Some auto insurance services offer their insurances together with
home insurance, or what you know better as bundling. Basically, getting auto
insurance and home insurance together is not the right decision for you to do,
because it will substantially reduce your insurance expense. However, it could
be a great decision too to bundle your auto insurance and home insurance too
only in several conditions. Because of that, you have to be very careful in
making the right decision, whether you want to bundle your auto insurance with
your home insurance or not. Like it has been said before, there are several important
conditions that you can consider to bundle your auto insurance and home
insurance.
The first important condition is when your insurer’s
multi-policy discount actually lower your total insurance costs. If this is the
common condition you often face, then it is the right time for you to bundle
your insurance. The second condition you should consider about in bundling your
auto insurance with your home insurance is whether you really need to take them
both or not. If you think you do not really need to take them both, then it is
better for you not to take them because the consequences are very difficult for
you to handle somehow. To get to know
more about this bundling thing, you can directly go to carinsurancerates.com.
Home Schooling Reviewed
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Best service of payday loan
Having more
financial troubles lately? Don’t know how to get rid of those problems
effectively smartly? You need to apply for your online payday loans service then, as this service does provide
best solutions for most of your money troubles and or situations.
Many of the service’s advantages could really give you a settled
peace of mind. The requirements, for instance, are quite easy with nothing more
than your bank account and payday checks for proving your steady income (and
not job, mind you!). Then, the delivery for you money is another best
advantage. When you need your money fast, the service could deliver your cash
even faster! With one day after and or the same day of your application as time
limit for your cash deliverance, surely you could tackle most of your financial
problems at one simple action!
Friday, August 17, 2012
Determine the Great Online Writing Service
Do you need some help about the paper project that your lecture gave to you two days ago? If you need help in that matter then perhaps you should take the term paper help from the online writing. What is online writing service? It is the company which sells the service of online writing. They would provide assistance in helping you to make your paper done. What you have to do is just contact them and tell them about our paper. After that you should set the deadline and then pay for the service after your paper is done. It seems easy, yes?
The things that you have to consider when you are about to hire the service from the online writing company then you should ensure that they have many professional employee. The professionalism would guarantee the best result of your paper. If you want your paper to be the great one then you should hire the service from the most professional online writing service. They would help you in many things from making thesis, dissertation until the answer on the question how to write a college term paper.
The other thing that you have to ensure is please ensure that you hire non plagiarism online writing service. Why is this important? You have to doctrines yourself that plagiarism is the most hideous crime in education. The sanction from plagiarism crime is terribly severe thus you should always ensure that your paper which is being created form the online writing service is free from plagiarism. How to determine that the online writing service company that you are about to hire is free from plagiarism? There are two hints in this matter, the first hint is check their clear statement that their service is free from plagiarism and the second thing is endure that they have the anti copy or anti plagiarism program.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Choosing Elementary Math Curriculum
As you begin your search for a math curriculum that works for your elementary aged child, you need to remember that there are three areas of math to cover: facts, computation and concepts. If math has already become a struggle for your child, then you will especially want to break math down into these three areas. Spread math over the course of the day with short sessions covering these areas in separate sessions.
1. Math Facts - Math facts are primarily a function of auditory memory so be sure you present this new information to your child auditorily as well visually. Whether you have a full math curriculum or find materials that cover the different parts, you must include this in your child's day.
My Best Recommendation for Learning Math Facts: Rapid Recall System
2. Math Computation - At a different time of the day work on computation skills. Computation is primarily a function of visual memory so I recommend 75% visual instruction. That is you do three problems for your child as he watches. You say only a few words to identify steps as you go along. Then your child does the fourth one. Repeat for the duration of the session of say, 10 minutes. You start with simple addition and work up to long division, fractions etc. If the child doesn't remember a math fact, tell them so that the process of computation is learned without interruption. You work on the math facts during a separate time. You can get the computation problems from any math book, but if you just want to pay for the computation problems, get a book that has only those problems in it.
