Category: by Debra Bell | Page 9

Help! My Child’s A Late Reader

July 5, 2011

The magic of reading is part brain development and part environment. You can’t do much about the first — that’s a timeline God controls — but you certainly can about the latter. Kids will learn to read if they invest time in reading. The more they read, the better they will read. Your role is to help Read More...

by Debra Bell, Testing

Standardized Testing: The G,B, & U Part II

March 29, 2011

If you are required or decide to participate in standardized achievement testing, then here are tips for getting the most accurate results possible: Please see prior post that emphasizes the validity and reliability issues with these tests. Even if you use all the tips that follow, your results are still not as accurate as your Read More...

by Debra Bell, Testing

Standardized Testing: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

March 25, 2011

It’s testing season again in Pennsylvania. Over the next six weeks, I will administer or provide materials for testing more than 300 homeschooled students in PA. Why? Because it is the law here. Fortunately, it is only required for grades 3rd, 5th and 8th and there is nothing in the law that says students have to score at Read More...

by Debra Bell, Homeschool For Success

Warmth – an essential nutrient for early learning

February 22, 2011

A necessary, but often overlooked, component of learning is emotional arousal. In laymen’s terms, that means we learn more when feelings of pleasure and interest are associated with a learning experience. Our memory system encodes what we are experiencing more deeply, more lastingly and in greater detail when we are not just cognitively engaged but also emotionally engaged. You know Read More...

by Debra Bell, Homeschool For Success

Experience – the Early Learning Advantage

March 15, 2011

The final nutrient needed to cultivate a rich soil that feeds your young child’s early cognitive growth is experience. God has created a marvelous environment to promote this — it’s called “outdoors.” Further, He has given your kids five intake valves through which to process this information. These are called the 5 senses: hearing, seeing, touching, tasting Read More...

by Debra Bell, Homeschool For Success, The Science of Learning

Does growing up in the country improve learning?

June 9, 2021

Here’s an interesting finding: City life decreases emotional control and cognitive capacity. Does this context, in part, explain why children growing up in our urban core lag behind their middle class peers? And what does the net effect of less time spent outside by school age children predict for the future? Homeschooling families can offset Read More...