Author: Jared Wells

For the second year in a row, Wells Academic Solutions is a sponsor of PCI’s “Walk for Water”. Read about the amazing work PCI is doing to help improve access to  water in impoverished parts of the world here.

This Sunday, April 22nd, is PCI’s annual “Walk for Water“. This fundraising event will feature a 5K, with the option to carry buckets of water, as many women and children must do, every day, in third world countries in order to supply their families with the water they need. This fundraiser will support clean water programs around the world.

I’ll be there with my daughter, Magic, so stop by our booth and say hi!

-Vince

Every year, we get calls from parents 2 weeks before the end of the semester, “I just got a call/email from the teacher and my son/daughter needs to get an A on the final to pass the class!” It’s a tough situation to be in. Obviously, at that point, telling a student what they should have been doing all semester doesn’t help much, and we are in triage mode. But telling them now, so they don’t find themselves in that situation, can make a huge difference!

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And many schools provide a great prevention tool: Powerschool! Students should be checking their Powerschool accounts frequently (weekly) to look for red flags.  But if that isn’t a weekly habit, now is a great time to look over their Powerschool account to notice any red flags that are easy to correct now, but won’t be so easy to correct 6 weeks from now!

And for students whose schools don’t have Powerschool, checking their grade websites (or emailung/calling/scheduling a meeting with a teacher) can serve the same purpose.

1) Missing homework assignments or tests

Students have so much work to do to stay caught up, it can be easy for them to say, “Well, it’s already late. I can take care of that later” about a missed assignment or test. Days turn into weeks, then into months, and pretty soon you have a student asking a teacher in May to make up a quiz from February. Toward the end of the semester, teachers are going to be inundated with requests for turning in late homework assignments, make-up tests, extra credit opportunities, and so on. Students should be handling these things now so that, as the end of the semester approaches, they can focus on getting ready for finals rather than trying to chase down homework assignments they “know they turned in” weeks ago. As you might imagine, teachers aren’t particularly sympathetic to students who are requesting to turn in homework 3 months after it was due.

Also, noticing missing homework assignments right now can give you and your son or daughter time to make the adjustments necessary to get the rest of the semester’s homework turned in on time. Help your student problem-solve: what is getting in the way of getting the homework assignments turned in on time?

2) Poor test grades

There is still time to turn poor test grades around! A poor grade on a test might all but guarantee a poor grade on the next test without intervention, particularly if the material is cumulative (for example, in a math class or chemistry). But sometimes students have the idea that a poor test grade can be made up by doing well on the next two. It can…but only if the student addresses the cause of the initial poor grade and does something differently.

Additionally, occasionally poor test grades can be made up with test corrections or test retakes. These are opportunities that should be explored now rather than at the end of the semester (when a teacher might not be so sympathetic to such requests).

3) Poor grades on homework assignments

I tell my students that “homework is free points”. It’s tough to fail a class as long as the student is doing the homework. Though this is often the case, sometimes teachers actually grade homework, and lost points on homework are often dismissed by students. It’s true that getting a bad score on a homework assignment, in and of itself, isn’t going to affect a student’s grade much. But months of bad scores on homework assignments can indeed have a significant impact. And oftentimes it is just a small change that needs to be made in order to get full points on homework assignments. Again, noticing that a student isn’t getting full marks on homework assignments now give the student the opportunity to make the adjustments necessary to earn a lot more points for the rest of the semester. In addition, not getting full marks can also be a sign that the student is struggling with the material, which again, can be corrected once noticed (particularly before a test comes up!) It’s no surprise that a student who is struggling to get full marks on homework assignments isn’t performing well on exams. But poor grades on homework assignments or quizzes can be a boon…they can be early warning about potential poor performance on a test.

Conclusion:

Make going through your son or daughter’s powerschool a weekly routine. The more quickly you notice something is amiss on their Powerschool, the sooner and more easily you can take corrective action.

-Vince

Give us a call at 858.551.2650 if you’d like to discuss what you are seeing on your child’s Powerschool account.

One of the most important skills we can teach our teens is the ability to plan. And developing the skill and habit of using planners is a big part of it. However, lots of students look as using a planner, not as a way to simplify and make life easier, but as an additional time-wasting chore.

One way to help develop any habit is to reduce the friction in taking action. Even the smallest obstacle can become a reason to just rely on memory rather than writing things down and thinking it through to the end. So how can we make our student’s planners easier to use? Here are 5 ways.

Attachable pen: First reason not to use your planner? You can’t find your pen. There is an easy fix for that…a self attachable pen loop! These things are cheap, so you can buy several attach them to anything that needs a pen (planner, notebooks, binders, etc). I have one attached to my planner. It has an adhesive patch that sticks to the inside cover and a loop that hold a pen or pencil. Just make sure to put the pen back when you are done!