My Best Recommendation for Learning Math Computation: Straight Forward Math and Keys to Fractions (Decimals, Percent, Measurement)
3. Math Concepts - The first two items are the nuts and bolts of math. Concepts are how the basics are applied to real life. If you want a regular curriculum, look into Math U See, Singapore Math and Right Start Mathematics. They cover the whole spectrum of math in a fresh way, but it makes it harder to separate out the three parts and concentrate on one at a time. There are a host of math games available that apply these math concepts in an interesting way. You can spend big bucks. Perhaps a better way is a book of games that you can play as a family. My best recommendation is actually a series of books, but the original is the best overall for K-8 math games. Family Math arranges the games in sections according to the different math concepts. Each game has an objective, instructions and sometimes a page that serves as a game board. You may need to add some household items for game pieces. Each game is labeled for one or more of the three age groups within K-8.
My Best Recommendation for Learning Math Concepts: Family Math
Bonus Recommendation for Mental Math / Auditory Skills: The Verbal Math Lesson Level 1 and 2 for early learners or those who struggle.
Since math skills build on each other, home educators find it helpful to use a "Scope and Sequence" for navigating through math. Downloadable lists of skills can be found on the Internet. By including math facts, computation and concepts you can prepare your children for Algebra, Geometry and beyond.
Maggie Dail and her husband, Ronnie operate the Center for Neuro Development in Lakewood, Washington which is affiliated with Family Academy. They home schooled two foster sons and have worked with home schooling families for nearly 20 years. Maggie earned her M.A. in Special Education in 1989 and has taught for nearly 40 years.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
The Five Most Important Writing Skills
In teaching your home-schooled teenager how to write well, what are the most important writing skills they need to learn? Different writers would likely produce different lists of skills, but here are five that I consider at least among the most important for effective writing.
1. Change weak verbs to action; omit useless words.
Although maybe not as important as my second on this list, I place action writing first because good writing begins with action writing. Action writing is simply the use of interesting action verbs as often as possible (at least half the time) without weak infinitives, weak participles, or weak linking verb/helping verb constructions.
Here's what I mean by a weak verb construction: "He may be going to get to go to the store." This weak verb construction includes a weak helping verb, a linking verb, a weak participle, and two weak infinitives. Yet I see this stuff regularly in student writing.
Interesting single action verbs in past tense include: "He catapulted out of bed." "Her face convinced me of my success." "The crow cawed its intentions."
2. Take your reader with you.
This skill includes many elements of good writing, but without it, your reader will stop reading - the ultimate failure of poor writing. This skill begins with focusing on the readers, being certain the tone and wording is appropriate to them. It includes using transition signals and defining terms so that your reader understands everything you say.
Taking your reader with you even includes skills 1, 3, and 4, that is, making the flow of thoughts interesting and thought-provoking. Finally, be sure that your readers are satisfied upon completion, that they finish your paper with some added benefit to their lives, whether by giving them curious information, or laughter, or some serious consideration, or just the joy of a beautiful world or the sorrow of some deep grief.
3. Develop elements of surprise and suspense in any form of writing.
Ideas are problems waiting to be solved. They are difficulties to conquer, snares to escape, or treasures to win. Good writing begins with a series of fascinating or entertaining or important ideas. It then weaves those ideas into a fabric like a web that captures readers. They read because they must know the answer to the questions you have raised.
One of my favorite opening lines of any book I have read is John Grisham's The Partner: "They found him." Those look like plain and dull words, but placed together as the opening lines - oh, the questions they raise. Who are they? Who is he? Why are they looking for him? What did he take? What will they do to him now that they have found him? And that's only for starters. With an opening like that, repeated several times in the first couple of pages, I am hooked. I must know what happens next.
All good writing includes surprise and suspense - the very thing that takes a reader forward.
4. Add sensory details to personalize and make vivid.
To make an idea interesting is to make it real to the five senses of your reader. Your reader must see and hear, taste, smell, or touch the elements of your topic. Your reader must know - and like - the characters in your story or the topics of your essay. Sensory details, imagery, dialogue, description, the right words in the right way, figurative language, all work together to make the picture you are presenting real to the reader.
