Episode 2 - Falling for Learning Podcast w Sunny

The podcast discusses the issue of preferential treatment in college admissions and the neglect of writing instruction in schools. It emphasizes the importance of parents taking an active role in their child's education and provides tips on how to support their child's writing skills, such as using sentence frames and allowing them to choose topics they are passionate about. The podcast aims to help children fall in love with learning and succeed academically. Welcome to the Fall for Learning Podcast. I am T.D. Blanaugh and I am so glad that you have joined us today for our second episode. It is so enjoyable. We're in summertime. Lots of things are happening. And today, we are glad that you have joined us. So, we're going to talk about our news, our hot news in education right now. I brought up last episode the Supreme Court's decision to stop racial preferential treatment, which is called affirmative action. And I also, at that point, have brought up legacy. How the legacy people are not being stopped and no one was addressing it, but here we go. It is now being addressed. So, this new lawsuit alleges preferential treatment for largely majority whites that are getting admitted into the university through the legacy admissions policy that has been in place in some institutions for at least a century. So, we are having a direct response into what many of us have called a preferential treatment for Caucasians or white students historically. And so, now we see that there's another place where they're trying to make admissions more fair. And, of course, this is controversial depending on your viewpoint of these different policies. So, we want to think about that as we are preparing. You know, parents, it's always on our mind about what we can do to get our kids into college, how we could get them to the next level, how we could get them to fulfilling their dreams. So, again, this podcast, Falling for Learning, is really about thinking about laying that foundation for your children to make sure they have the skills to be on track for learning and on track for success so that there are no barriers in them reaching their goals. And so, that's where we are. So, last episode, we talked about some major elements that your child needs to be fully prepared and have a well-rounded education. Today, we're going to start with writing. The focus is going to be on writing. We know that throughout the United States, the writing instruction aspect in schools is actually a neglected skill. All across the nation, we see that students are not performing up to par when it comes to writing. And when we get into the root cause of that, we see that the issue is that the teacher education programs are not adequately preparing teachers in a general sense. Of course, there's always exceptions, but we're thinking in general terms, this is an area where they're not being adequately prepared, and as a result, the teachers are not feeling comfortable with how they're teaching writing, and they are not teaching writing in the way that they could be. Some of the issues that come up when they're writing and teaching writing is that there is composing without writing. So, this sounds really strange, right, where the students are copying a lot of the writing that they're doing, they may give them sentence starters, and with the sentence starter, they actually only have to write a couple of words, because most of the sentence has been composed for them. They may be also filling in the blanks on worksheets, so there's writing without composing. So, we really have to think in terms of what we can do. This podcast focuses on parents, so we look at the trends in education, and then you as a parent, how are you going to respond to that, because failure's not an option. We don't want you to think in terms of, there's nothing that we can do, right? There's also, there's always something that we can do, and that is why we're here to support you. Number one, as parents, you are the first teachers and the continuous teachers of your child, and so we really have to strategize about how to address these issues that we see in the educational space, and again, some of our parents out there have taken over the reins from public schools and have decided to do homeschooling, and so again, you're even more integral into how the education is rolling out for your child. So, we want to, number one, address this composing without writing, or writing without composing. Big issue. So, you really want to support your child in writing their own sentences and their own paragraphs. So, if you have a child that is behind in their writing, number one, you want to give them some support, so that support might start with sentence frames. So, you have to be very strategic about how those sentence frames are used. Now, are those sentence frames going to be used the same way the whole academic year? Absolutely not. So, how do we make changes? So, you may need to start, depending on your child's level, with heavy scaffolding. Heavy scaffolding may be a temporary writing without composing, right? So, we're giving them the first five words, and then they fill in a couple of words. We may start there, but be clear with your child when you put this, what we call a scaffold in place, be very clear that it is not a continuous support. You are putting it in place to help them, and that you'll slowly be taking this away. Let them know that the goal is for them to be writing independently, without getting any help, and you're going to work them up to that level. So, maybe you start with five words at the beginning of a sentence, and they add two or three, then you start them with four words, give them a week, three words, two words, one