Observe your child or ask your child’s teacher or in-home tutor how well your child is doing with school and homework. Professional tutors and teachers usually sense when the child has a learning problem. To help you in determining your child’s learning abilities, read the following symptoms of sensory integration problems, which Optimum Learning from Australia has provided in its free booklet for parents and educators.

• Short term memory problems
• Information goes in one ear and out the other
• Your child may not be able to remember more than one or two items from a list of four verbal instructions.
• Your child may have learned and understood tables one day, but totally forget them the next day.
• Poor reading comprehension
• Messy writing: while the attention is on what to write (auditory channel), there is no attention on how it looks (visual channel).
• Phonetic spelling: the attention is only on what it sounds like and not on what it looks like.
• A student may learn easier with the teacher whose teaching method matches the child’s learning style, such as visual or auditory. The child does not have to shift from one sensory channel to another to translate the lessons.

When the child has problems with left and right brain integration, the following behavioral signs are present:

• Poor reading skills: comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and speed may be all affected
• Reversals of “b” and “d,” numbers or “was” for “saw”
• Visual problems, as the left eye and the right eye do not communicate efficiently
• Poor eye-hand coordination
• Poor handwriting skills, i.e. capitals where they do not belong, letter size and spacing are irregular, and lines are often ignored, although these may have been pointed out to the child many times.
• Poor story writing skills, as creative ideas are processed in the right brain and grammar and punctuation are processed in the left brain
• Poor spelling: there may be reversals of letters in words, there is an extra letter, or a letter is missing (often an “n”, “r” or “l”). The child does not say the word while looking at a picture of a word. This is an example of a survival strategy used by children who can only use one side of the brain at a time.
• Exam blanks

If you or your child’s tutor or teacher observed many of these symptoms, then it is possible your child has a learning problem. Immediately consult a learning and child development specialist for correct diagnosis. Many special education schools can be trusted to help your child learn and develop the necessary skills for a healthy adult life.

Dyslexia is the most common cause of problems in writing, spelling and reading. About 20% of the population has some language learning disability and about 80% of them have dyslexia.

Children with dyslexia often have a high level of intelligence, but they were often mistaken as slow learners because of their condition. They lag behind their classes. This builds frustration within them and changes their attitudes towards school. They lose their interest, which greatly affects their academic performance.

Dyslexia can take many forms at different intensities, which makes a correct diagnosis of dyslexia difficult. Some children with dyslexia do not receive the proper attention for their learning problem.

Indirectly, in-home tutoring helps children with dyslexia, although it is not part of therapy. A correct diagnosis should always come first. From this, educators and parents can create a learning program to help dyslexics cope with school.

If the problem is indeed dyslexia, then there are professional tutors specially trained to teach children with dyslexia. They have specialized modules and learning materials that make learning fun and easy for any child.

Tutorial modules for children with dyslexia involve sensory activities. Since they have trouble reading texts they can learn through the other senses like through listening to music. Most children with dyslexia can do easy reading of very simple text, but have trouble with higher level reading skills, such as paragraphs.

In-home tutors can help the child improve reading and writing skills by giving various exercises that gradually develop the child’s confidence. The child eventually succeeds in learning along with classmates in a regular classroom setting.

[Re-syndicated from cbsnews.com]

All You Need To Know About Tutoring

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There are several signs that will indicate to parents that their child needs a tutor, says Edward Gordon, a tutoring consultant for the federal and state governments and author of “Tutor Quest.”

According to Gordon, parents spend approximately $8 billion a year on tutors. He said the federal government will spend about $1 billion to pay for tutors due to the “No Child Left Behind” Act that was passed by Congress in January of 2002.

Under this legislation, children who attend schools that do not meet new government standards and are determined to be “failing” schools for two consecutive years will have the option to transfer to better schools and receive tutoring.

Here are some signs to find out whether your child needs a tutor:

• Continued failing grades in school.
• Child is constantly making excuses as to why he or she is not doing homework. The student is unhappy in school or having problems in general that you are aware of.
• The teacher sends notes home to you and you have to go to school because there is disruptive behavior, a pattern that goes on for at least a full school year.”The typical pattern is the child gets a bad report card in the first semester and the second semester they get a second bad report card. In February through May, that’s when the parents typically take action and get a tutor because they don ‘t want the child to go to summer school or to repeat a grade,” Gordon says.

Gordon says there is no such thing as a lazy child. “That is a symptom. It’s a question of motivation or if the child is having a problem processing the information or if there is a problem at home, such as parents going through a divorce.”

So if your child is falling behind, Gordon recommends getting a tutor to help him or her catch up. “The purpose of tutoring is to speed up the learning process, make up the skills the child has lost and get them back up to the instructional level so the teacher in the classroom can continue the learning process with the child,” he says.

Here are some typical ways of finding a tutor:

• Network through friends
• The public library
• Teachers acquaintances, but not necessarily at the school child goes to. Gordon says the school the child attends may be hesitant to recommend a tutor for liability reasons.
• Volunteer organizations, such as church organizations
• Web sites and the yellow pages

Gordon says the first thing that any parents who are interviewing a prospective tutor should ask is how many years of experience does the person have in teaching the specific subject or area of concern. If the child has a learning disability, reading problem like dyslexia or attention deficit disorder, find out if the tutor is trained to identify and work with children who have this problem.

“You need someone with at least five years or more experience,” says Gordon. “Second, ask if they have a degree in the area they are going to teach and if they are certified to teach in this area. Many people need help in math and science, particularly high school students. Teachers who are not certified can still be good. You may have a teacher who has many years of experience teaching math on a college level and has a degree, but is not certified to teach high school.”

He notes that having degrees and experience does not necessarily mean the person will be a good teacher. “There are certain things you should look for. The teacher needs to be able to explain in laymen’s terms what they are going do, how are they going to find out what the child’s problem is and how they will go about improving the child’s skills,” he says.

Most tutoring programs work with the child on average three to four months, seeing the child for an hour’s session two to three times a week. “Less than twice a week is often a waste of time because it’s not enough assistance,” he says.

Although a tutor cannot give a guarantee, Gordon says, the tutor can give parents some idea of what their expectations should be for success.

There are two aspects of tutoring, he explains:”While the tutor is there, what they do; and afterwards, after the tutor leaves, what do they do to make sure that the homework is done. Do they check it and make sure the child does whatever the tutor suggests?” And after the tutoring is over, he says, what are you doing to continue to reinforce it on a day-to-day basis? He says parents should also make sure the child has a quiet place to study and the supplies he needs. The parent shouldn’t do the child’s homework, but be willing to help, if needed.

The primary motivation of the child to learn comes from the parent, Gordon says. The following is a list of things that a parent should do to reinforce what the tutor is doing:

• Check homework everyday (assigned by the school and the tutor).
• Structure time to do homework
• Provide a quiet place to study
• Be available to help, but don’t do the work
• Show that reading and education are important.

Gordon estimates that the cost to hire a private tutor in the U.S. ranges from to $20 to $150 an hour, depending on the area of the country and what the tutor is doing.

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