StudySkills.com by SOAR Study Skills

I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and that your new year is off to a good start.  As you may recall, I tackled a big project in November and December, writing 30 articles in 30 days.  I wanted to determine the topics and issues that are of greatest to concern to parents and educators so I can better target the materials we develop and the free articles we distribute.

Some of the hot topics included handwriting (to my surprise), gaps in our educational system, and challenges with motivation.  Teachers spoke about their constant frustration that they just can’t “do enough” to reach all of the students they want to reach or have the impact they had hoped to have.  Parents are struggling with homework and finding that homework is, in many instances, destroying their relationships with their children.  Heavy stuff.

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Two-thirds of students entering high school are not proficient readers! This is a crisis, but there is a simple piece of the puzzle to fix this problem.  It would dramatically improve student performance! However, most of us don’t know anything about it.

The problem is that we do not teach a COMPLETE set of English rules. In last week’s article, I shared information about a fabulous book called, Uncovering the Logic of English.  The author, Denise Elde, clearly explains how much we are missing in our traditional reading instruction.

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Last week, a friend was telling me about her work with a community initiative to help “at-risk” youth get better grades in school. Before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “Oooh…they need study skills!”

She responded, “Well, we are focusing more on motivation,” and quickly continued with her story.

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As school budgets are rapidly shrinking, administrators have to carefully consider how to allocate their budget; they need to get the most “bang for their buck.” Managing a school budget is an art form involving hundreds of decisions and balancing dozens of demands.

“HOW CAN WE MAKE THE GREATEST IMPACT?”

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Study skills have earned a bad “rap” over the years for many reasons:

-Students think they are “boring” because many boring things are lumped together with study skills.

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We are heading in to the time of year that students of all ages have reports, presentations, and other big projects to do. So, I am sharing a nifty, on-line tool that is a great for helping students map out a plan for these big projects. It is a calendar creator that will allow you to print a customizable date range of up to 12 weeks…all on one page. It’s free and available here: (more…)

Today, I want to share a resource that became the topic of one of the “rants” Susan mentioned yesterday. We were discussing how important it is for student to learn how to “delay gratification” in order to be successful… in school or in life.

So, I shared this video with her: (more…)

By now, you’ve heard me mention Chrystal, SOAR’s Operations Manager. Chrystal is a certified teacher; she was actually my son’s (favorite) teacher, which is how I met her. She is very kind and easily wins respect from her students, but she holds everyone accountable. Personally, I believe she is one of the best teachers I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet, so I’m thrilled to have her on our team!

Around the office, Chrystal and I often get on rants about how we would make the world perfect, if only people would ask for our opinion. During a couple of these rants, Chrystal got rather animated while telling good stories, so I asked her to turn those stories into two specific articles. Today, she presents the first one: (more…)

Last week, I received an email from a 30-in-30 subscriber: Her son is a junior in high school who struggles academically. He refuses extra help from a tutor or teacher, insisting he can do it on his own. He has an older brother who does well in school with relatively little effort, so the young man is likely feeling inferior. This ended with, “Can you help?”

Well, I hope I can. Ultimately, this is an issue of confidence (or lack of it) with a heaping spoonful of sibling rivalry. However, once the confidence is addressed, this young man’s tendency to compare himself to his brother will fade away.

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I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! There are a few lose ends to tie up from last week.

THE DRAGONS WON!

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