word. So, you are giving them very, very little support by the end until they are writing on their own, and always let them know, I'm making the shift now. You are making this progress, and so you're ready for the next level. Celebrate with them. Doesn't have to be a big celebration. Praise goes a long way, specific praise about them thinking and coming up with their own ideas to complete their sentences and thoughts. The days are flying by. You know you need to buckle down and provide learning activities for the kids to prevent the summer slide. Let me help you out. Join our email list, and in exchange, you will get our freebie, 10 ways to squeeze learning into the busy days. Don't let another day go by without providing fun and learning that will give your child the competitive advantage. Go to tinyurl.com slash learn10way. That's tinyurl.com slash learn the number 10 way. Brainstorm or pre-write. Brainstorm is just writing down ideas in an unstructured way. Pre-writing is an umbrella term, meaning before you get to the sentences and the paragraphs. That may come in the form of a graphic organizer where you're writing down phrases and ideas that they are discussing, and then eventually you could get to writing the sentences and paragraphs. You're talking, giving them think time, because when you're talking, it's part of thinking. Writing down some phrases and ideas, listing those ideas, or putting them in a graphic organizer in a structured way. You could put them under different categories, characters, events, conflicts, fun dialogue that there are certain movies that there are certain parts that you always want to repeat those phrases that the characters say that are either funny or threatening or really that stand out. You could think about different categories and let it be their choice. That's the final thing that I want to tell you about. When we want kids to write, especially kids that are hesitant, reluctant, or let's just say it, they hate writing. You want to give them a choice about what they're going to write about. You want them writing about things that they love, things that they enjoy, things that maybe they're even a little addicted to, because you want it to be something that they already have a lot to say about. This prepares them in the future when they have to write about topics that aren't their favorite, that aren't part of their strong suit or their preferences, but at first to whet their appetite. Again, falling for learning has to do with falling in love with learning. These tips are going to help your child to fall in love with writing, starting with making sure they have topics that they really love, they really like to talk about. They talk about it all the time. They're bringing it up all the time. When they're playing, this is the topic or the movie or the game that they are playing with or acting out or duplicating or dressing up as. Those are really easy topics. When you're around your child, you know what those are. You can have them talk about it, and it'll help them to write about it. All of what we talked about is just talking about first draft writing. I'm not going to get into the nitty-gritty of going through the entire writing process. We talked about pre-writing, talked about drafting, and again, helping them if you need with sentence starters when you're first starting, but letting them know before you put it in place that this is going to be put in place to be taken away slowly later. It shouldn't be a surprise. It's not a gotcha. I'm helping you until you don't need my help anymore. You're growing up, and you're becoming independent thinkers, writers, readers, and I will help you, and then I will slowly take it away. Later on, we'll talk about in our next episode about the writing process, but the quick thing that I want to say, when they get their information down, they get a first draft, celebrate it. Celebrate. Again, I feel like a lot of parents, and I've been there. I'm a parent, so I've been there. They want to point out negatives. Oh, this is a mistake. That's not spelled right. That doesn't even make any sense, so before you get into that, just celebrate where they are. Oh, I love that detail that you put there. Oh, you put all the ideas from our graphic organizer or our pre-write or our discussion in your draft. Celebrate. Do not point out negatives, especially when you have those kids out there that hate to write. Again, we're not twisting their arm. We're getting them to love writing by talking about and discussing and writing about and thinking about something they love already, they talk about already. They act out. They repeat all of that over and over again throughout the days that you spend with them. That is just one way that we can make sure our students are on track, getting that writing together because it is a neglected skill in the classroom across America. We need to make sure as parents, we step in and make sure that we are filling in those gaps. We're making sure our children have the advantages, they're not disadvantaged. We talked about the college admissions. We want to make sure they have the skills. We want to start with the foundation and build them up so that any school that they get admitted to, they're successful. We know that there is a issue where kids get admitted but they don't graduate or they don't have the skills. It takes them a lot longer to get through college. We want to make sure we're in the know. Thank you again for joining Falling for Learning where we help you to get your child to fall in love with learning so that they have the skills to stay on track for success and on track for learning. Thank you. Join us again next week. Saturdays is when our podcast is released. Our new episode every week. Thanks again. I'm T.D.