Listen, these things apply even in an essay on chemical reactions in chemistry class. If your professor is fascinated by the picture you present and forgets that he's "grading" an assignment, you've won.
5. Revise, revise, and revise.
Effective writers - writers who are read - re-write and re-write many times. The best approach to re-writing, of course, is to find someone else, someone with a critical eye and a tough skin, to read and mark and criticize what you have written. Bear into that criticism. Change what is recommended. Alter your approach. Try it again. Revising and editing your work are half of the writing process.
1. Change weak verbs to action; omit useless words.
Although maybe not as important as my second on this list, I place action writing first because good writing begins with action writing. Action writing is simply the use of interesting action verbs as often as possible (at least half the time) without weak infinitives, weak participles, or weak linking verb/helping verb constructions.
Here's what I mean by a weak verb construction: "He may be going to get to go to the store." This weak verb construction includes a weak helping verb, a linking verb, a weak participle, and two weak infinitives. Yet I see this stuff regularly in student writing.
Interesting single action verbs in past tense include: "He catapulted out of bed." "Her face convinced me of my success." "The crow cawed its intentions."
2. Take your reader with you.
This skill includes many elements of good writing, but without it, your reader will stop reading - the ultimate failure of poor writing. This skill begins with focusing on the readers, being certain the tone and wording is appropriate to them. It includes using transition signals and defining terms so that your reader understands everything you say.
Taking your reader with you even includes skills 1, 3, and 4, that is, making the flow of thoughts interesting and thought-provoking. Finally, be sure that your readers are satisfied upon completion, that they finish your paper with some added benefit to their lives, whether by giving them curious information, or laughter, or some serious consideration, or just the joy of a beautiful world or the sorrow of some deep grief.
3. Develop elements of surprise and suspense in any form of writing.
Ideas are problems waiting to be solved. They are difficulties to conquer, snares to escape, or treasures to win. Good writing begins with a series of fascinating or entertaining or important ideas. It then weaves those ideas into a fabric like a web that captures readers. They read because they must know the answer to the questions you have raised.
One of my favorite opening lines of any book I have read is John Grisham's The Partner: "They found him." Those look like plain and dull words, but placed together as the opening lines - oh, the questions they raise. Who are they? Who is he? Why are they looking for him? What did he take? What will they do to him now that they have found him? And that's only for starters. With an opening like that, repeated several times in the first couple of pages, I am hooked. I must know what happens next.
All good writing includes surprise and suspense - the very thing that takes a reader forward.
4. Add sensory details to personalize and make vivid.
To make an idea interesting is to make it real to the five senses of your reader. Your reader must see and hear, taste, smell, or touch the elements of your topic. Your reader must know - and like - the characters in your story or the topics of your essay. Sensory details, imagery, dialogue, description, the right words in the right way, figurative language, all work together to make the picture you are presenting real to the reader.
Listen, these things apply even in an essay on chemical reactions in chemistry class. If your professor is fascinated by the picture you present and forgets that he's "grading" an assignment, you've won.
5. Revise, revise, and revise.
Effective writers - writers who are read - re-write and re-write many times. The best approach to re-writing, of course, is to find someone else, someone with a critical eye and a tough skin, to read and mark and criticize what you have written. Bear into that criticism. Change what is recommended. Alter your approach. Try it again. Revising and editing your work are half of the writing process.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Home School Writing
Many parents of home-schooled teenagers ask themselves: "Is my child missing out on science or math or even writing skills by not being in the 'mainstream?' Will they survive college?" Having been both a home-school dad and a public and private high school teacher, I know the questions.
I also know the answers. "NO! Your child is not missing out." And: "They will make you proud."
Hindrances to Writing Well:
Now, however, as a college instructor of developmental writing, I see the lacks and the blockages that prevent incoming students from expressing themselves intelligently and creatively in written English at a college level. They are not stupid; they do have something worth saying, but written English is a formidable thing to them.
One student, Amanda, told me, "I always dreaded writing class, but my thoughts on writing have changed. Writing truly does help you to visualize and express who you are. It has become natural, and I do not dread it now."
