In reaction to corrupt tutoring, many private and public schools are turning to more in-class work, to be sure that students’ work is their own. Many teachers are aware that students are receiving too much outside help, but it is often difficult to prove. Students and parents must of course also do their part to make sure tutoring or other outside help is ethical. In addition, students should realize that teachers are usually aware when the students’ in-class work is dramatically different than their take-home work, and colleges generally look out for college application essays that are so widely discrepant with the students’ academic record and scores on the ACT or SAT. In fact, one reason the SAT and ACT added writing sections was to assess how well applicants write on their own.

While a good tutor or learning specialist can help a student improve his or her core skills, tutors who do the work for students shortchange the students and wind up hurting them in the end. Here are some other practices to follow when students and parents turn to tutors for outside help:

Tutors Should Help with Skills
The right tutor will not only help a student with content for a particular class but will also help him or her improve core skills, such as reading comprehension, writing, and study skills, that last a lifetime. Sometimes, students simply don’t know how to study, and, for example, they try to cram for exams at the last minute. A good tutor can show students how to pace themselves and how to spread out their studying for optimal test results. This is the type of skill that will benefit students and help them become more independent and successful in later studies and in college.

Good Tutors Make Sure Students are Doing the Work
Good tutors, whether they work on academic or test preparation, such as for the ISEE or SSAT, make sure that students are doing their own work. They know that students learn the most from doing their work independently. Ethical tutors also work with schools and teachers, rather than hiding their work, to make sure they understand school assignments and that the students are following the teachers’ directions. In addition, tutors should never cross the ethical lines and culture of the school. Instead, they need to understand what schools allow—and what they don’t—and abide by these rules. The more familiar the tutors are with the schools, their assignments, and their cultures, the more useful tutors will be to students and the more likely they are to benefit students in the long term by making sure students are working independently. In fact, the best tutors make sure that their students won’t need them one day when they can do all the work on their own.

Dr. Blythe Grossberg has worked as a learning specialist in New York City for the past thirteen years. Formerly the Upper School learning specialist at the Collegiate School, she has worked with students in grades 5-12 and college students at top-flight private schools and at magnet and other public schools. Her clients include students with study-skills deficits and learning disorders such as ADD, Asperger’s Syndrome, and dyslexia. She also helps students prepare for standardized tests, including the ISEE/SSAT, SHSAT, PSAT, and SAT, and she works with high-school juniors and seniors to prepare their college essays and applications. She is also the co-founder of a new tutoring company called Themba Tutors- www.ThembaTutors.com. She can be contacted at blythe@brooklynletters.com

Sensory Experiences in the Home: 

The home offers many sensory experiences that occur during everyday activities.  Here are a just a few:

• Mealtimes – eating various types of foods, manipulating foods with your hands, smelling a variety of types of foods
• Bath time – offers exposure to water play, soap, various bath sponges, toys in water
• Motoring around the home – crawling over different types of surfaces including carpet, rugs, floors, etc. offer sensory input to the hands as well as provide motor opportunities.
• Here are a few materials available to provide additional sensory experiences in the home setting:
• A therapy ball – a child can be bounced, can roll over the ball on their stomach, can receive gentle squishes on their back using the therapy ball.
• Scooter board – available on amazon.com or through occupational therapy equipment websites.  In the home you would need a solid surface to roll a scooter board on.  Scooter boards are great to help build a child’s upper extremities as they propel themselves while on their stomachs.  They can also sit on the scooter board and scoot along using their feet.
• Shaving cream or soap foam – can be used in the bathtub against a vertical surface (bath tub wall) to provide tactile exploration
• Playing with foods – offering a variety of dry and wet foods to play with are great opportunities to increase a child’s tactile processing.  Some examples include:  cooked plain spaghetti noodles, making necklaces using cheerios, painting something using pudding, digging hands or feet inside a bin of dry beans, rice, popcorn kernels, etc.