Here is what mine looks like:

Bookmark: Second reason not to use your planner…it’s annoying to find today. There are lots of ways to keep today marked. The best way is with a bookmark. The planner that Muirlands Middle uses has a ruler/bookmark built in. Just insert it into the spiral with “Today” peeking out, and you’ve made it easy to find the current calendar week. Get multiple bookmarks if there is more than one page you’d like to mark.

Remove pages you don’t need/want: Third reason not to use a planner…all the pages in the planner you don’t care about make it bulkier and needlessly complicated to find what you need.

Well who says you have to keep them! Tear out everything that is irrelevant to you. Not in chemistry? Then you probably don’t need the periodic table page, right? Don’t feel you need school policies in your planner? That’s probably ten pages you can remove. Go ahead and tear out previous weeks’ plans if you don’t feel they are relevant to you now. Make your planner as lean as you like so that every page in it is useful to you.

Spiral puncher: Well, if you are tearing out the things you don’t want, why not add things that you do want? A spiral puncher can help! These are great ways to insert pages for projects that you need more space for than what is provided in your current planner. Also great for adding extra sheets for notes to be processed later. We have a spiral puncher here at the office as well.

Plan to plan: In the rush of trying to get everything done during the day, it’s easy to let planning slip off the radar. So the more important thing to plan is…time to plan!

Make the first 15 minutes your student get home planning time. At that time, everything that happened that has not yet been transferred to a planner should be, and time that needs to be spend on assignments and studying should be scheduled. Make spending at least 15 minutes per day on planning, decompressing, and downloading your brain will make it 100x easier to focus on each individual task you need to complete, without forgetting anything.

What tricks do you or your son/daughter have for making their planners more effective?

-Vince

Does your son/daughter need support in planning and using their planners? We can help! Give us a call at 858.551.2650 or email help@wellsacademics.com.

Sign up for our March 7th “SAT/ACT Success” workshop at La Jolla High School here.

As I mentioned in a previous email, I’ve been having lots of personal success using a service called “Focusmate” (Check out www.focusmate.com for more information!)

A service that we’ve offered at Wells Academics on a limited basis is to provide a place for students to do homework. So, for students that are struggling to get their work done, we’ve offered to have the student grab a room after their session and get all (or a good chunk) of their work done. Having a space devoted entirely to schoolwork makes it easier to stay on task. I (or other instructors) can provide light class support but largely it’s about having a block of time dedicated to nothing other than getting homework done. Of course, the problem is that our space for that is limited, so we can’t offer it to every student who could make use of it (who couldn’t?)

So I’ve been thinking, why not offer something like that on an online basis?

So I’m starting the Wells Online Homework Club today!

So here is how it will work:

In my daily email, I’ll let you know what time I’ll be holding the homework club (it will be based on my availability that afternoon). At that time, any student who wants to participate can click on the link provided to join the video chat (no software download required). When the student arrives, he or she will check in with me for a minute or so to talk about what work they plan to complete that hour. Then you get to work!

This is not intended to be time for class support (I’ll be doing focused work myself!) I’ll be available to answer some questions here and there, but this is simply about creating a space for students to get focused work done with a bit of accountability.

I’ll put the time I’ll make available in the footer below on each of my daily emails. No need to call in to schedule or reserve a spot. Just drop in! Give me a call if you have any questions.

-Vince




Today’s homework club will be from 3:30-4:20.

It’s Friday afternoon, and you (a student) are thinking about the work that needs to get done tomorrow. If you know what’s good for you, you start writing down a schedule of when you will get what done the following day. It might looks something like this:

10am-11am: Wake up, have breakfast, shower
11am-12:30 Study for AP Biology test
12:30-1:30: Take a break, watch TV, have a snack
1:30-2:30 Finish rough draft for English paper

You look at it and feel excited…that is totally doable, and I still get to sleep in and relax the rest of the day!

Then the next day rolls around, and as 11am approaches, you start thinking, aww, I’ve got all day to do this. I’d rather do go to the gym/sleep/clean my room/play video games/go to the beach right now. And you probably come up with some really good reasons why your new idea for how to spend 11-12:30 is better, right?

Why do you think you are wiser now than you were you were yesterday?

“Yesterday You” was looking out for your long term well-being. “Yesterday You” knew what actions would lead to a weekend you would actually enjoy, as well as the best outcome for your grades. Are you sure that “Today You” has those same interests in mind? My bet is that 9 times out of 10, “Today You” is just trying to get out putting effort into something.

“Yesterday You” tends to give really sound advice. Think about how successful you’d be if you followed “Yesterday You”s guidance every day. Compare that to the advice “Today You” generally gives. Sure, sometimes “Today You” takes advantage of new information “Yesterday You” didn’t know about. But usually, “Today You” gives pretty bad advice. Listening to “Today You”s advice usually leaves you worse off and feeling bad about yourself, right?

So why are you listening to “Today You”?

Want to make sure your child starts second semester off on the right foot? Give us a call to schedule an in-person or phone consultation!