What Students Really Want:
Do not make the mistake, though, of depending on any modern college, public or private, to impart to your teenagers the writing skills they need for success in college and in life.
Much of what passes for writing instruction in today's world both confuses incoming students and leaves them vulnerable to some of the manipulative philosophies that pervade modern education. On the other hand, those who enter college fully equipped with the ability to think clearly through written English are much more able, not only to hold their own, but to excel.
Modern education wants students to "feel good" about themselves, to learn from their peers, to express their "feelings" and "beliefs" about the given topic. I find that students look for something entirely different. My students want three things, and I suspect your teenagers do as well. They want clarity of thought, they want to do for themselves what is being taught, and they want to leave a course convinced that their time spent has given them meaningful skills that bring immediate benefits.
A Different Way to Learn Writing:
First, your own students need to have the skills of written English made immediately clear to them.
Second, they should write and re-write and re-write their own work, not wasting time fixing programmed "mistakes" in someone else's writing. You will be moved by the clarity and power of the final drafts your children write; they will be amazed as well.
Third, your child must experience the certain knowledge that they know how to write well. Based on that knowledge, further creativity and expression come easily. When a student knows how to write well, every future writing task becomes a challenge to be won.
Teaching Philosophy:
How do you approach teaching writing in a way that will accomplish good results for any child. That is a question I often ask myself when I reject all the second drafts my students turn in, making them do it all over again, and even then still don't see what the paper must become for the final draft.
I want to share with you a teaching philosophy that has helped me.
The teaching philosophy, the approach to learning to write well, that I have found useful for writing students consists of three simple things. The first is to have your writing learner copy good writing. Second is to allow them to write freely without thought of rules - and then, require them to re-write and re-write and re-write until the paper is clear and powerful. And the third is for your student to hit the brick wall of a hard-nosed editor who refuses to accept mediocrity, ambiguity, or otherwise boring drivel passed off as written English. It is to deal with the need to change how one writes, and, in desperation almost, pull out of the insides, one's very best.
Where to Begin:
I start all of my writing students with a Personal Narrative paper for three specific reasons. First, if we write well only what we know, there is nothing we know more than our own story. More than that, people and their stories are interesting. Seeing one's own story written powerfully, and knowing, "I wrote that," does more for your child's self-esteem than all the "feel-good" sessions put together.
The third reason I have learned from years of experience teaching writing skills to teenagers. Narrative writing is the best place to learn what exactly makes the difference between boring writing that is read only by those paid to read it versus writing that moves its readers, making them eager to read more. People's stories and life experiences are always interesting - if written well.
I also know the answers. "NO! Your child is not missing out." And: "They will make you proud."
Hindrances to Writing Well:
Now, however, as a college instructor of developmental writing, I see the lacks and the blockages that prevent incoming students from expressing themselves intelligently and creatively in written English at a college level. They are not stupid; they do have something worth saying, but written English is a formidable thing to them.
One student, Amanda, told me, "I always dreaded writing class, but my thoughts on writing have changed. Writing truly does help you to visualize and express who you are. It has become natural, and I do not dread it now."
What Students Really Want:
Do not make the mistake, though, of depending on any modern college, public or private, to impart to your teenagers the writing skills they need for success in college and in life.
Much of what passes for writing instruction in today's world both confuses incoming students and leaves them vulnerable to some of the manipulative philosophies that pervade modern education. On the other hand, those who enter college fully equipped with the ability to think clearly through written English are much more able, not only to hold their own, but to excel.
Modern education wants students to "feel good" about themselves, to learn from their peers, to express their "feelings" and "beliefs" about the given topic. I find that students look for something entirely different. My students want three things, and I suspect your teenagers do as well. They want clarity of thought, they want to do for themselves what is being taught, and they want to leave a course convinced that their time spent has given them meaningful skills that bring immediate benefits.
A Different Way to Learn Writing:
First, your own students need to have the skills of written English made immediately clear to them.
Second, they should write and re-write and re-write their own work, not wasting time fixing programmed "mistakes" in someone else's writing. You will be moved by the clarity and power of the final drafts your children write; they will be amazed as well.
