Successful Learning

You want your children to succeed in their education. We do too. We offer practical tips for teaching your children math, science, writing, and more! These tips can be applied to any homeschool curriculum. There are also highlights of our new textbooks with examples of how our curriculum trains your children to have success in their learning.

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Make Your Kindergarten Curriculum Work for You

How to Teach Paragraph Writing

Quizzing with Hands-on Activities

Developing a Passion for Reading

July 14, 2016 by Ben

We all want our children not only to learn to read but also to love reading. Of course, it can be discouraging to have a reluctant reader in your home. And too often boys develop a distaste for reading, but any child is susceptible to this apathy. Veteran homeschool mom Cynda Moore has written a clever blog post titled “How to Build a Reluctant Reader.” In the style of C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, Cynda offers advice for achieving the opposite of what we want for our children. Her post shows how easy it is for us to cultivate an interest in reading for our children. She starts off the post with this advice.

Although we realize it is not always possible, the best way to build a reluctant reader is to avoid reading to your child. Not only should you avoid funny and meaningful chapter books read aloud to your whole family, but you should also avoid reading little things you may not even connect to literacy. For instance, don’t read his birthday card from Grandma or the highway signs as you are traveling.

My wife and I are so thankful for the eager reader we have in our house. Our second-grade daughter has an almost insatiable appetite for reading. Give her a stack of books, and she will be content for hours. It was natural for us to do these simple everyday activities Cynda mentions with our eldest child, but our challenge is repeating those same activities with our younger children. Cynda’s blog post was helpful to me in identifying what fostered a love for reading in our first child so that my wife and I can help our other daughters find a passion for reading. Read the rest of Cynda’s blog post on the HomeWorks by Precept blog.

Dates to Remember in July

June 30, 2016 by Jenna

Even though I’m not overly fond of summer, July has always been one of my favorite months—my birthday being in July probably has something to do with it. Besides the obvious holiday in July, there are many other notable events to remember.

July 1, 1863, began the three-day battle of Gettysburg, a desperate attempt by General Robert E. Lee to relieve the strain on his own Confederate troops by invading the North. The battle became the turning point of the Civil War, in favor of the Union. I’ve always wanted to visit Gettysburg because being there and seeing it would help make history—which is not my strongest subject—come alive for me. Visiting the park could make a great field trip. Learn more about the events leading up to Gettysburg in American Republic.

July 8, 1776, four days after the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, was the first public reading of the Declaration. The National Archives and Records Administration displays a complete transcript of the Declaration on its website. Reenacting that day from 240 years ago by reading the document to your children would be a great way to celebrate our nation’s independence. Or you could imagine with your children what it would have been like to live through those events.

July 16 to July 20th, 1969, was the historic space journey of Apollo 11. There are many activities you can do with your children to celebrate Moon Day, but I’ve always wondered what it would be like to stand where Neil Armstrong stood and contemplate the vastness and the silence of God’s creation.

July 28, 1866, marks the birth of Beatrix Potter, English author and illustrator of The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Potter wrote and illustrated more than twenty children’s books. Interestingly, a previously lost Beatrix Potter book entitled The Tale of Kitty in Boots was discovered in 2013 and will be published this coming September.

Also on July 28, in 1858, William Herschel—a British magistrate in India—began using people’s fingerprints to authenticate documents. His use of fingerprints eventually opened the door for the use of fingerprints in solving crimes. For a fun hands-on experiment with fingerprints, try this activity!

On July 31, 1790, Samuel Hopkins was issued the first patent in the United States. Hopkins had developed a process for creating potash, an ingredient in fertilizer. Since Hopkins’s patent, more than 6 million patents have been issued—that probably includes several kitchen sinks!

What other event would you add to this list? Comment and let us know what else is going on in July!

Reading for Boys

June 14, 2016 by Ben

When I was six, I hated reading. All I wanted to do was build forts with sticks and gather lots of pinecone hand grenades. It didn’t help that most of the books around the house related to my older sister’s passion for a certain brand of dolls. But, eventually, due to my mother’s persistence, I developed an enthusiasm for reading.

Years later, I still enjoy reading, but as a father of three daughters, I don’t often think about reading options for boys. But my friend and BJU Press illustrator Zack does. In fact, he says that reading education is geared towards girls and that often boys are alienated. His helpful blog post is worth reading in full, but one paragraph is particularly important:

Publishers themselves provide a few obstacles to male literacy. Simply put, publishers target girls more than boys because girls share and recommend books. Boys typically read in isolation from one another. Boy-friendly publishing brings greater financial risks than girl-friendly publishing. . . . This is easily rectified. If books that honor boyhood sell a bunch of copies, publishers will produce more. This means that parents have to be discerning consumers and reward publishers who take boy-friendly risks.”

Thankfully, when I was a boy, my parent’s provided me with books that honor boyhood. My mother was always looking for fiction books that I would appreciate and that would not threaten my walk with the Lord. Here are four titles that I enjoyed when I was younger and that parents can provide for their boys today.

A Father’s Promise

A book I read several times, A Father’s Promise tells the story of a Christian Jew named Rudi, who must survive the Nazi occupation of Poland. Rudi’s close escapes into the woods were my favorite part.

