiosity. Right now, you have so much potential. Make the most of it by exploring the world around you and learning as much as you can. If you're doing what you love, it won't feel like 'work' or 'learning,' but it'll still prepare you for your future years of schooling and for your future career. If you find that thing that inspires your mind to soar to new heights, you can start thinking of the kind of job you'll want when you grow up. If you love nature, you might become a botanist. If you can't go a day without animals, consider researching a veterinary career. If you're a computer whizz, think about becoming an engineer or a coder.

The best part of finding what speaks to you is that you'll start to see the world in an entirely new light. The more you know, the more connections you can make. The more you bring into the classroom with you, the more knowledge you'll leave with. Please don't think of learning as a chore. Learning... Learning is a box holding a key to a whole new world. So get out there. Learn something, even if it's one little thing every day, and watch as the world opens itself to you. It won't happen overnight, and it might not happen for years. But if you make a habit of learning, and if you learn to love learning, one day you will look down and find that key in your hand. See where it takes you. You might be surprised to discover where it leads, but I promise you this: you will not be disappointed.

Khan Academy

A while back, one of our readers suggested that we add Khan Academy to our list of resources.

Khan Academy offers an amazing variety of learning resources. Students can brush up on their math or science skills, learn about economics and finance, dive into the world of computer programing, prep for the Big Test, or access partner content offered by world-renowned museums.

Khan Academy is an awesome resource for learners of all ages. Kindergartners through college students can benefit from using Khan Academy, as can their caregivers and teachers. Adult learners can enjoy these resources as well. Whether you're 5 or 125, Khan Academy will help you learn something new.

Book Recommendation: The Moomins Series by Tove Jansson

The co-creator of this blog is probably going to laugh when she sees this post, but I would nevertheless like to recommend a series of children's books that is very near and dear to me. The Moomins series was begun in 1945 by a Swedish-speaking Finnish woman. The series details the often quite whimsical adventures of a family of hippopotamus-shaped creatures who live in a fictional place in Northern Finland called Moominvalley.

I would recommend this series primarily to elementary school students and older students struggling with reading comprehension; however, the Moomin books are written so that they can be enjoyed by people of all ages. I know of adults living in Scandinavia and in Finland who often revisit the beloved stories they enjoyed as children. I myself didn't discover the Moomins until my junior year of high school, but I found them rewarding nevertheless.

The Moomins series can teach American children a lot about Nordic culture and also serve as a gentle reminder to respect all of Earth's living creatures, from plants to animals to the waters and forests they call home. The prose is also quite beautiful, and often evokes vivid mental images of glowing sunsets and magical nights. For a better idea of what I'm talking about, see the quotes I've included below.


“Now dusk fell again. It spread very slowly and carefully, to give the day ample time to go to bed. Small clouds were strewn all over the western sky like dabs of pink whipped cream. They were reflected on the ocean, which rested calm and smooth and looked quite harmless.” - Moominpappa’s Memoirs

“The sun had set, but now in June there was of course no darkness to speak of. The night was pale and dreamy and full of magic.” - Moominsummer Madness. 

“The sand was raked into smooth little ripples under the clear, green water, and the rocks were warm in the sunshine. The wind had gone home to sleep, and there was no horizon to be seen, only a great transparency of light.” - Moominpappa’s Memoirs

“One evening the western sky was on fire with the most beautiful sunset she had ever seen. It was a tumult of red, orange, pink, and yellow flames, filling the clouds above the dark and stormy sea with smoldering colors. The wind was blowing from the south-west towards the island from the sharp, coal-black line of the horizon.

  

As she gazed at the sky, the evening light crept up the wall, lighting up the flowers in her garden. They seemed to be alive and shining. The garden opened out, and the gravel path with its curious perspective suddenly seemed quite right and to lead straight to the verandah. Moominmamma put her paws round the truck of the tree; it was warm with sunshine and she felt that the lilac was in bloom.” - Moominpappa at Sea.

Free Books

Many sites provide free digital books. A few are listed below.

Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

Open Library: https://openlibrary.org/

Penn State Electric Classics: http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/jimspdf.htm

The Online Books Page: http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/

You can also try searching the Amazon Kindle Store for free books. Amazon has thousands of free digital books, and you don't need a Kindle to access them, either. All you need is some kind of electronic device (a computer, tablet, or smart phone) and the free-to-download Kindle app.

If you're looking for a specific book, you might want to try a quick Google search using the keywords 'Title pdf' or 'read Title online free.' Use your judgement when doing so, however, because searches like these can direct you to virus-laden downloads if you click on a suspicious site.

Shopping List: Reading Reflex

When I was in first grade, my mother taught me how to read. She didn't trust the school to teach me to read, so she went to the library and got a book called Reading Reflex: The Foolproof Phono-Graphix Method for Teaching Your Child to Read by Carmen McGuinness and Geoffrey McGuinness.

In about three weeks, I was reading at a third grade level. Reading Reflex really works!

Please note that Reading Reflex is only for students who do not know how to read yet. This is not for more advanced students. We recommend using it for grades K through 5.

How We Teach Our Students to Read

How we teach our students to read is a method that is time-tested and effective. Unfortunately, it's also a company secret.

Thankfully, we use more than one method and we're more than willing to share so that our readers can improve their reading skills on their own and at any reading level.

• Read a lot. This is one of the tips that we give our students on their first day with us. Reading is almost like a sport in that the more you do it, the better you'll be at it. 
• Read what you love whenever possible. Sure, you're going to have to read some potentially boring (but still rewarding) books at school, but in your free time you can read whatever you want. 
• That being said, step out of your comfort zone sometimes. If all you read are mystery books, try reading historical fiction once in a while. If all you read is non-fiction, try science fiction! 
• Make reading an adventure. Reading transports you places in your mind that you may never otherwise be able to go to. Reading can take you to France in 1863 or Egypt during Cleopatra's rule, New York City one hundred years from now or 65 million years ago right before everything changed. Reading can allow you to visualize the rise and fall of empires, the birth and death of the most influential people ever to have lived, and the greatest changes ever to have taken place on this planet. You can go anywhere in time and space. Isn't that amazing?
• Discuss what you reading. Asking yourself or being asked questions about what you read helps you develop critical thinking skills.
• Write about what you read. Whether it's a journal entry describing what you read, a book review, a character analysis, an essay, or an alternative ending, writing about what you read will help you find new levels of meaning within any text.