I’m always on the look-out for apps to help my students (and me!) stay on task. One that I’ve found fun recently is called “Forest” The basic idea with the app is that you set the amount of time you want to do uninterrupted work. You start the timer, and on the screen a seed is planted. As time goes on the seed grows into a bush or tree (depending on the length of the work period. But here is the catch: if you ever leave the app, for any reason, the tree dies and you have to start over. What a great metaphor for your attention growing over time as you focus on a task, only to have it destroyed with even a short distraction!

Over time, as you grow more trees you can plant them in your forest. You can also (and I think THIS is a great feature!) create a room and work with friends…and if ANY of the friends leaves the app everyone’s tree will wither. What a great way to motivate each other to stay on task.

I love apps that use gamification for good rather than evil, and Forest does it in spades. Also, they have a REAL tree planting program that you can use the in-game currency you earn to pay for a tree being planted, which I think is a cool feature too (you can also use the in-game currency to buy different varieties of trees to plant in your virtual Forest).

I’ve had a lot of fun seeing my forest grow over the last few weeks, and it definitely creates a LOT of hesitation in picking up my phone to check emails when I need to be concentrating on something else. I’m also thinking this might be a great way for families to stay off their phones during family time.

So check it out, Forest, for IOS and Android

Want to make sure your child starts second semester off on the right foot? Give us a call to schedule an in-person or phone consultation!

It’s a tragedy that so many people go through years of foreign language instruction in high school and university without feeling confident enough in the language to have a simple conversation. What is required to get an A in a Spanish class is much different from what is required to be able to use the language. It’s unfortunate because being able to converse in a second language could be one of the most practical skills that a student learns in high school.

So if your child wants to get more than just a good grade out of a foreign language class, here are 3 things he or she should be doing.

Consume media in your target language

Do you “waste” time watching TV? Or “trashy” YA fiction? Think about the media you consume. Podcasts, music, articles online, magazines, movies, and on and on. What if, instead of time-wasters, these were valuable investments in your language learning process? Start consuming your media in your target language, and you’ll make reading and listening to your target language something that engages your interest and attention (as opposed to the artificial-sounding conversations we read in our language textbooks!).

Find partners you can practice speaking and listening with regularly

The key to learning any skill is to practice the skill regularly. If you want to improve your skill of memorizing definition, then notecards will probably work fine. But if you want to improve your skill at speaking, speaking is what you need to do. Here is a great article with different web services that can connect you to speaking partners online. But maybe there are one or two students in your class that are interested in going farther than just an A in a class. Schedule time to meet up with them regularly to practice speaking. Start a club at your school, dedicated to speaking the language.

You are going to be bad at it. Be OK with that!

I have a three year old daughter, and let me tell you, she is REALLY bad at English. In a few years, without systematic study, she is going to be REALLY good at it. How? Lots of practice, and no fear of failure. For example, when she hears a new word, she uses it all the time, mostly in incorrect ways. But she keeps at it. Over time, she learns how to use the word correctly. If she were embarrassed about being wrong, she’d probably stop the first time her mother or I corrected her. Instead, she says, “Oh!” and proceeds to improve.

Start using the language, and be ok with your imperfect use of it.

Looking to sharpen your Spanish skills this summer? Give us a call at 858.551.2650 or email help@wellsacademics.com to see how we can help!

So you’ve got your agreement with your child. What do you do from here?

First, remember that it is not your job to determine HOW the expectations are met. That means, no micromanaging, no “nagging”. If our goal is to help our kids become self-directed workers and problem solvers, we need to give them the space to figure out how to succeed. That doesn’t mean you can’t provide advice and support when asked for it (and during the contract creation process, you should indeed make clear that you are available to provide support when asked!) But it needs to come from the student.

It also means that consequences must be consistently enforced. Schedule a time every Friday afternoon or Saturday morning to check how your child did that week. If your son or daughter did not meet your expectations, help them problem solve what went wrong during the week and, most importantly, what your child could have done differently to succeed.

Remember, the purpose of consequences is not to cause pain. The purpose is to eliminate distractions that are getting in the way of success, and to safely simulate the kinds of consequences the real world is going to mete out if the student doesn’t live up to other people’s expectations. Just as we remove the training wheels from a bike once our child has shown she has the skill necessary to succeed without them, so too do we give our son a smartphone once he has shown he has the focus and discipline to use it responsibly. Taking the training wheels off the bike before your child is ready will necessarily lead to failure and pain.

Periodically, you should re-evaluate your expectations for your child. The goal of course is that your child’s competency will, over time, increase, meaning that your expectations should too. On the other hand, you might find that, in some areas, the expectations were too high, and might need to be adjusted downward for a time so that your child can experience success.

If this is a process you are interested in, we can offer consulting and mediation to help you create a contract with your son or daughter, and help set the tone for the process as well. It’s about helping your son or daughter gain the skills they’ll need to be independent, successful adults.

Want to make sure your child starts second semester off on the right foot? Give us a call to schedule an in-person or phone consultation!