Sensory Experiences in the Community: 

There are many community settings that offer sensory exploration including parks, beaches, amusement parks, backyards, museums, etc.  Below are just a few suggested community settings and some sample sensory based play activities.

Park Play: 

• Swinging on a playground swing
• Swinging on a tire swing
• Climbing on playground equipment
• Climbing across monkey bars
• Playing in a sandbox
• Water play in the park

Beach play

• Playing in the sand with tools and with hands
• Playing in the water
• Swimming

Backyard play or Community Play

• Sprinkler play
• Slip and slide play
• Bouncing on a trampoline (if available)
• Playing chase, red rover, tag, etc
• Bouncehouses
• Sensory Gym Spaces

What does a sensory gym offer? 

Sensory gym spaces are equipped with specialized equipment and suspension devices to provide unique and sensory enriched experiences.  Sensory gym spaces offer children opportunities to receive more intense sensory input in a safe and playful environment.  Children benefit from sensory gym spaces when areas of need require equipment that is not accessible in the home or community.  Some types of equipment you may see in a sensory gym include:

• A variety of different types of swings
• Large crash pads or pillows for heavy work and deep pressure input
• Trampolines or bouncing equipment
• Various tactile play opportunities – bins of dry and/or wet tactile media
• Climbing equipment – ladders, ramps, ropes, lycra swings, etc.
• A ball pit

What types of developmental challenges can benefit from sensory input provided in a sensory gym environment?

• Self regulation difficulties
• Sensory processing difficulties
• Sensory modulation difficulties
• Motor planning challenges
• Decreased fine motor strength
• Decreased upper body strength
• Difficulties with postural strength and control
• Difficulties coordinating the two sides of their body – bilateral coordination
• Sequencing and coordination difficulties
• Body awareness difficulties
• Visual processing challenges that include visual spatial skills, ocular motor control, visual motor skills.

If your child demonstrates challenges related to sensory processing, as detailed above, your child may benefit from an occupational therapy consultation or evaluation in a sensory gym setting.  Further information regarding sensory gym spaces and a child’s specific developmental challenges can be addressed by an occupational therapist.

Dr. Neeha Patel is a licensed occupational therapist who offers a holistic approach to therapy, drawing from evidenced-based practice techniques, sensory integration theory, neurodevelopmental treatment, family-centered care, and a play-based approach. She is Sensory Integration and Praxis Tests (SIPT) certified, and has extensive experience helping children from birth to 16 years old with sensory processing delays, fine and visual motor delays, social skills, pre-writing and handwriting skills, as well as in their primary activities of daily life. She has worked with varying diagnoses including autism spectrum disorders, learning disabilities, developmental delays, developmental coordination disorder, cerebral palsy, disruptive behavior disorder, and down syndrome. Neeha has special interest and completed her doctoral work in the area of cultural sensitivity when working with children and their families. Neeha offers home, school, or community visits in Manhattan (Upper West Side, Midtown, Chelsea, Clinton, West Village, Soho, Tribeca, Union Square, Murray Hill, Gramercy Park, Upper East Side).

For more info. http://www.aboutourkids.org/spk

Parenting a child with special needs can be stressful. It is important to learn to manage that stress instead of letting it manage you. In this workshop, you will learn and practice simple stress management and relaxation skills that will help you to self-soothe.

When?
Wednesday April 24, 2013, 6-8pm

Where?
Extreme Kids and Crew, Space No. 1
40 Brevoort Place
Brooklyn, NY 11216

www.extremekidsandcrew.org

How do I register?
Contact Sonali via email at: sonali@sonalizoracki.com or via phone at: (917) 274-7248

Register early as space is limited!

Who is leading the workshop?
This workshop will be lead by Sonali Zoracki, LCSW.  Sonali has been working with children with special needs and their families for the past 10 years.  She has a private practice in New York City and specializes in providing psychotherapy to parents, caregivers, and siblings of children with special needs.

For more information about Sonali and the services that she provides visit www.sonalizoracki.com

Click here for a printable PDF flyer.

