What Matters Most

It was great to see many of you at Back to School Night!  I appreciated the opportunity to share key research-based strategies that you can do at home that significantly impact your child's achievement.  In reading the following three T's are recommended:  Time, Text and Talk.  There is a direct correlation between the amount of time students read at school and at home and their performance.  Every minute counts, so engaging your child in a text of his/her choice that he/she can accurately read and comprehend is key. Also talking with your child about what he/she is reading and modeling your excitement for reading goes a long way.  
In math it is essential to build students' math fact fluency without using a timer.  Removing a timer helps send the correct message that math is about thinking, not speed.  Having students practice with flash cards that visually represent the answer to an addition, subtraction, multiplication or division problem, similar to the ones used by our Investigations Math series, builds a conceptual understanding of what the operations stand for.

Finally, parents are able to promote students' academic and social emotional growth by honoring mistakes and promoting a growth mindset.  Using more positive phrases such as, "I don't have this concept yet" instead of "I can't do this" promotes resiliency.  Brain research also shows that the brain grows synapses when mistakes are made.  Because the academic and social learning that results from making mistakes is great please encourage your child to take risks.