Mice of the Herring Bone

This is a fantastic adventure story about two mice that sail the high seas and frequently encounter pirates. I loved Mice of the Herring Bone and the other four books in the series! When my cousin was struggling with reading, we shared these books with him, and he loved them too.

Pulling Together

As a family struggles to keep their farm, a young boy named Matthew watches his father’s resourcefulness and strength. In the final pages of Pulling Together, the family’s hope rides on their work horses in an exciting local fair competition.

Zoli’s Legacy

Based on a true story, Zoli’s Legacy centers on a young man in post–World War I Hungary who is seeking a path to success in a nation devastated by war. Even though my dad read this book to me at a time when I still hated reading, I enjoyed the account of Zoli’s journey to manhood.

These are a few of my favorite stories for boys. What are some of your favorites?

The Importance of Developing Comprehension Skills in Elementary Reading

June 9, 2016 by Megan

My oldest daughter, a rising second-grader, reads everything—books, magazines, catalogs, advertisements. I even caught her reading the teacher’s edition for a high school Bible textbook one afternoon. Is she an awesome reader? Absolutely. Does she understand everything she reads? Probably not. That’s why reading is such an important part of her curriculum.

A reading curriculum in the elementary school years is not just about learning how to sound out words, even though phonics plays a big part in kindergarten and first grade. Reading class is primarily about the development of reading comprehension skills.

My daughter has been using the BJU Press curriculum since preschool. In the fall, we’ll be using the third edition of Reading 2 in our homeschool, so I’ve been spending a lot of time with the curriculum. Below are some ways I have found that it promotes reading comprehension.

Introducing New Vocabulary in Context

Our children won’t be able to understand a text’s meaning if they don’t understand the meaning of the individual words that make up that text. The Teacher’s Edition always directs us as teachers to introduce new vocabulary words before our children start reading.

Teaching Reading Skills and Strategies

In Reading 2, before our children read a selection, they are directed to the Reading Focus page(s), where a particular reading skill or strategy is emphasized. The information on these pages will help our children better understand and appreciate the accompanying story.

Exercising Pre-reading Skills

Before reading, our children are also directed to take a look at the title page of the selection. We as teachers then ask a series of questions designed to challenge them to make predictions about the text. That exercise not only gets them excited about reading but also sets the stage for better comprehension.

Using Various Levels of Questions

If you are using any of the BJU Press elementary reading textbooks in your homeschool, you know that every teacher’s edition is full of questions. Reading 2 is no different. These questions, based on the four levels of Barrett’s taxonomy (literal recognition or recall, inference, evaluation, and appreciation) are designed to help our children think about the reading selection on a lot of different levels. They also help us assess how well our children understand the text.

Reinforcing Learning

After our children read a selection, we’ll have opportunities to review vocabulary and reading focus skills. We’ll also get another opportunity to read the selection, but usually in a different way (such as turning a narrative story into a drama). These exercises continue to build comprehension.

I’m really excited about using Reading 2 in my homeschool next year. It’s filled with a lot of great selections that I know my daughter will enjoy. But, most of all, I’m anticipating that through this curriculum she will continue to grow in her ability to read with understanding.

Have you used BJU Press’s elementary reading curriculum? What was your favorite feature?

Are You Asking the Right Questions?

June 7, 2016 by Jenna

Much of your child’s success in learning depends on the questions you ask him and how you ask them. Research shows undisputed benefits from asking questions to develop reading comprehension. These questions help children of all ages put what they’re learning into a context that they can discuss, and those who answer comprehension questions learn more subject matter than their peers who do not. Asking your child questions also helps him discover his own ideas. It also gives him an opportunity to explore his creativity and to sharpen critical-thinking skills.

But like most homeschooling parents, you already know the need to ask questions to ensure that your child is learning. In order to teach effectively, you also need to know that you’re asking the right kind of questions. Consider these steps to improving your questioning method.

1. Develop your child’s thinking skills by asking questions that go beyond content.

Use questions that require comparing, evaluating, and discerning. (Why? What if? What is the evidence? What are the alternatives? What are the implications? What do you think is right?)

2. Give your child time to answer.

Don’t expect an immediate response. Five or six seconds of silence is not much time to allow for a well-developed response.
Be willing to accept an unconventional answer. Don’t dismiss an answer simply because it didn’t use the terms in the way that you wanted. Your child may be thinking along the right lines but maybe unable to express the answer in the correct terms. Take the time to help your child restate his answer.

3. Help your child think toward the right answers.

If your child doesn’t understand the question or answers incorrectly, ask simpler questions that help build up to the question you asked initially. If your child has trouble explaining why a sentence is grammatically incorrect, ask about the functions of the words in the sentence (which word is the verb? Is it transitive or intransitive? If it’s transitive, doesn’t it require a direct object? Is there a direct object?).
Demonstrate for your child how you arrive at conclusions by walking him through your own questioning process (how you decided to make a difficult purchase or what leads you to endorse a particular political candidate).

If you help your child by demonstrating good questioning practices, he will not only learn course content but also learn how to ask questions in order to arrive at the answers for themselves. And isn’t that the whole point?

For more insights on questions, consider the discussion sections in our BJU Press curriculum Teacher’s Editions.