They offer an enrichment track for thriving students, and an Orton-based support track for students who are smart but need explicit multisensory support.

A Speech & Language Pathologist will be on staff for 1-on-1 and small group therapy. We don’t want students to miss any of the morning core curriculum classes, so kids needing speech therapy see the SLP in daily pull-out sessions during the afternoon.

• Ages: Children rising to 1st-6th grades in 2013-14

• Hours: 8:00am-6:00pm (early dismissal optional)

• Class size: Maximum 12 students/teacher

• August in Brooklyn: August 5th-30th at The Park Slope Jewish Center, 1320 8th Avenue (at 14th Street)

Full-day (8:00am-6:00pm) tuition is $2,800- $14/hour for 200 hours over 20 days

They are a 501c3 non-profit, with a limited number of means-tested scholarships to offer, covering 30-90% of tuition, for families qualified for public school free lunch.

Applications with a 33% deposit are accepted in the order received; the balance is due by May 31. We offer a discount of…

• 10% for deposits paid by April 15

Mention code Brooklyn Letters and receive an additional $100 discount (offer only available to the first 5 parents to sign up)!

The Advanced Literacy Skills Hour is for students reading and writing at or above grade level. Every day we work on oral expression/elocution, informed-ear spelling strategies, vocabulary development, and reading comprehension. Older students study Latin roots, suffix and prefix usage, poetry, Aesop’s Fables, grammar, and syntax. We still diagram sentences.

The Geography Hour covers a subject that is rarely taught at most elementary schools. Kids doing well in math take geography instead. We have a globe for every student, lots of mapping puzzles, geography games, and a rare collection of geographical and historical atlases. Students learn the geographical significance of wet, dry, and moist environments. The continents and oceans are introduced, along with major rivers, mountain ranges, and agricultural lands. Older students learn about latitude and longitude.

During the Science Hour students conduct experiments in chemistry, microscopy, or physics. On microscopy days, we examine plant, animal, or mineral specimens, and record our observations. On chemistry days we make concoctions like white-glue silly putty, cornstarch quicksand, polymer worms, and borax slime. On physics days, we celebrate Newton by launching objects from catapults, crashing things together, and experimenting with inertia and gravity.

The MultiSensory Literacy Hour is for students not yet reading and writing at grade level. We focus on speech development, vocabulary building, phonics, spelling, decoding, fluency, reading comprehension, and penmanship. These concepts are taught in a structured and explicit manner, with all the patience that struggling students deserve, using Orton-based lesson planning and procedures.
The MultiSensory Math Hour is for kids who don’t like math, and have difficulty grasping math concepts. Students not yet performing at grade level in math should benefit from these classes. New learnings are introduced explicitly, patiently, and with real-world applications. Tactile teaching tools are used to create clear mental pictures of math procedures. Color coding helps students understand place value and time telling concepts. We play math games so students can see that math can be fun.
Afternoon Program for All Students

Why play Chess? Chess builds memory. Chess improves concentration. Chess develops logical thinking. Chess promotes imagination and creativity. Chess teaches children to look both ways before crossing the street. Chess develops the scientific way of thinking. Chess is cheap. Chess is fun. The Chess & Puzzles Hour combines chess with other spatial-skill activities.

The focus of the Art Hour is art appreciation, drawing, and painting. Students learn basic color theory, and how to blend in order to achieve rich layers of color. They learn to mix paint, layer colors, and use wet and dry brush techniques. Students who lack fine motor dexterity are patiently helped with their abstract brushwork creations.

The Drama Hour gives students a chance to be somebody else for an hour each day. Kids warm up with improvisational activities, and theater games, then work with Reader’s Theater plays – dramatic presentations read and recited by the players from printed scripts.

The Sports Hour is a PE program providing fundamental-skills instruction in one sport each day over a ten-day cycle. Students learn throwology, basketball, touch football, softball, soccer, tennis, table tennis, fencing, ultimate frisbee, and miniature golf – with no scorekeeping or competition.