Third, your child must experience the certain knowledge that they know how to write well. Based on that knowledge, further creativity and expression come easily. When a student knows how to write well, every future writing task becomes a challenge to be won.
Teaching Philosophy:
How do you approach teaching writing in a way that will accomplish good results for any child. That is a question I often ask myself when I reject all the second drafts my students turn in, making them do it all over again, and even then still don't see what the paper must become for the final draft.
I want to share with you a teaching philosophy that has helped me.
The teaching philosophy, the approach to learning to write well, that I have found useful for writing students consists of three simple things. The first is to have your writing learner copy good writing. Second is to allow them to write freely without thought of rules - and then, require them to re-write and re-write and re-write until the paper is clear and powerful. And the third is for your student to hit the brick wall of a hard-nosed editor who refuses to accept mediocrity, ambiguity, or otherwise boring drivel passed off as written English. It is to deal with the need to change how one writes, and, in desperation almost, pull out of the insides, one's very best.
Where to Begin:
I start all of my writing students with a Personal Narrative paper for three specific reasons. First, if we write well only what we know, there is nothing we know more than our own story. More than that, people and their stories are interesting. Seeing one's own story written powerfully, and knowing, "I wrote that," does more for your child's self-esteem than all the "feel-good" sessions put together.
The third reason I have learned from years of experience teaching writing skills to teenagers. Narrative writing is the best place to learn what exactly makes the difference between boring writing that is read only by those paid to read it versus writing that moves its readers, making them eager to read more. People's stories and life experiences are always interesting - if written well.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Finding the Best Curriculum
There is not one curriculum that's the best. There is only the curriculum that's the best fit for your child. This is why I don't think anybody can tell you what the best curriculum is, because it may not fit your child at all. So, one of the things you want to be thinking about is what has worked for your in the past because that's the kind of thing that's likely to be a successful curriculum in the future.
The other thing you want to be thinking about, especially during the high school years, is whether the curriculum was made for homeschoolers. The reason this is important is because there's a lot of curriculum out there, even sold at homeschool conventions, that was originally developed for public and private high school teachers. These books assume that you are in a classroom setting and includes lots of repetition. It also assumes that the teacher knows the subject. This means if you were to buy a French book that was intended for a public school French teacher, it would assume you know French.
In contrast, if you buy curriculum that is intended and written for homeschoolers, it's going to assume that you know nothing. It will assume that you don't know the subject and that your child doesn't know the subject. This is how you get through, especially those difficult subjects like chemistry, physics or algebra. You will want to choose a curriculum that is made for homeschoolers and this will help you be much more successful.
I have a suggestion for you if are looking for curriculum for the very first time and you have no idea where you are going to start or what you are going to do. Usually, I point people to Sonlight curriculum because I find that it has the best hand-holding and can help you kind of ease in to a homeschool curriculum a little bit. So, if you are completely flummoxed and you don't have a clue where to start, look at Sonlight curriculum. Other than that just make sure that your curriculum choices are made for homeschoolers.
The other thing you want to be thinking about, especially during the high school years, is whether the curriculum was made for homeschoolers. The reason this is important is because there's a lot of curriculum out there, even sold at homeschool conventions, that was originally developed for public and private high school teachers. These books assume that you are in a classroom setting and includes lots of repetition. It also assumes that the teacher knows the subject. This means if you were to buy a French book that was intended for a public school French teacher, it would assume you know French.
In contrast, if you buy curriculum that is intended and written for homeschoolers, it's going to assume that you know nothing. It will assume that you don't know the subject and that your child doesn't know the subject. This is how you get through, especially those difficult subjects like chemistry, physics or algebra. You will want to choose a curriculum that is made for homeschoolers and this will help you be much more successful.
I have a suggestion for you if are looking for curriculum for the very first time and you have no idea where you are going to start or what you are going to do. Usually, I point people to Sonlight curriculum because I find that it has the best hand-holding and can help you kind of ease in to a homeschool curriculum a little bit. So, if you are completely flummoxed and you don't have a clue where to start, look at Sonlight curriculum. Other than that just make sure that your curriculum choices are made for homeschoolers.
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