James discusses exactly what to do when your children get in trouble for fighting at school or at home—and the right kinds of consequences to give them so they learn to use appropriate behavior instead of lashing out when they feel like hitting someone the next time. Read on to find out the steps you can take toward resolving the problem of fighting at school, plus get advice on how to handle fights that break out between siblings at home!

When your children use fighting or other negative physical behavior as their main coping skills, you’ll find that it usually doesn’t stop at home—they will use it at school, in the neighborhood, on the ball field or at the mall. If your son uses physical fighting, for example, or your daughter uses verbal abuse in place of the problem-solving skills they need to learn in order to function successfully as adults—skills like communication, negotiation and compromise—make no mistake, you need to address this problem immediately. If you don’t, understand that it’s as if your children will be entering the world with a couple of hammers to handle their problems, when what they really need is a wide range of sophisticated tools in order to be successful.

How to Handle Fighting at School and at Home: 7 Tools You Can Use Today

When your child is disciplined at school for getting into a fight, I think the absolute best thing you can do is first find out from the school exactly what happened. That way, you’ll have a framework for your eventual discussion with your child.

Your Spanish students will always need to practice the differences between “Ser” and “Estar”.  The following activity involves your class describing famous people using both of these all so important verbs.

 Before Staring the Activity:

 Before going right into this, review the differences between “Ser” and “Estar”.  Give examples on the board of how “Ser” would be used in describing people.  Do the same with “Estar”.  Make sure everyone is clear on this and that examples are written for everyone to see.  Break your class up into groups of twos or threes.  These groups will then decide on three or four famous people from history, or from modern day pop culture, that they want to talk about.  Give the class about five minutes to decide on their famous people to describe.  Let each group know that the rest of the class should not know who they have chosen.  Other students will be guessing the identity of the mystery person described by listening to the clues read out loud.  From my experience, most students don’t have a problem with this.  For some reason they like keeping secrets from the rest of the class!

 Incorporating the Verbs Ser and Estar in the Descriptions:

 Once each group is happy with their selection of famous characters tell them to write out four sentences describing these people using the verb “Ser”.  From the examples you wrote on the board, students will see that these sentences will involve stating where the person is from, what his physical characteristics are, their nationality and what his job is.  To get everyone involved you can have one student draw the person being described, another person writing the sentences and yet another student looking up words in the book. 

 Now that the descriptive sentences are completed with the verb “Ser”, tell the class to do the same thing with the verb “Estar”.  Again, from the examples you gave on the board students will see that for each character they will be providing information on the emotional state this person may be in now, where he is right now and what he may be doing at this exact moment (present progressive).  For each character there are now eight or so sentences.  Four include the verb “Ser” and four include the verb “Estar”.

 Presentation/Getting Everyone Involved:

 Select a group to present one of their characters.  Have a student read a descriptive sentence with “Ser” and one with “Estar”.  If nobody in the room has guessed who is being described have another student read the next two sentences.  Make a rule that each group member has to read at least one sentence.  If the class is really stumped have one student present the picture created during the sentence making time.  If nothing else, this will get everyone’s attention!  Each group will go through this process until all of the characters have been described.

 Post Activity Strategies:

 Let your students have fun with this.  The class will get loud because people get excited when talking about famous characters and pop stars.  As long as the entire class is listening intently to the  Spanish sentences being read, they are getting great practice.  In most cases this happens without them even knowing it!  Use some of the sentences created by students in your warm up the next day.  By completing this exercise you will find out who the students are interested in.  Each day have the class describe these people using the target verbs.  Good luck and have fun!

Dyslexia is one of the most common learning disabilities in children and in many adults, which hinders a person's reading, writing, spelling and speaking ability. Many people with dyslexia often suffered from difficulties with reading and spelling properly. In recent research shows that dyslexia is not an intellectual disability, it is considered both a learning disability and a reading disability. Dyslexia and IQ are not interrelated too, for reading and cognition develop independently in individuals who have dyslexia.

Not all dyslexics displays the same symptoms, the severity of dyslexia can vary from mild to severe. Some may be mildly dyslexic and may only have a few or even none of the symptoms, some have severe symptoms which affect a person's life. Although there is a learning problem, many sufferers can still become successful in life. As far as treatment concerned, the sooner dyslexia is treated, the more favorable the outcome, it is never too late for people with dyslexia to learn to improve their language skills.

Nowadays dyslexia can be considerably tackled with proper therapy, training and equipment, dyslexic people will benefit from modern technology products. There are many tools and resources to combat dyslexia or learning disabilities, help people cope with their disabilities and difficulties.

