Learn Smarter Podcast

Reading comprehension is critical--even if your student is the most fluid out loud reader...are they really understanding what they’re reading? Reading comprehension weaknesses can be sneaky because it can be difficult to identify. In last weeks episode, Rachel & Steph dug in to why students can pretend they understand what they’re reading (when they don’t) and give you some of their favorite reading comprehension strategies. This week, they’ll share the rest of the strategies and the Key Takeaways they want to make sure you know. The first four strategies from last week: Knowing what the story is about in advance using images in the book and Sparknotes Prefilling a book with sticky notes that have questions on them Using visualization Audiobooks Strategies five through ten: 5. Make true life connections with the story 6. Reading for answers 7. When going through guided reading questions, restate the questions in your own words and identify how many questions you are responsible for answering 8. Creating a summary for the part you are reading 9. Talking out loud: 10. Skim and scoop Top 10 Reading Comprehension Strategies Other episodes mentioned: Episode 12: (Reading Series) “My kid isn’t reading.” Episode 17: (Reading Series) Our Top 10 Reading Comprehension Strategies (Part 1)

My Ed Therapist’s Eric Kaufmann and Kapp Educational Therapy Group’s Katie Nolan join Rachel and Steph to chat about how and why they became Educational Therapists. They chat about the concerns they had about leaving the classroom and why they all love the work that they do. Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/learnsmarterpodcast How to connect with us: Join our FB Group Join our e-mail list Rachel’s Kapp Educational Therapy Group website Steph’s My Ed Therapist website @learnsmarterpodcast, @kappedtherapy, @myedtherapist Other episodes mentioned: Ep 95: Comprehension Strategies & Tools with Katie Nolan (Local Professionals Series) Ep 191: The Why and How of Informal Assessment with Katie Nolan (ET Series) Ep 173: My Ed Therapist's Eric Kaufmann on Executive Functioning in Males (EF Series) Ep 192: The Formula For Effort: How to Tell if Your Learner is Trying with Eric Kaufmann (ET Series)

Reading comprehension is critical--even if your student is the most fluid out loud reader...are they really understanding what they’re reading? Reading comprehension weaknesses can be sneaky because it can be difficult to identify. In this episode, Rachel & Steph dig in to why students can pretend they understand what they’re reading (when they don’t) and give you some of their favorite reading comprehension strategies. Next week, they’ll share the rest of the strategies and the Key Takeaways they want to make sure you know. ----------------------------------------------------------- There are two major components of reading: decoding and comprehension. Decoding is sounding out and reading the words. Reading comprehension is understanding what you are reading. It is really apparent when a student is struggling with decoding because you can detect it when they read aloud. Reading comprehension struggles can fly under the radar. Before we move forward in giving you our ideas and strategies we want to make sure you know that we are not intending for you to try everything at once. It is not reasonable, achievable, or realistic. We suggest you pick one or two of these strategies that you think your child is going to connect with the most and start there. With that said, we are going to discuss some of our top strategies for students who struggle with reading comprehension. We will continue to talk about reading strategies in our following blog (blog 18) as well. Reading comprehension strategies: 1.Knowing what the story is about in advance: Look at the book cover as well as the book art and get a sense of what the book is about. Read the back of the book. Use Sparknotes to find out what the story is about ahead of time. 2. Prefill a book with sticky notes: Write questions on the sticky notes such as the W’s (who, what, when, where, why). Use some sticky notes for the child to draw a picture of what just happened at that point in the book. 3. Visualization: After your child reads a paragraph ask, “What does the character look like?” Help your child use the details in the book to put together images. 4. Audiobooks: Audiobooks remove the burden of decoding, allowing the reader to focus on story, plot, and characters. Pro Tip: Reading the book while listening to the audiobook is one of our favorite strategies. Other episodes mentioned: Episode 12: (Reading Series) “My kid isn’t reading.” Episode 18: (Reading Series) Our Top 10 Reading Comprehension Strategies (Part 2)

Calendaring is hated by so many of the students we work with--and it’s the first thing we do with them. It is so critical and so important. If you do not keep track of what is going on in your life, nothing else can get done. Having a calendar is the starting point that greatly reduces anxiety in students because once you are in control of your time, you are in control of your life. You cannot get into a car and start driving unless you know where you are going--it is the same with calendaring. You cannot start reaching goals and milestones within educational therapy without knowing what they are in the first place. We encounter a lot of resistance when it comes to calendaring, but we have learned to challenge that resistance. Many students rely on online portals and memorization to keep track of their assignments and commitments. To counteract this resistance, we challenge our students to find an adult that does not have a calendar. All adults have calendars (or some sort of way of keeping track of their tasks). Like many things, it is difficult to start calendaring and there is a lot of upfront work, but as soon as the process becomes automated and habitual, you will see results. The benefits far outweigh the uncomfortable beginning of starting. One of the reasons students don’t want to calendar is because of their online portal. We have a love/hate--but mostly hate--relationship with the online portal because it teaches students learned helplessness. The online portal teaches students to rely on whattheir teachers are posting to tell them what to do everyday. Often the online portal is used differently by different teachers, sending students off on a wild goose chase to source their responsibilities. The online portal does not allow for forward planning--it is nearly impossible to manage a long-term project simply by using an online calendar. To help you and your child start calendaring we have compiled the... Seven Big Rules of Calendaring. Everything needs to be in one place. Students need to have one point of action everyday, which is, “I am going to check my calendar.” Decide AND COMMIT between digital and paper. The advantages and disadvantages of the two depend on age and preference. If you tend to lose papers but not your phone, the digital calendar may work best. We don’t want to pretend like we prefer a paper calendar--the ability to quickly automate, reconcile and access it is simply not an option with a paper calendar. Sometimes it’s unavoidable and ourclients have to use a paper calendar, but we undoubtedly prefer the digital calendar. (BONUS: You can have an all-family calendar and communicate and schedule with your child.) Automate, automate, automate. Automating is both learning smarter and working smarter. Put weekly commitments into your calendar once as a repeating event and have it always be there. Front-load. Put in all dates for all tasks as soon as you learn of them. This means, when you have the same class, every Monday at 8AM for the entire year...put that on your calendar at the beginning of the year. Layering. Digital calendars allow you to create specific calendars for the different facets of your life. We recommend that each student have two: school and personal calendars. Color code your different calendars to allow you to see how your time is being spent. Because each calendar is a different color, it allows students to visually see what is actually happening every day. The “to-do list” is an all day event. Listing your one time tasks on the same calendar as an all day event keeps everything you need in one place. Our Seven Big Rules of Calendaring are some guidelines for you to be mindful of when calendaring with your student. Now, what goes on your calendar? We have created a universal list to help guide your planning. School Entire School Academic Calendar (Days Off, Progress Report Days, Late Start, School-wide events, Class Schedule) All Day vs.

Rachel Kapp, M.Ed., BCET, and Stephanie Pitts, M.Ed., BCET dig into test anxiety–what it is, why it happens and what to do about it. Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/learnsmarterpodcast How to connect with us: Join our e-mail list Rachel’s Kapp Educational Therapy Group website Steph’s My Ed Therapist website @learnsmarterpodcast, @kappedtherapy, @myedtherapist