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| The Basics of Home Schooling |
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Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Why are so many families choosing to teach their children at home? Does it require a special degree or something? Can anyone do it? These are the questions that will be answered here. Some families choose home schooling because it gives the parents control over what the children are taught. This might offend some people, but it is what our country was founded on: freedom. If the government is allowed a monopoly in education they will be free to completely control what children are taught. If carefully considered, that is a frightening thought. Another reason parents have chosen to teach their children at home is that children naturally learn better under a tutor system of learning. If one adult is teaching one to six children the children will learn better than if they are in a classroom of 30 children with one adult. Some people might disagree, but the studies show that the more personal attention a student gets the better they learn. There are also parents who want their children to be able to learn at their own speed. It has been shown that children learn at different rates. Any parent and teacher will agree with that statement. Some are ready to read at a younger age than others the same as some are ready for arithmetic at a younger age than others. It does not mean those who are ready at a younger age are smarter than the others. There are home school graduates at Harvard who did not learn to read until they were ten or older. But by learning at home these students were given the wonderful opportunity to learn at their own speed, whether that meant finishing high school by 14 or 15, or not beginning formal academics until they are 10. Thankfully there are places in the world where anyone can teach their children at home. In the United States all 50 states allow anyone to teach their children at home. However, not everyone should home educate their children. It requires a fair amount of patience and persistence. Also, the parent needs to be able to enjoy being with their children all day, as well as enjoying all the mess it can create. It is kind of like experiencing summer vacation all year long in that the children are always home. It also requires a certain degree of dedication and the ability to be calm. It helps if the parent can model a love of learning, can make learning fun, and can relax and enjoy this time with their children instead of feeling pressured to produce a bunch of Thomas Edison’s. Home schooling might not be right for everyone, but it is a wonderful opportunity for many families to grow close, allow the children to learn at their own speed, and give each child individual attention in a tutor and student setting. The author is the publisher of the Our Time Now retirement Blog (http://www.ourtimenow.com) and the Online Christian Shopper (http://www.onlinechristianshopper.com) Christian T-Shirt and Jewelry site. How to read Spanish When you sit down with a book or article written in Spanish do you first decide what it is you want to improve? Or do you just sit down and start reading with no clear goal in mind? While the latter approach is fine if you are reading for enjoyment and will definitely help your Spanish, there are two specific areas in which you can help improve your Spanish that demand that you go through the text in a specific way. Reading to improve vocabulary The first, which is probably most common is to start reading and to stop every time you find a word you don't understand and reach for the dictionary. This will improve your vocabulary as you go through the text, but if you're trying to read a book this way it can become quickly tiring and you may lose sight of the story due to the number of words you look up as you go along. This approach really works better for news items, where you can go through a text, highlight the vocabulary you don't know and go through it in one block to find the translations. Then go through the text again to see how your comprehension improves. Reading Spanish to increase fluency The second approach is to simply keep reading, as close to your normal reading speed as possible without stopping, even when you haven't understood. This is closer to the way you read in English, with knowledge gaps being filled by other clues. This helps you going, even when you know you don't understand everything and helps build a coping mechanism for dealing with those information gaps. While it is much easier to reach for the dictionary as you go along when you are reading, just imagine what happens when you are talking with someone in Spanish; you simply can't, so you need to try and get the complete information from the context, by asking questions or just waiting to see if the missing information appears at a later stage in the conversation. By doing this with your reading you'll actually be able to enjoy the story if it is a novel that you are reading; reading the same book with a dictionary doesn't exactly make for relaxing reading and may put you off from picking up that book. Mark Hazard has been living and working in Spain since 2001. His new website is about learning Spanish and can be found at http://www.simplylearnspanish.com/ 5 Warning Signs of Diploma Mill Education industry is one of the highly profitable industries. Scams are trying very hard to penetrate into the market in order to share the profits. These scams are known as Diploma Mill and they are trying very hard to make themselves look like the legitimate education institution by claiming accreditation, offer guarantees and they even have ".edu" domain extension for their website. Here are 5 tips on how to look for the warning signs of diploma mill: 1. Accredited by Non-Recognized Accreditation Agency Diploma mills know that you definitely will look for accreditation when you search for your university or degree program. So, they will increase your confidence level by claiming full accreditation too. The trick is on the accreditation agency, which accreditation agency accredited the school? This is the first thing you need to find out before you even requesting the degree information from them. Find out whether the accreditation agency is in the list of regional accreditation or national accreditation. If not, the accreditation is not recognized. 2. Limited Contact Information Don't enroll into a degree program without requesting details information from the school. If you hard to find for the contact information from the school website and there is no physical address and telephone number on school website, it is better to drop this from your list than taking the risk. Every legitimate school should be able to provide students with a way to get help in person or over the phone beside the email communication. 3. Extremely Claims If any of advertisement from any online universities guaranteed that you can get your degree within 5 days, 7 days or with solely life experience only, it is a clear diploma mill signal. You should always put yourself at a high alert level for any degree program that offers extremely good deals or claims that your can complete your programs extremely fast with extremely minimum work, it likely to be a fake. 4. The School is Not Listed on CHEA's Website CHEA (Council on Higher Education Accreditation) is an association of over 3,000 degree-granting colleges and universities, it contain a searchable database for universities and colleges that are accredited by proper accreditation agencies. Hence, check your selected university to see whether it is listed in CHEA database at chea.org. If you can't found the university in the list, your better be caution on this university. 5. Sound-Alike Names Many people familiar with "branded" universities and have a good confidence on those universities. But, be aware, look at the school name careful to make sure the name spell out exactly and the address is matched. Because, many diploma mills try to confuse you by using names that sound or look like those well-know universities. If the institution has a name similar to a well-known school, but is located in a different state, check on it. In Summary You have the responsibility to make sure that the degree of your choice is from legitimate and properly accredited universities. Keep yourself alert to the potential signs of diploma mills and avoid fake-degree burns by spending some time to check for the credential of your selected university. Amelia Turner is the author from http://www.your-online-degree.info. Visit her website if you want more FREE and detailed information on choosing the right online degree programs, accredited online colleges, and other online education information. |
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