Audio devices such as tape recorders are helpful, users can listen to what they have recorded repeatedly. Similarly, users can take advantage of text to speech software programs. Panopreter Plus is a text-to-speech and text-to-mp3 software program, it reads out characters, words, phrases or files in file formats of txt, rtf, doc, pdf and web pages with natural sounding voices, and converts them to spoken audio files in wav and mp3 file formats, the volume and rate are adjustable. By using this text to speech software, users can hear a natural voice speech on the computer, or export audio files to an iPod, smart phone or portable mp3 player, and listen to them later at their convenience, this can improve user's pronunciation and listening skills dramatically.

Voice-enabled electronic dictionaries which give word definitions, synonyms , antonyms, and pronunciation are also helpful. If spelling and grammar are the major problems, there are spelling and grammar devices that have spell-checkers to correct your spelling, and grammar checkers for your grammar correction.

Besides utilizing above technology resources to get help with dyslexia, many other treatments and exercises that can be done to speed up the treatment and help process. With the proper training and treatment, dyslexics can overcome their dyslexia symptoms and lead normal and productive lives.

“Music, dance, drama, and story are the oldest ways human beings learned to pass on information, traditions, customs, and beliefs…. In the vocabulary of some Native American and African languages, there is no word for art, because art is part of everything the people do. Children are natural connectors. Similarly, they see the performing arts as part of everything they do” (Mimi Brodsky Chenfeld; article: Derry Koralek Young Children, March 2010, p. 10).

As we continue our series on Fine Arts, let’s examine how creative and dramatic play is beneficial to children’s learning. Do you remember playing dress-up or performing for your friends and parents? Take a walk down memory lane with us while we talk about some products that will be great in your preschool or daycare center’s outdoor classroom.

I am making a passionate plea to parents and teachers who believe that schooling is the alpha and omega of a child’s life.  Often, schools have convinced students and parents that a child’s focus must exclusively be centered on academic concerns during every waking hour.

This is not a question of whether a quality academic program plays an integral role in the life of our children.  However, do parents and teachers understand the necessity of creating a climate so that children are able to find balance in their lives?  Schooling, as important as it is, should not be the only focus of a child’s daily lifestyle.  There should be more to a child’s life than teaching, learning, and the reaction of parents to a child’s academic performance.

Have you gotten "the call" from your child's school? Janet Lehman, MSW talks frankly about how she and her husband James dealt with it when their son had trouble at school.

In September of our son’s third grade year, we got the phone call from his teacher. She said she was really concerned about our child’s chances of passing that year. I was shocked, angry and anxious—and terribly embarrassed, both as a mother and a social worker who “should have known” what was going on. I immediately took the stance of viewing myself as the victim in the situation. In fact, very quickly it became all about me.

Child development and education are perhaps the most critical phases in one’s life. These stages span the human life from birth up to the end of adolescence. What a child experiences during these years would shape practically his entire identity and determine what his adulthood would be like.

Child development and education are two of the most vulnerable yet most significant stages in life. It is during these stages that the child’s first identity is built based on how he first sees himself, how he thinks he should behave, and how he expects others to behave in relation to him. During these stages, also, the child will face different challenges as he goes through many transition points. These challenges include physical changes, social demands, academic pressures, and emotional needs. Some of these can be handled with just a little getting used to but others truly can place much stress and pressure on the child.

This is why parents play an integral role during child development and education. It is crucial that parents are there to provide particular understanding and guidance for the child. They must offer him support, understand what he is going through, and help him cope with these challenges.

Parents should be actively involved in the education of a child despite the fact that there are already several teachers, administrators and other school personnel to provide them the guidance they need through the school’s rules and regulations, the curriculum, and the learning.

Although it has been shown from studies that the children whose parents are involved in their education by helping them review lessons and study for exams exhibited higher scores in exams and performed better in the overall aspect, this is not how and why they should get involved. If being involved meant teaching and the reason for getting involved was for better grades, then all parents had to be well-educated and good at instruction. Furthermore, it such was the reasoning, then parents will fail to clearly express what the purpose of the education of a child is

As parents, you would want to provide only the best education for your child. This is why parents work so hard; they do not mind getting tired everyday as they look forward to that paycheck to provide for their children’s educational needs. In fact, a star stamped on the child’s hand for being “very good” in school today is enough to put a smile the parents’ faces and make them forget how stressful work can be.

Now, what if someone told you that there was a way to improve your child’s learning for free, would you not be interested to listen? You would, probably. And even if it does not come for free, perhaps you still would, as long as it will benefit your child’s education. Fortunately for parents like you, it does come for free!

So what is “it”? Well, it here means music. Singing, playing, and listening to music, all these activities have long been proven to produce positive effects on a child’s academic performance. In fact, even children as young as newborns benefit from music.